The pharmaceutical industry has been vilified by its close association with physicians.
With reforms having distanced these two groups, it appears they are moving onto trying to influence reporters. As journalist professor Gary Schwitzer writes in a recent blog entry, Pfizer is offering journalism fellowships on cancer issues.
The program, not unlike Pharma-sponsored CME for doctors, includes an all-expense paid trip for the 4-day seminar.
Professor Schwitzer has a problem with the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) promoting the fellowship, and indeed, “If taking free airfare, lodging and meals from a drug company whose work you cover isn’t at least a perceived conflict of interest, I don’t know what it is. And I don’t think SPJ should promote events in its own newsletter that, in my reading, invites journalists to violate the SPJ code.”
There is now tremendous pressure for doctors to refuse drug company gifts. Health journalists, who can perhaps influence the public to a greater degree through the tone of their reporting, should similarly shun any pharmaceutical influence.
Related posts:
- Are drug companies buying off journalists?
- Poll: Do gifts from pharmaceutical companies influence how physicians prescribe?
- Do drug company logos influence medical students?
- Health journalists need to be held to a higher standard
- Journalists: On Pharma’s payroll?
- Why don’t drug companies use Twitter?
- Do drug companies and the pharma industry deserve to be villains?
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Where’s the pushback from the oxymoronic organized medicine? How can government point fingers at physicians’ receiving dinners, etc from Pharma when legislators call benefitting from lobbyist largesse SOP? Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. As for me, you can pry my Viagra notepad from my cold dead hands.
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