Famous Journalist Brill’s Beef with ABC
Well-know
journalist Steven Brill, who founded Brill’s Content, recently turned
his critical eye to Beef Products Inc. (BPI) and its lawsuit against
ABC. Brill, also a legal writer and entrepreneur who also started
American Lawyer magazine, said of BPI’s suit: “as an aficionado of these
cases, I can report that this is the most detailed, persuasive
complaint of its kind that I have ever read.”
Brill’s analysis of the case appeared on Reuters on Sept. 18, and was highly critical of ABC’s attack on the beef industry.
Beef
Products Inc. (BPI) filed a lawsuit against ABC News on September 13,
claiming that ABC had knowingly and recklessly campaigned against the
use of “Lean, Finely Textured Beef,” which ABC dubbed “pink slime.”
According to the lawsuit, BPI had to lay off 700 of its 1,300 employees
after it lost 60 percent of its business, due to bad publicity from ABC
News.
He
describes ABC’s reporting “as if Upton Sinclair a his epic novel ‘The
Jungle’ that took readers inside the gruesome meat packing plants of the
early twentieth century had been reborn in the person of [Diane] Sawyer
and lead on-air reporter Jim Avila.”
Based
on multiple readings of the lawsuit’s “painstaking explanation” of how
LFTB is made, Brill said, “ I began to believe that it was Beef Products
that was slimed. I actually found myself believing that this may not be
‘The Jungle, Part Two’; that what the company produces really is the
‘lean, finely textured beef,’ or ‘LFTB’ that Beef Products’ complaint
says it is; that it is real meat, not “filler” or “gelatin,” as it was
described on ABC; and that it is safe and has been deemed so by federal
inspectors and officials who were not paid off or unduly influenced by
corporate politics and lobbying.”
He
also noted that BPI claims it provided evidence to ABC of the safety of
its product, which BPI says ABC ignored. “If that’s true, it could
establish the kind of ‘actual malice’ or ‘reckless disregard’ for the
truth that would put ABC in real legal jeopardy. Indeed, for me this is
the most compelling part of the complaint.”
In
addition to Brill’s Content and American Lawyer, Brill founded CourtTV
and Journalism Online and has written several books including “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools.”
