Journalist Keith Goetzman asks this question on the Utne Reader site.
Excerpts:
“Are our institutions of higher learning becoming dens of corporate complicity? That’s the thread running through a spate of recent stories that reveal how a trio of heavies–Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and Big Pharma–are pulling strings at U.S. universities. Each tale, on its own, is unsettling. Taken together, they paint a picture of collusion in which intellectual freedom and moral decency take a back seat to the mighty promise of profit.”
You can read the stories to which Goetzman refers by visiting the links on the Utne site. But he concludes:
“It’s not lost on me that several of these conflicts of interest occurred at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. If I were the type of person who displayed my degrees on the wall, my B.A. from the university would be losing a bit of its luster right now. University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks said after (a recent) imbroglio that academic freedom is the “cornerstone of all great American universities.” I see signs of that cornerstone crumbling–and I hope that hard-working journalists keep drawing attention to it before there’s a complete structural failure.”
(Disclosure: I was employed by the University of Minnesota for 9 years and gained tenure as a journalism professor before resigning last May so that I could spend more time on my web projects and independent journalism training and workshops.)
In this week, when, as I’ve pointed out, some hard-working journalists have accepted Pfizer-funded all-expenses-paid trips to Washington for cancer news workshops at the National Press Foundation, I think it’s time for more journalistic introspection about a “cornerstone crumbling” that should also keep drawing attention.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
As always, encouraging news outlets covering medicine to practice journalism, not stenography. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1267796903141539846
Thanks @garyschwitzer & @HealthNewsRevu
So helpful & rational as always:
"Often it is what journalists allow interviewees to say – unchallenged – that is most concerning" https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1267796903141539846
CBS @60Minutes promoted one hospital’s “promise of plasma” for #COVID19. Here are some things that you need to know about that story. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/06/60-minutes-promotes-one-hospitals-promise-of-plasma/
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Alan
October 20, 2010 at 9:09 amYou’ll like Dan Wasserman’s editorial cartoon in today’s Boston Globe:
Drug-hyping doctors
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/outofline/2010/10/drug-hyping_doctors.html
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like