The thesis of this piece in Columbia Journalism Review is that the media is complicit in drug marketing. I would somewhat disagree. I think the media often does not know how to evaluate marketing claims and that is hardly unique to the pharmaceutical industry–think of the coverage of the food industry or of the space program or of claims about medicine’s war on cancer and its successes. The media is in the news business a bit of the time and the entertainment business much of the time and the grab your attention in any way we can mode all of the time. No one should think of the media as really capable of getting past its fundamental business values to become a ‘fair’ broker of health news.
Not gonna happen. – Art Caplan