Word: mobil
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...accused WNBC-TV Investigative Reporter Liz Trotta of 18 specific "hatchet jobs." Some of Mobil's contentions were minor. At one point, for instance, Trotta asked: "If there's a surplus of oil, then why hasn't the price of gasoline gone down?" Mobil's complaint was, in part, that the price has gone down in recent months by about 20 a gallon. But other Mobil points about inaccurate or loaded reporting were sharper. Among them...
...Reporter Trotta cited 1973 and 1974 reports that "tankers loaded with millions of gallons of oil were waiting offshore in New York Harbor" at the height of the oil shortage. But there was no mention, as Mobil felt there should have been, of later investigations that failed to support the parked-tankers stories...
...only difference between them and the hoodlums in the street is that [the oil companies] don't get caught." Then WNBC cut straight to an oil executive saying, "It is true, we're not willing to subsidize an economic loss at a marginal station." The juxtaposition, as Mobil saw it, was a "cheap distortion...
Last January Mobil executives were invited to be interviewed for the series. They kept putting off an appearance until it was too late, explaining in the ad that they did not want their remarks to be edited. Said Mobil Spokesman Raymond D'Argenio: "We've been screwed too many times by people coming in here, talking to us for a half-hour or an hour and then excerpting two minutes of one of our guys scratching his nose...
Free Time. After the series appeared, Mobil Vice President Herbert Schmertz, the company's public affairs chief, asked to buy 30 minutes of WNBC-TV's air time to reply. The station turned him down, citing an NBC rule against paid statements on "controversial" issues, a policy supported in a 1973 Supreme Court decision. Instead, WNBC-TV News Director Earl Ubell offered Mobil two or three minutes of free time on the evening news program, to be followed by a few more minutes of questioning by Trotta. Company executives declined, arguing that the time would not be enough...