Student-run organization Ohio Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) is sponsoring a lecture by Journalist Jane Akre Tuesday. Akre and her husband Steve Wilson worked as investigative reporters for the Tampa based branch of Fox until October 24, 1998, when the station fired them for refusing to run false and misleading reports regarding recombinant bovine growth hormones. Akre and her husband resisted demands by station managers and lawyers that they run they story. The station fired them just prior to Christmas, 1997.
In a statement published online, Wilson said, "Fox managers and their lawyers ordered us to distort, twist, and slant a story, and threatened us with immediate dismissal if we would not broadcast material we knew to be false or misleading." Fox threatened to fire Akre and Wilson within 48 hours after their refusal to report the false story. When they retorted by stating their intention to file a formal complaint with the FCC, Fox offered them what Wilson called "a large cash settlement." When they refused to accept Fox's proposed settlement the station fired them.
The National Society of Professional Journalists awarded Akre and Wilson with its Award for Ethics, only the fourth time they have issued it in their 89-year existence. Akre will deliver her lecture Tuesday at 7:30 in King 306.
Allen Memorial Hospital and the Oberlin Clinic merged February 1 to form an umbrella corporation that will be called The Oberlin Medical Center. Hospital Director James Schaum and President of the Clinic's Board of Directors Wuu-Shung Chuang announced the $3.5 million acquisition.
A merger between the two medical units had been anticipated since at least October, 1998, when a similar consolidation was announced but failed to manifest. The 16 clinic doctors will work at the Oberlin Medical Center. The hospital will purchase the clinic's West Lorain Street buildings, equipment, and supplies.
The merger is partly financially motivated, as the hospital lost $400,000 in 1998 and $2 million in 1999. In a Feb. 1 edition of the Oberlin News-Tribune, Schaum said he feels the merger will offer new life to the center and allow the center to recruit new physicians.
Copyright © 2000, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 128, 13, February 11, 2000
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