A Summary of the Undercover Food Lion Story

The University of Nevada’s “J-week,” a series of cutting-edge journalism events running this week, is just about over. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend two lectures yesterday.

Lynne Dale, former reporter and producer from ABC’s Primetime Live, gave a tell-all account of going undercover at Food Lion grocery stores in the early 1990s. In her presentation, she outlined how ABC began receiving complaints about employee mistreatment and poor handling of meat products at various grocery stores in the chain.

Dale ultimately went undercover for two weeks with a hidden video camera and documented employees engaged in unsanitary meat handling and repackaging of out-of-date meat. The crux of the investigation, she said, was that Food Lion employees were systematically pressured to maintain a certain level of profit and performance. If unattainable, the employees were fired.

So, despite printed company policies and what appeared to be a lack of appropriate training in safe food handling procedures, employees maximized profits with purposeful repackaging and recycling old meat into new products, such as sausage.

From a journalistic point of few, the story was a slam-dunk.

“I was very single-minded,” Dale said. “Document it, prove it.”

Legally, however, the story became a battleground as Food Lion took ABC to court, not for libel but for Dale’s hidden documentation (fraud), trespass and breach of duty of loyalty.

Tellingly, Dale admitted, Food Lion fought its battle against ABC in the press. ABC took the legal high road and ignored its own public relations by staying mute about the accusations and case, which dragged on for years.

The result: “ABC lost in the court of public opinion,” Dale said.

Legally, ABC ultimately “won.” While Food Lion won the case on some technicalities and was awarded nominal damages, the victory was questionable. Perhaps most notably, the case had legal implications for undercover stories of this sort for years to come. Food Lion now has the authority to prevent undercover videotaping at its stores.

So too does ABC. During the Q-and-A portion of the presentation, one question I posed was: “If someone were to go undercover with a hidden video camera into the Primetime Live newsroom, what might we see?”

Dale’s response was adequate – that the newsroom has built-in accountability for fairness with attorneys and others to evaluate story balance. Her reply also fell flat because she failed to admit that ABC, like any other business, will inherently have internal problems.

There’s no organization on the planet that doesn’t have some element of dysfunction, disgruntled employees, people jockeying for higher positions, backstabbing and so on.

In the audience was Gene Grabowski of Levick Strategic Communications, who is a crisis communications consultant (and who gave a stellar presentation after Dale’s). He pointed out that ABC has a “no videotaping” policy at its gate.

“You mean ABC’s newsroom isn’t transparent?” I asked him.

“Of course not,” he replied with a smile.

Most importantly, though, I asked Dale, if, at any point, Food Lion apologized and vowed to tighten up procedures.

The answer, sadly, was no.