The Corporation Documentary

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

 

I highly recommend seeing The Corporation at the Castro. It has a great

section on the inhumane treatment of animals and Jane Akre and Steve

Wilson, the two Fox reporters who weren't allowed to run a piece about

Monsanto's bovine growth hormone in milk. The basic message in the film

was: Stop Drinking Milk.

http://thecorporation.com/

 

THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive

proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative

reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on

rBGH, a synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned

in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows’ metabolism and boost their milk

production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from

mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be

injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce

people’s resistance to disease.

 

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre

and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida’s

whistle-blower statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the

story Fox would have had them put on the air was false, distorted or

slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict was

overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award. For more

information on the case see www.foxbghsuit.com

 

JUNE 4–-16

http://www.thecastrotheatre.com/p-list.html#corporation

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Winner of the Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, The

Corporation is an insightful, engaging and humorous exploration of this

very peculiar entity. 150 years ago, corporations were relatively

insignificant. Today, they are a dramatic and pervasive presence in all

our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in

other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant

institution. This feature documentary takes a look at the very nature

of the corporation. Considered a “person” under the law, filmmakers

Mark Achbar (co-director of Manufacturing Consent), Jennifer Abbott and

Joel Bakan ask “What kind of person is it?” And they conclude that it

meets all the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath. The Corporation

questions the sanity of granting so much power to such a person, this

institution with the legal obligation to serve the bottom line and no

need to account for “human” values. The film deftly blends interviews

with newsreel footage, early TV advertisements, B movies, and corporate

propaganda films. It uses dramatic case studies to explore the impacts

the corporation has on our environment, our children, our health, our

media, our democracy, and even our genes—and what people are doing in

response.With Noam Chomsky, Peter Drucker, Milton Friedman, Naomi

Klein, Michael Moore as themselves. A film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer

Abbott and Joel Bakan. Based on the book “The Corporation: The

Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” by Joel Bakan. (2003) 145m.

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/corporation

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/corporation/trailer.med.html