The LA Times's investigation into Purdue Pharma in 2016 revealed internal Purdue documents demonstrating the company's culpability in fueling the opioid crisis.
> The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.
I don't have many recurring subscriptions, and I don't live in LA, but I signed up for the Times the day the reporting came out. So rare is quality investigative journalism these days.
Fast forward 3 years, and "Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion" (Wikipedia).
As far as I know the settlement was never finalized. And I don't want to make it seem that the Times was the only organization looking into Purdue. But I wish a fraction of that settlement could be re-invested into investigative journalism.
The journalists are just doing what their employer asks them too.
Their employer is trying to sell papers/clicks.
No enough people are willing to pony up for good journalism like the parent comment -- I'm generalizing but most people don't even like to read long form journalism anymore.
If we want to know why journalism sucks we need to look in the mirror.
“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a
conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But
when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.”
Jobs was right to say it's not part of some grand conspiracy, but if you look more closely, you see that people ("consumers") and media are both produced by the same ideological and economic forces that serve each other. It's not some sinister plot, it's just how culture has developed to this point.
The media does give people what they want, but where do people get ideas of what they want? It's a dialectic, not a one-way causative relationship.
If it's a two-way conversation, I think it's fairly lopsided. The reason is: competition. When consumers only have one choice or a few, sure, that company can exercise a lot of power in dictating what people read, and thereby influence what they want (by limiting what's possible for them to experience and be aware of).
However, there are countless competing sources of entertainment and news online. If any particular organization gets away from giving consumers what they want, and instead becomes overly wrapped up in trying to tell consumers what they should want, they'll get eaten by the competition.
The result is a web in which billions of people flock to whatever "channel" has the message that resonates best. Meanwhile the people running these organizations are doing their best to figure out what will resonate, so they can survive and thrive. If a story gets clicks and shares, repeat. If it doesn't, stop writing things like that. Survival of the fittest.
There are some mitigating factors ofc. For example, a lot of smaller media orgs will simply copy what the bigger ones are doing, which gives the bigger ones a lot of influence. Also, there's momentum. Once you have a loyal audience, there's friction for them to switch to reading a different source, so you get more leeway.
But all things told, I think reader demand drives most of the content we see.
An ironic quote, considering that Steve Jobs literally conspired with Google and other SV companies to illegally depress wages for tech employees--to the tune of hundreds of millions in lost wages.
When I look in the mirror, I don't see someone wanting clearly biased, opinionated, decontextualized, or downright unfacts, trying to be spun as news, with zero retractions or apologies when it's called out. Those are the reasons journalism sucks, and it has nothing to do with what I see in my mirror.
'When you look in the mirror' you see the 'story you tell' about yourself.
If you want to know what you really like - check your actual news browsing habits.
If you did that you might note you might click a lot of bait, and read things that micro-trigger you, and the local or boring news just doesn't get the attention.
Obviously, some more than others.
But certainly, the death of 'local news' at the very least is due to the fact we don't care about local stuff. Not only this, but we are also materially less engaged at the local level than at any time in history.
There was a writer on Sam Harris' podcast (I think Matt Taibbi in this episode[1]) who said he was having a really hard time getting interest in any article that wasn't about Trump. Interest virtually disappeared in anything else. The 24/7 reality TV show is what gets attention and it's easy to produce.
And if you think about it, there is a lot more money to go around.
Purdue was only responsible for roughly 8% of the market. That means whatever money we get from the Sacklers, in an ideal world, should only be 8% of what we ultimately collect!
That could fund a lot.
Now all that assumes an ideal and non-corrupt US where everyone is equal under the law and all politicians are not corrupt and judges and lawyers are not bent etc etc. So, it would not surprise me at all if even among the billionaires, the pattern of only the smaller drug dealers getting prosecuted continues to hold true. I'm hoping at least for some media pressure to help take down some of these larger dealers. Probably won't actually take the big boys down by itself, but it can't hurt to try. 92% is a lot of money to leave on the table. (Not to mention a lot of crime to let go unpunished.)
I think there is a lot to this idea. I've wondered whether something like the False Claims Act (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act) could be expanded or modified (or just used) to fund journalism.
Not perfect by any means but it would protect one of the most important functions of the papers.
Wonder if they still work for the Times?
Maybe if we rewarded the journalists behind the investigations more than the newspaper itself, they could all bandy together and create something that only does investigative journalism.
At the end of the day, if a doctor is prescribing medication against clinical guidelines, surely the doctor is at fault? If a pharma warehouse is burgled then it's on the burglars.
Am I missing something regarding this case? Did they mislead doctors?
Edit: Downvotes to -4 with no engagement for asking a question. This place has gone downhill rapidly
> there would have to be some wrongdoing to be proven
Are you claiming the extensive evidence brought in numerous cases across the country against Purdue and the Sackler family, accepted in many cases by juries and judges, has not done that?
If you're genuinely interested, there's so much reading on this. I'll quote one snippet here for you. Just to give you an idea. (This is not an invitation to reply to it and debate the issue. Just trying provide a pointer for reading more on the topic since you expressed interest.)
> The drugmaker admitted in 2007, when confronted with evidence gathered by prosecutors, that it trained sales representative to tell doctors that OxyContin was less addictive and prone to abuse than competing opioids, claims beyond the one approved by the F.D.A.
First, they I mislead doctors. They insisted very enthusiastically that’d OxyContin relieved pain for 8 hours, when 4-6 was much more common for most patients. Secondly, I don’t remember the laws and requirements exactly, but there are reporting requirements for abnormal behaviors that indicate drug abuse. One of the long form articles over the past few years saw a memo where Perdue deliberately decided not to report large orders in certain areas. Of course, I haven’t had coffee yet, so caveat lector.
Purdue mislead doctors, and the public, in several different ways.
They said that their medication was unlikely to lead to addiction if used to treat pain. They said their medication was less likely to lead to addiction than other opioids. They knew some doctors were prescribing vast quantities of opioids - far more than even Purdue recommended as treatment for pain. They used a variety of marketing to doctors and to members of the public, and some of that was designed to evade regulation of marketing. They used stealth marketing methods such as employing physicians to speak at conferences without disclosure. They interfered with the creation of treatment guidance. They used front groups. They targeted vulnerable and wealthy populations. They concealed what they knew about the addictiveness of their product. They concealed what they knew about the efficacy of their product (people may tolerate an addictive medication if it increases function. Purdue knew their meds didn't increase function for many patients.)
There's a huge list of absolutely scumbag behaviour from that company, and we need to recognise their part in driving death and misery to millions of Americans.
You might be right, but it's not an either or situation.
Some sales reps that told doctors Oxy was NOT or LESS addictive and knew that was untrue so they did lie.
Ironically the exact same thing happened a century earlier with Bayer and Heroin, history does indeed repeat itself.
The thieves that burgled drugs from pharma are also responsible obviously.
As far as the fast down votes, chances are everyone knows someone who has been hurt from the opiod crisis. It is a very painful subject for people. Playing the devils advocate is going to get a swift response that just the way it is.
My personal experience with the opiod crisis is typical, I had a friend who got hurt, started taking oxy, got hooked, his doctor cut him off, he spent a ton of money buying pills off the street, when the cost got too high he switched to heroin, when he decided to get help he went to a doctor for methadone, they did a blood test, because of the fentinyl he tested positive for abusing methadone and was refused. Three months later he was gone.
I feel the entire system failed him, ofcourse he was not without blame, everyone played a part in his death, including me for giving him money.
I linked to a 6,500-word article answering your question and you are surprised you got downvoted? Or feel free to look into why armies of lawyers on both sides negotiated a $10bn settlement. If "surely the doctor is at fault" held water, they wouldn't have come close to that number.
> The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.
I don't have many recurring subscriptions, and I don't live in LA, but I signed up for the Times the day the reporting came out. So rare is quality investigative journalism these days.
Fast forward 3 years, and "Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion" (Wikipedia).
As far as I know the settlement was never finalized. And I don't want to make it seem that the Times was the only organization looking into Purdue. But I wish a fraction of that settlement could be re-invested into investigative journalism.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/