1.FOX News and Monsanto - from "The Corporation"
2.A Journalist's Loss of Faith and Discovery of Deeper Truths
NOTE: Item 2 is an extract from former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Uli Schmetzer's new book: TIMES OF TERROR ˆ Notebooks of a Foreign Correspondent: A Journalist's Journeys in History, Politics & His Profession
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1.FOX News and Monsanto - from "The Corporation"
http://www.videosift.com/video/FOX-News-and-Monsanto-from-The-Corporation
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2.A Journalist's Loss of Faith and Discovery of Deeper Truths
http://mediachannel.org/blog/2009/08/a-journalist%E2%80%99s-loss-of-faith-and-discovery-of-deeper-truths/
Faith does not collapse all of a sudden, it erodes gradually.
In the early 1990s Bob Rowley and I were taken off our regular beats abroad to concentrate on a series about the global smuggling of weapons and nuclear material. For nearly two months we traveled the world interviewing experts, police and the smugglers. In Munich I was given access to the jail cell of a convicted plutonium trafficker, caught in a sting operation; in Venice I had dinner with a leading Italian magistrate investigating the smuggling of plutonium inside tree trunks transported from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East; in Frankfurt a Polish smuggler carrying a briefcase containing plutonium died of radiation poisoning; on the Afghan-Pakistan border I spent two days with village gun makers turning Japanese scrap metal into lethal custom-made weapons including one-shot fountain pens, artillery pieces and custom-made automatic rifles; in Afghanistan CIA agents tried desperately to buy back the shoulder-held anti-aircraft Stinger missiles the Pentagon had donated to
the Mujahideen when they still fought the Soviets, rather then the U.S.; in Zurich we heard of a CIA plane parked permanently at the airport. The plane allegedly functioned as a buy-up office purchasing nuclear material from smugglers.
We figured we had spent some $80,000 in expenses on traveling and accommodation alone.
But the series did not see print.
All efforts for an explanation fell on deaf ears. It was as if an official secrecy act had been imposed on the Tribune editors. Rumor had it the word came down from Washington the series would panic the public. Seven years later, on September 11 2001, Americans would be jolted out of their false sense of security and truly panicked.
While in India in 1998 I wrote a story about the battle of Indian farmers and scientists to prevent Monsanto introducing its Genetically Modified Seeds (GMS). The Indians argued GMS would spell the end of their native seeds, might transmigrate and would grant Monsanto a monopoly on seeds in the world's second most populous nation. The desk in Chicago tossed the story back at me with some queries. I rewrote the piece addressing the queries. A few hours after I dispatched the reworked story I received a telex message from the Monsanto rep in India. He complained about an alleged inaccuracy in the third paragraph of my story. The story had not been printed so far. Someone in Chicago had offered Monsanto a copy of the story prior to it being printed.
Needless to say the story was never printed and my furious inquiries how the corporation had managed access to unpublished copy were never answered.
Such incidents jolt your faith.