Biased Media Outlets Ignore 'CRUDE' Outtakes

Imagine the following scenario taking place on the world stage:

Scene 1: Employees of one of the world’s largest oil companies are found to be in league with a right-wing film producer in an effort to produce a documentary aimed at helping the company fend off a lawsuit in a third-world country’s court that, if lost, could cost the company more than U.S. $100 million.

Scene 2: New York-based lawyers, said to be working on behalf of thousands of poor plaintiffs in their suit against the oil company, ask a U.S. federal court judge to order the right-wing film producer to provide his court with outtakes from the documentary, and the judge says, “Yes.”

[youtube duFXuRnd2CU nolink]

Scene 3: Recognizing that the outtakes are now part of the official court record, members of the news media request copies of them. In turn, the federal judge orders that copies of the outtakes should not only be provided to members of the media requesting them but to members of the general public.

Scene 4: After obtaining the outtakes, members of the media spend countless hours airing video snippets, painting the “Big Oil” company in the worst light possible and, in so doing, aiding and abetting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, a real-world scenario diametrically opposite the one described above seems to be taking place now. Below is a list of the players involved:

• Chevron Corporation is the defendant in a contentious lawsuit — now 17-years-old — being tried in an Ecuadoran court;

• The Amazon Defense Coalition, an Ecuador-based nonprofit that claims to represent thousands of poor citizens of the third-world country, is the plaintiff;

• Representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit is a legal team headed by New York-based trial lawyer Steven Donziger;

• Joseph Berlinger is the man who produced the controversial 2009 documentary, “CRUDE,” which, though only 1 hour and 45 minutes in length, seems endless in its criticism of Chevron; and
  
  

• Members of the mainstream media have covered the lawsuit in anti-Chevron stories similar to a CBS News 60 Minutes segment, “Amazon Crude,” that aired May 3, 2009.

On April 30, attorneys for the San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplain in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order the release of outtakes from Berlinger’s flick, arguing that they might contain incriminating information that might help settle the case sooner than later. Within days, the judge granted Chevron’s request and ordered the release of outtakes from “CRUDE.”

Several months passed until, lo and behold, the folks at Chevron were proven right!

On Aug. 3, I shared a report, the title of which — ‘Crude’ Footage Reveals Lies Behind Trial Lawyers’ Suit Against Chevron — revealed what was uncovered by Carter Wood at the National Association of Manufacturers’ Shop Floor blog.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2010, some five months after Judge Kaplan declared the outtakes were fair game. In a memo to his court clerk, he stated that copies of the outtakes should be provided to three requesters — Thomson Reuters, American Lawyer Magazine and ALM Media — as well as to “any member of the public who requests (them) upon payment of the reasonable cost of duplication and blank media.”

As of today, I could find no evidence that any of the outtakes have been published. Not by any of the requesters. Not even by CBS News!

Why? Because the amount Chevron would have to pay if it loses the lawsuit is estimated at $113 billion — up from $27 billion figure reported in previous reports about the case — and nothing would make members of the left-wing media happier than to take a huge financial chunk like that out of “Big Oil.”

I close with two messages:

To the mainstream media, I say, “Your bias is showing!”

To Mr. Berlinger, I say, “I hope you remember how much emphasis you placed on your First Amendment freedom of expression when you were vehemently opposing the release of outtakes from your film [To refresh your memory, click here or here]. When people start to air the outtakes from your film in YouTube videos, remember that those outtakes are now part of the public record and, therefore, protected by federal law.”

Stay tuned!

NOTE: For more background about this case, read more than three-dozen posts I’ve written about it during the past 18 months.