November 1992 – NBC’s Dateline runs a segment showing how General Motors trucks explode when involved in accidents. The automaker sues the network, which later apologizes for staging the accidents to make them look worse than they appear.
NBC ran a segment called “Waiting to Explode” on its popular Dateline show about how certain General Motors’ trucks were more likely to explode when struck from the side.
The show had taped staged accidents to support its claims, but the accidents did not result in fires that destroyed the trucks, as had happened in several actual accidents. The show went ahead and aired the footage, but a month later apologized to GM when threatened with a lawsuit. In addition, it was disclosed that the crash testers hired by the network to perform the accidents had placed incendiary devices under the trucks to promote a fire.
Dateline was not the only TV show to experience problems with stories about businesses. At nearly the same time as the GM story, competitor ABC ran a story on its Prime Time Live show about North Carolina-based grocery chain Food Lion, accusing it of selling old and tainted meat to customers. The show used undercover reporters who were hired by Food Lion locations to work in the stores, and taped footage inside the stores without the company’s permission. One of the producers wrote the following on her application: “I love meat wrapping. I have heard Food Lion is a great company. I would like to make a career with the company.”
The company launched a massive public relations campaign to counter the story, charging that the show had selectively used footage that supported its preconceived angle and not footage that portrayed Food Lion positively. The company also sued ABC, but not for libel. It claimed fraud and business deception, noting that the producers had obtained jobs under false pretenses. Its stock price had fallen 50 percent, and its sales fell after the segment aired. Although a judge initially awarded Food Lion $315,000 in damages, the award was later reduced to $2. However, the courts ruled that the reporters had acted illegally.
Two years after the GM debacle on Dateline and the Food Lion story on Prime Time Live, the ABC News program Day One ran an investigative story called “Smoke Screen” about how Philip Morris manipulated the nicotine in its cigarettes. The main reporter on the story was Walt Bogdanich, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who had won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating medical clinics. Two weeks later, Philip Morris sued ABC, asking for $10 billion in damages. In 1995, the network apologized to the cigarette company, but a year later, ABC was aggressively reporting on the industry again, with Peter Jennings on the nightly news airing a segment called “Never Say Die -- How the Cigarette Companies Keep on Winning.”
Although the Day One story was tarnished, few have questioned the reporting. In fact, later stories and evidence have proven the reporting correct. The end result, however, was a loss of credibility for this type of business journalism, which included anonymous sources.
Overall, the television networks have done a good job of reporting about business, though their work has not been as measured as other types of media, notably newspapers and magazines. But what remains in the public’s perception of how TV approaches business journalism are these cases where it was later determined that their tactics and approaches to a story were unfair. And by using such strategies, all investigative business journalism on TV during the time came under question. The success of the companies in fighting back also made it harder for many journalists in any form of media to report and write investigative pieces about business and industry without being accused of being unfair and receiving threats of lawsuits.