coming up on our tea in the battle of david versus goliath on the field of agriculture the highest court in the nation has sided with a corporate giant next we'll tell you the deciding factor in the case of an indiana farmer versus monsanto. nearly a month after the deadly explosion at a west texas fertilizer plant state investigators are launching a criminal investigation into the blast meanwhile authorities are now questioning a first responder we'll bring you the latest information coming up. and we're getting big stories wrong over and over again those words from a veteran television journalist to a crowd of college journalism students in connecticut coming up why he's no exception and why the mainstream media continues to bumble the facts.

it's monday may thirteenth four pm in washington d.c. . you are watching r t. well it's one step forward for a biotech giant monsanto one major leap backwards for g.m.o. critics the u.s. supreme court handed down a decision today in favor of the mega company in a unanimous decision the just of the justices ruled that indiana farmer running hugh bowman actually violated the company's patted on his genetically modified soybeans when he planted them for harvest without monsanto's permission r.t. correspondent liz wahl routes out the evidence in this case it's a supreme court decision with far reaching consequences for patents mood and farmers the supreme court today ruled unanimously that an indiana farmer violated agra giant monsanto's seed patents you know there are certain things that the law

prohibits what it prohibits you're is making a copy. of the patented bench and that is what he did the case brought seventy five year old indiana farmer vernon you boman up against monsanto an enormous agricultural corporation that owns more than half the world seed market i don't know but i could see nothing what i'd done was wrong monsanto requires farmers to buy it's genetically modified seeds to resist this weed killer but bowman bought in planted second generation seeds from a grain elevator if they don't want me to go to the elevator and buy the grain then congress should pass a law saying you can't do it the ruling written by justice alina kagan says quote if simple copying were a protected use a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing

the invention the undiluted patent monopoly it might be sad but extend not for twenty years before only one transaction and that would result in less incentive for innovation than congress wanted but consumer and organic food groups a food am living things should be viewed differently we're not talking about the latest cell phone we're not talking about some new fancy new technology this is about whether people going to be afford be able to afford to forment afford to the supreme court decision would come as a sigh of relief for companies that invent products that are able to copy itself but when it comes to food consumers may be paying the price for soybeans corn and cotton and the cost for farmers to plant the seeds has skyrocketed between one thousand nine hundred five to two thousand and eleven the cost per acre rose three hundred twenty five percent this according to the center for food safety this farmer's saying i buy seeds that were the next generation removed from what you patented that patent should apply here anymore and monsanto saying the patent

applies forever for farmers like bowman the supreme court decision means they better pay up to use monsanto c. no matter where they come from and from monsanto and agra jain with massive lobbying power another victory in washington liz mom. well joining me now to discuss the case of the seventy five year old indiana farmer in greater detail is the man's lawyer mark walters he is a seattle patent attorney and the partner at foreman lawrence and hong l.l.p. hi there mark thank you so much for joining us so let's start by breaking down this case what evidence did actually sway the supreme supreme court's decision to side with monsanto you know it's tough to say what went on in their deliberations behind closed doors but there were a lot of briefs filed in support of monsanto from the biotech community there were about eighteen or so filed by the industry. fellow companies like playing here at

the universities and you know other biotech interests and then our on our side we had the small farmers and it's difficult to to organize them we did have some support but we had about five or six amicus briefs filed in support of our side and so i think the policy arguments here from the industry won out over the small farmers policy arguments so is this the end of the line for your client you know it's the end of the line for mr bowman he's got no judgment that it's sitting against him for about eighty five thousand dollars so. it's the end of the line for him on that particular judgement however i do hope and expect that he and other small farmers more will continue the fight to try and clarify this law in congress and that eighty five thousand dollars isn't even to mention all of the lawyers fees that is that he's going to have to pay can you talk about just how big of an impact

this is going to be on this particular farmer and then we'll start talking about the bigger picture. well we took his representation pro bono because we believe in the rule of law and we believe that everybody should have a voice and a defense to do these claims. so that part is not going to weigh into too much on him he's a single guy and he wanted to stand up against a monsanto and he knew that at the end of this if he wasn't going to be successful they were probably going to start trying to collect from whatever assets he has mark talk about the precedent that this case set for future monsanto lawsuits as we know monsanto does when the majority of its of its cases that it does bring to court that's right i mean the what this decision means for monsanto is that now ninety five percent of the acreage is already roundup ready and all of

those farmers are technically infringing monsanto's patents they get to use this technology not because they have a right to use it because they own the seed that they purchased but because months and so dictates the terms at which they can use them so every single farmer who grows around up ready seeds is an infringer and it doesn't matter how they obtain the seed they could have bought it on the open market like my client did it could have bought it at a farmer's market could have bought it from their neighbor it could have blown on their property and now every single time roundup ready seed germinates somebody is responsible for infringement and it's going to be the farmer in all those cases so it makes an infringer out of about ninety five percent of the farmers and it makes them beholden to one single corporation to dictate the terms at which they can use property that they've purchased and that they own out right now largely just talk about the effect of this has on local farmers let's talk about the effect that it

has on consumers like you and me and our food prices if you could care to explain. well you know one of the immediate impacts is going to be less information for the consumer on what goes into their food there are a number of initiatives to try and label the food it's through through the state laws. and those have hit a number of roadblocks one thing that we had hoped from this decision is that if monsanto was going to require farmers who purchased from a grain elevator to be liable for infringement that they would it would also require the farmer the seed companies to segregate the seed at the grain elevator to give farmers a choice to buy conventional versus roundup ready now when it comes to soy they're all intermixed together at the grain elevator so the source of soy in this country is all commingled and there's no separation so because the initial source of the

soy it's commingled and not going to be going to be separated at the grain elevator there will be less information for consumers to be able to know if what they're buying is is free of genetic modification mark walters has a very interesting thank you for your insights marc is a seattle patent attorney and partner at former lawrence and hong l.l.p. thanks megan well a criminal investigation has now been launched to look into the cause of a massive explosion at a town texas plant. sure that. the west texas fertilizer plant turned into a fireball on the evening of april seventeenth fourteen people were killed and nearly two hundred others were injured the blast was so big it registered as a two point one magnitude and was actually felt fifty miles away now up until late last week the incident was treated as an accident sixty investigators have

interviewed some four hundred and one eleven witnesses resulting in no fewer than two hundred fifty leads now those same investigators have been able to conclusively rule out whether natural causes and hydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate as possible causes for this explosion now they have actually opened up a criminal investigation into the explosion and in a strange twist one of the first responders on the scene has been found with a pipe bomb or pipe bomb making materials there authorities say that the two cases are unrelated for more on the investigation are to correspondent ramona lindo who actually covered these explosions from west texas here to weigh in hey there ramon is there any indication as to why they decided to launch a criminal investigation only now. sure was the announcement from the texas state department of public safety came out on friday announcing that they were instructions instructing texas rangers and the mcclelland county sheriff's department to open up their own criminal investigation now we have to remember that

a.t.f. the bureau of alcohol ought to back on fire and the texas a and the texas state marshal's office has been investigating this from the start as a criminal investigation however as you mentioned there have been hundreds of interviews and hundreds of leads which the state of texas then says that made them go into this new criminal investigation being launched by the sheriff's department now that the state will only say that they don't want to leave any stone unturned and they want to give the community you know some confidence that every angle of the investigation is being looked at they don't want to anybody to jump to conclusions to indicate that there was any of play but they want to make sure that every stone that there is no stone unturned however it does the timing is a little bit suspicious because there was that arrest of the first responder also late last week and we'll get to that arrest in just a little bit but i am i need a little more explanation if you could from on are they watching this probe to

quell criticism or because they believe that there is credible evidence that there was foul play. right. they won't say that there is any sort of code or credible evidence and they want to make sure that to say that as of right now there is no specific link between the arrests and any fellow play that have been there they know that it was in a natural occurrence think that it could still be an exit or it could be something having to do that somebody put something there deliberately you know i called all the agencies involved in the investigation about any other possible rest they were able to get back to me or told me that they are unable to give any more details as they move forward in their vest occasion as i understand it ramon at the same time that this criminal power problems announced one of the first responders to the same was arrested for possession of the necessary elements to actually create that pipe bomb can you talk a little bit more about this man's case and i also understand that you were present

when the man was actually giving a eulogy at a memorial for one of the first responders can you talk about those of us this bit of information. now that the state and county were launching their own criminal investigation it was announced that the a.t.f. had arrested thirty one year old bryce reed now bryce reed is a volunteer west far paramedic who happened to be fired just two days after the emergency and now the sheriff's department says that they went to a home in abbott texas near west of an acquaintance of reed was given a box which contained explosive material according to a complaint by the a.t.f. bryce reed admitted to being in possession to those materials and then he was a resident however over the weekend his. attorney said that he is not guilty that he is not in any way linked to the explosion and is a very interesting character because he was seen all over the town of west in the

aftermath of the explosion consoling families and he even spoke at the memorial which was attended by president obama and spoke for more than five minutes about a fellow firefighter cyrus reed who was killed in the explosion so he's been a very visible figure in the aftermath of the west explosion and as we said earlier there is no known at link between this man and the explosion so far this plant has been under investigation since two thousand and six and has fallen under the scrutiny of hazard material companies it's found under the scrutiny of the e.p.a. among the linda thank you so much for your reporting and please keep us updated as the story develops. well it has been a bad few months for american media perhaps no one knows that better than c.b.s. news anchor scott pelley in a speech he delivered at quinnipiac university in connecticut pelley admitted to the role that he played in the race to be first the first news organization to report a breaking news story he also admitted that many times he has gotten it wrong lesson

during or coverage of newtown. i sat on my shirt and i reported that nancy lanza was a teacher at the school and that her son had attacked her classroom it's a hell of a story but it was dead wrong from the newtown shooting to the boston bombing time and again the media has chosen speed over accuracy and time and again there are ports have missed the mark it's a problem scott pelley attributed to overzealous media wanting to get the scoop first. how does it serve the public if we are first. you know what first is all about. it's abandoning. its self-conceit. we do it to make ourselves feel better no one sitting at home watching five television monitors going oh they were first. that's a game that we play in our control rooms nobody does that so is the state of the

media really as bleak as it sounds to discuss this christopher chambers joins me now he's a journalism professor at georgetown university thanks for joining me so does this speech really reveal anything that people didn't already know about the media well i thought it revealed a lot about scott pelley basically doing a miracle everybody and i commend him for that but you know as with me a call because it's almost a situation where you fall on your own sword not necessarily to get sympathy but to kind of deflect the deeper meanings of things and i think you know he scratched the surface when he talked about self-conceit the words that self-conceit from the mainstream media particularly t.v. just you know cable giants in the three networks where it is a bubble up from if he didn't drill down to that level do you think it's more meaningful to hear this admission from somebody that as a news anchor who's been on that desk saying this incorrect information as it has

come out for says a critic that that is looking from the outside and criticizing the journalism that that is today well i think i think it is meaningful i mean particularly if you're talking about c.b.s. which is a mainstay of broadcast journalism for sixty years and in a bigger machine of the viacom universe which has all kinds of entertainment. properties and movie studios and the feed into this monster that has been created i think it's good to see the inside view but at the same time it does nothing to really give us the big. as for what's going on here i mean as soon as he gave that speech you had critics and commentators on the left and on the right saying that you know we don't trust the media because they don't provide our point of view they don't provide our boosterism and our our dome that we live under you know so who cares what scott pelley says and have proceeded to to list some of the things that they think scott pelley has done to offend them which as i do with the facts has

more to do with where they're coming from you know that he's not reporting the stories that they want to do to either you know screw conservatives or screw president obama so i mean it's not drilling down to the case of you know corporate control corporate concentration closing foreign bureaus the money that is the stakeholders are trying to strip out of newsgathering so they lay off people they lay off people with experience they don't drill down again into deeper stories and as we know now versus in one thousand nine hundred three it is six corporations that actually control ninety percent of the media these days they felt like you have to gain from something that you call americal what could he possibly gain from the speech well you gain quick you can credibility here he had authority now you great you gain credibility among the regular consumers of news across even across all platforms not practitioners but consumers and that's what's important he gains an audience he gets one step closer to that you know its own call walter cronkite

or edward r. murrow you know who who practice this really downstream he's practicing it upstream because the mainstream media is already down here so he has to climb up so he attains that credibility and that aura that he is the heir apparent to c.b.s. giants of c.b.s. like morrow and like cronkite and you know on and on and i'm not trying to be cynical in terms of his motivations but i think that it operates in that direction and i think that's good for him on all counts and press we've had you on here multiple times talking about the way the mainstream media is going this. you're a journalism professor we are in an unprecedented age where there is twitter and facebook and anything that you can possibly think of we are in an age of the over abundance of and from a great so how can these news organizations change their ways to both be credible and accurate but also to compete in a twenty first century where the information comes from every angle possible well i think that you have to go back to the old school things that he talked about but

editing about you know checking sources checking facts and also about looking at your own you know your own place in the universe about what your point of view is that you're not pandering and feeding raw meat to people for that sake to get eyeballs on your on the screen to get clicks on the site i mean there has to be some higher calling here and we do not see it you see these stories anywhere from the ariel castro story in cleveland to you know everything having to do with benghazi and whether it has legs or not no legs depending on who you are i mean not the facts but where you're coming from politically eccentric cetera so we have to have these checks and balances in and that takes that takes guts and money and we run out of that but at the same time do you think that anyone is actually paying attention to anything that scott pelley or anyone else says because actually no one really broadcast what he said no one really wants to at mit that really dark see the truth that if you just you just hit the punch line i mean nobody's i mean you

know we have people say under twenty five the probably don't even know who scott pelley is they don't watch sixty minutes or the c.b.s. evening news they get their there's stuff off twitter but where does that original reporting come from that feeds into social media comes from the legacy properties like c.b.s. like the new york times wall street journal whether we like it or not or whether the younger generation likes it or not the source has to come from somewhere and maybe you know he needs to do a better job of reaching out and maybe we all need a better job of educating and i think this was a first step for him talking to these two. well hopefully a few of those journalism students who are listening will take notes maybe watching t.v. ok mr chambers journalism professor at georgetown university thank you so much for your way. well it was one of the bloodiest chapters in history of guatemala a long drawn out war led to the deaths of some two hundred thousand civilians during numerous power grabs many of the people who were killed during the chaos were indigenous mayans today the family members of the victims are finally getting

the justice that they say was a long time coming former head of state for i mean riots mont was actually found guilty for orchestrating the massacre of some seven hundred seventy one excel lions during the seventeen months that he was in power between one thousand nine hundred two and one thousand nine hundred three now when the sentence came down the courtroom burst into tears. oh ok he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for genocide and another thirty years for crimes against humanity not as expected to appeal on the grounds of his age he is eighty six years old after all nevertheless it's a historic moment for guatemala and the world it is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide by a court in his own country to discuss this case in greater detail i'm joined now by rachel rice she's an organizer with the school of americas watch rachel thank you so much for joining me so let's first discuss why is this

a moment so historic this is a really important moment because this is the first time as you said that an axe head of state has ever been held accountable in their own country and in a region that's been plagued by impunity throughout all of the violent history that's gone on it's a really it's a huge moment for justice in the americas so give us some more background. of rios montt what role did he play in the guatemalan civil war and particularly when he was actually the president of the country. yeah he was. he was linked to a lot of. the mayan genocides that went on there and in his very short period of time when he was in power he was responsible for so much of those genocides a lot of the deaths of the excel mayans as we understand it now he was actually supported by the united states even trained by the school of america as a school that you're still watching to this day can you talk about how u.s.

policy actually affected this man's actions and guatemala. yeah well he was trained at the school of the americas which is based in fort benning georgia . and they take america and they train them in torture and counterinsurgency and all the things like that and those are skills that he was then able to transfer back to our amala. and to help him carry out all of these atrocities sure and could you talk a little bit more about the trust that he is actually accused of did he play a direct role or did he order it or can you go into a little bit more about that yet there was a direct role particularly in operation sophia in which some six hundred mine villages were completely destroyed and there was this demotic and of unarmed civilians and women. and so that was a huge huge part of riot. and he was directly responsible for all of us now as we

witnessed the courtroom burst into cheers people were so relieved and they were so happy that this man this is eighty six year old man was convicted of these atrocious crimes do you think we're should expect to see more of these in guatemala in the future i would hope so i would hope so i really hope that this has set a precedent not only for guatemala but for the region in general because so much has gone on there and i just hope that this can be a precedent moving forward for more more people receiving justice but also in their own countries which would be a significant step now one of the things that actually prevented real small arms from being arrested convicted tried and all was the fact that he kept coming into power or fighting for power to some extent he ran for president twice in two thousand and three and two thousand and six and he was actually in the government in congress until two thousand and twelve it was just two weeks after he got out of

the congress that they brought these charges that. tim how does he continue to stay in power for so long knowing the history of the background i think there's just been a lot of corruption in the country. and he's built up such a reputation there with a lot of connections so i think that helped him stay in power do you think that there's also officials that are in power in guatemala right now that have some more background oh absolutely absolutely the current president. president. he was also trained by the school of the americas and worked with rios montt on a lot of the campaigns the island campaigns. what to what do we know about the school the school of americas what is it doing right now they're still very active training soldiers we through our work with school the americas watch we have gotten six latin american countries to pull out. and stop sending soldiers but they are

still actively working. american very interesting information rachel rice is the organizer of school america's watch thank you so much for coming into our studio and weighing in thank you. all right that's going to do it for now but for the latest and greatest information on all of the stories that we have covered today go to our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america and don't forget to check out our web site r t dot com slash usa there are web seen as working hard to make sure that they post all the stories we just don't have time to get to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez i'll see you right back here in half an hour. is it possible to navigate you connie with all the details such as dixon misinformation and media hype will keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream. stating it's in your.

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. good afternoon o. welcome to prime interest i'm harry and boring here in washington d.c. here's a story that we're tracking today. as we have actually twenty rankings closest media confidant to articles in the wall street journal over the weekend about major changes coming to the fed breaking news welborn a confidant janet yellen is in the lead to take over then step down next january the current vice chairwoman is not expected to deviate much from burning policy it's the second story breaks news about how the fed will scale down as records gone by the timing eventually but the fed might pause first or accelerate classic birds i know but we do have five fed bank president plus the chairman himself.