Ex-CBS Reporter Exposes How Big Pharma Took Over the News Media

Ex-CBS Reporter Exposes How Big Pharma Took Over the News Media
Sharyl Attkisson says “something changed” in 2006 when pharmaceutical companies began forging direct partnerships with corporate media.

Before this alliance, she was able to report on topics like the flu vaccine’s abysmal effectiveness. But then, pharma’s ad money started buying the media’s silence, turning watchdogs into lapdogs and burying stories that threatened to expose their corruption.

“They [media executives] were just saying, we can’t tell this story at all. The people must not know about it.”

Attkisson said the shift became clear only in hindsight, when the pressure to avoid certain topics began growing inside newsrooms.

“I learned only with the benefit of hindsight that at the time we were starting to feel pushback over these sorts of stories. The pharmaceutical industry was making new partnerships with media organizations, including CBS News, at the corporate level, and together, pharma and these media corporations were lobbying as partners on Congress to loosen up the rules to allow more pharmaceutical advertising on TV and other media,” she explained.

That shift, she noted, was not just unprecedented—it was once illegal.

“People may not know if they’re not old enough. This was forbidden, against the law, until what I think is relatively recent history. And it’s forbidden in most other countries to advertise prescription drugs. But that meant billions and billions and, over time, trillions of dollars for the media companies with this partnership.”

The consequences of that money, Attkisson said, were clear in the stories that never made it to air.

“We have seen that it [pharma ad dollars] largely influences the stories that don’t get done.”

“Managers who I think were conflicted at the networks and other media organizations also were starting to censor stories that had not been done on such a large scale before. So I knew something was wrong and something was different. When they weren’t just arguing, be sure to tell both sides of this argument. They were just saying, ‘We can’t tell this story at all. The people must not know about it.’”