Gary Schwitzer is publisher of HealthNewsReview.org. He has worked in health care journalism for 44 years. He led a health journalism graduate program at the University of Minnesota and taught media ethics there for 9 years. He Tweets as @garyschwitzer, or using our project handle, @HealthNewsRevu.
Ben Harder, a journalist with US News & World Report, recently tweeted, “Pharma ads subsidize many health reporters’ salaries.”
Elisabeth Rosenthal, who now heads Kaiser Health News after a long career with the New York Times, tweeted in that same discussion, “Many of my articles in the NYT carried pop-up ads for pharma. Infuriating.”
Many journalists are aware of the drug industry’s attempts to gain positive attention by buying placement within the nation’s health care news. A few occasionally write or talk about it, as Harder and Rosenthal did publicly.
But I don’t think we talk often enough about why it matters if health care industry entities are allowed to advertise within, or sponsor, health care journalism content. Americans spend more than $3 trillion on health care. Conflicts of interest in health care and research are rampant. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last month published a special edition all about health care conflicts of interest. JAMA included a Viewpoint article entitled, “Conflict of Interest: Why Does it Matter?” The first line: “Preservation of trust is the essential purpose of policies about conflict of interest.”
But who talks about conflicts of interest in health care journalism? In a Gallup poll, “Honesty/Ethics in Professions,” respondents rated journalists’ honesty and ethical standards below psychiatrists, chiropractors and bankers….and just above lawyers.
There is great potential harm in a further erosion of trust in journalism and in health care. There is a great potential harm in journalists – and the audience they serve – becoming numb to the presence of and influence of drug companies and other industry entities in the news and information disseminated to the public. There is, as we have begun to point out repeatedly in our review of news stories and PR news releases, advertising and marketing messages, often a polluted stream of contaminated information reaching the public. Often vested interests pollute that stream. (We will discuss these potential harms in more detail in part 3 of this series.)
That’s why I think that this issue demands and deserves a deeper dive. Why now? Because, as outlined in this series, there are a growing number of questionable alliances between a growing number of news organizations and health care industry sponsors. Money is exchanging hands and I ask “Why? Why do news organizations enter into these arrangements? Why do they feel they need to? Have they exhausted all other options?” I want to shine a light on a collection of news organization practices. I’m raising the same types of questions that journalists often raise as they report on various issues. But I’m asking them because I don’t see enough journalists talking about it when their own organizations accept industry money.
We have written many times about the National Press Foundation (NPF) offering all-expenses-paid trips to health care journalists for workshops that are sponsored by drug companies (or by Coca-Cola).
We have written twice about how STAT has accepted sponsorship from the industry group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA). They have also accepted sponsorship from individual drug companies, from health care providers and other health care industry entities. See articles by Trudy Lieberman and, later, by me.
Vox sends out a daily newsletter sponsored by an arm of PhRMA, America’s Biopharmaceutical Companies. Criticism of this deal was tweeted by @AllOnMedicare: “The ‘wonks’ of @voxdotcom are too naive to understand how problematic it is for @PhRMA to pay their bills and salaries” and “Is this a joke? Do you not see how this kills any credibility you might have with health journalism? @PhRMA is a powerful lobby.”
NPR lists PhRMA as a supporter.
This October the World Conference of Science Journalists will meet in San Francisco, with several big bucks drug company sponsors. Johnson & Johnson is currently the top donor, at $400,000 . Bayer gave at least $50,000. Nearly a half million just from two drug companies.
It would require a much longer piece to outline ethical issues swirling around some women’s magazines – often on matters of health or health care. A few years ago science journalist Hilary Rosner wrote,”Their So-Called Journalism, or What I Saw at the Women’s Mags,” on a PLoS blog:
“There are some serious institutional problems, and these can lead to 1) lack of coverage of important topics, 2) less-than-completely-truthful coverage of important topics, and 3) complete and utter bullshit coverage of important topics. …The problem is that they also happen to run stories that are ostensibly ‘journalism.’ And they employ fact-checkers and have supposedly strict editorial guidelines about what sources are acceptable and what materials you must provide to the fact-checking department and so on. But if the whole question of what stories make it into the mag to begin with is determined by what will be acceptable to advertisers, then you’ve already kind of ditched your journalistic integrity. And if you’re going to tell your writers what you want them to say from the get-go, and then change their quotes (or other things) at will, then why bother employing fact-checkers? I think the problem lies in pretending to be something other than a vehicle for advertisers.”
Local television news has, at times, been a cesspool of troubled advertising, sponsorship and content-sharing deals with vested interests in the health care industry. We’ve written about these issues more than 15 times but this is such a firmly-entrenched practice that we’re not sure that another 15 articles would do any good.
Some who teach journalism – if they lead by example – are not giving the best example for their students and for the public. We broke the story about a University of Kansas journalism project that has ties to Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin.
Another campus, another issue. Paul Thacker wrote in The BMJ about the University of Colorado accepting Coca-Cola money to sponsor a health journalism workshop on obesity. MinnPost.com published a good summary. Thacker wrote:
“The tactic bore fruit. In one example, a CNN reporter attended the 2014 journalism conference and later contributed to a story that argued that obesity’s cause could be lack of exercise, not consumption of sugary soft drinks. Critics told The BMJ that Coca-Cola’s $37 000 support for that particular conference and the resulting story was a better bargain than an advertisement placed on CNN’s website.”
But, to come full circle, Thacker also reported on the National Press Foundation – about whom we began this piece – being involved in an earlier University of Colorado health journalism workshop that received Coca-Cola support. Thacker captured this:
“I feel like I was lied to,” (then-journalist Kristin) Jones told The BMJ. Jones no longer works as a journalist but said that she would not have attended the conference had she known of Coca-Cola’s funding.
Trudy Lieberman wrote for us about her conversation with Lauren Sausser, who reports on health care for the Charleston, SC Post and Courier newspaper. Sausser attended a National Press Foundation obesity workshop in May 2013 at the University of Colorado. A year later, she signed up for, but then backed out of, another National Press Foundation cancer news workshop that was sponsored by Bayer. Lieberman quoted Sausser:
“I would not accept lunch from a local hospital so why would I accept a hotel and airfare from a drug company.” She said she didn’t notice Bayer’s funding until she was accepted. “I said thanks but no thanks. I was uncomfortable accepting the free trip.” She said the Foundation had told her that “while Bayer is funding all costs for the program, they have no input into content and do not have any say in who we choose as speakers.” But sometimes, Sausser told me, “The conflicts are hidden and sometimes they are just not clear.”
Recently, Sausser reflected on Twitter: “I felt duped by the organizers.”
Paul Thacker wrote:
The (National Press) foundation is now run by Sandy Johnson, who said by email that “a more appropriate sponsor of a journalist training program would be an organization such as Mayo Clinic, which did just that in February 2016.”
But would the Mayo Clinic be a more appropriate sponsor for a journalist training program? We will look more closely at an example in part 2 of this 3-part series tomorrow.
I wrap up this introductory overview by emphasizing a few things.
Come back for part two of the series on June 13: Time for the Association of Health Care Journalists, arguably the world’s top health journalism professional organization, to reconsider its fundraising practices.
And part three on June 14 includes a video in which I talk about why this trend bothers me – namely, that this is vital health care news we’re talking about, not sports or fashion or dining news.
Comments (7)
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J.Daniel Flaysakier
June 12, 2017 at 8:19 amOn the other side of the ocean, here in the Old Europe, the problem does also exist . One example : for the recent ASCO meeting in Chicago sevral journalists from France have travelled to Chicago , slept and eaten at drug companies expenses. Some have even spent between zero and one hour at the conference venue. The companies were ‘kind enough’ to provide opinion leaders for daily briefings about what was ‘important’. As one may imagine it was a totally objective and unbiased approach !
What is funny is that these journalists work for news media which love to find scandals , real or false, in which physicians and drug companies are involved.
Alan Cassels
June 12, 2017 at 10:25 amThis first in the series on conflicts of interest in journalism is about the best thing I’ve read on the subject, ever. I like how it was peppered with the most exacting metaphor: pollution. “polluted stream of contaminated journalism”, “cesspool” etc.. Very vivid.
As one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration (Sir Muir Gray) once told me,
“We need clean, clear health information as urgently as we need clean, clear water.” When you think of the immense loss of life (especially among the young) that happens needlessly on the planet due to polluted drinking water, one cannot help but feel sorrow for the state of humanity. Ditto when we see public health information so carelessly, and needlessly polluted. Kudos for taking this on.
Brad Flansbaum
June 12, 2017 at 6:29 pmGary
Its good to see you back in long form. I have missed your writing presence.
This is not a pushback or a challege. Its a legitimate question. You do address advertising dollars and COI above, something you have avoided assiduously. However, there are not probably not enough dollars to go around to support more than the likes of ProP and your site. (Incidentally, I don think Nike, health and wellness companies, or food concerns will step up, but thats my opinion.)
So my question is this. Is it better to have a well intellectualized, mainstream outlet doing investigative pieces and being transparent about sponsors–accepting potential harm–or not having the stories at all? My premise is this, and I am sure you will challenge: upsides>downsides.
Again, I am asking. I would like to hear your opinion.
THanks
Brad
Gary Schwitzer
June 12, 2017 at 7:02 pmBrad,
I’ve been here all along – for 11 years. But you’re correct: I’ve stepped back to a large degree from daily – and especially long-form writing – to become more of a public ambassador for this not-for-profit project and to pursue acceptable funding for our future – a daunting task. But another example of how we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk.
But to your question: I thought I had addressed that in this piece when I wrote:
My recurring question is “Why?” Why do news organizations that cover health care entities apparently feel that they must take money from those entities? I will address these questions again in part 3 of our series on Wednesday. Please keep coming back.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Till Bruckner
June 15, 2017 at 4:00 amJournalists and outlets who cover politics usually don’t take money from political parties or PACs. Is there a fundamental difference to taking money from pharma companies?
Susan Molchan
June 12, 2017 at 6:52 pmGreat analogy–asking whether news organizations accept political news coverage sponsorship from the Trump 2020 campaign or The Tobacco Institute? Somehow the news (and plenty of other) organizations can still convince themselves that drug companies are there to primarily cure and stave off disease, rather than to sell, the primary function of any company.
Till Bruckner
June 15, 2017 at 4:02 amThis mirrors long-standing discussions about the funding of think tanks. You may enjoy the discussions here, and also the methodology for assessing disclosure levels related to outside funding sources: http://www.transparify.org
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