As we noted last week, the New York Times decided to dig deep into ancient history to uncover what they thought was a clear story of “ghostwriting.” The story alleged that drug companies had essentially paid two authors—Dr. Charles Nemeroff and Dr. Alan Schatzberg—eleven years ago to put their names on a medical handbook, written by unacknowledged authors.
The problem with the story, as we noted, was that everything was acknowledged in the preface of the handbook. Dr. Schatzberg told the Times that GlaxoSmithKline (SmithKlineBeecham at the time) “had no involvement in content,” and that “An unrestricted grant does not give the company any right of sign-off on content and in fact they had no sign-off in content.” Dr. Nemeroff said he and Dr. Schatzberg “conceptualized this book, wrote the original outline and worked on all of the content.” Accordingly, the “story” contained no evidence to contradict these assertions.
Consequently, after our article brought to light some problems with the story, the Times published a correction.
For example, the title of the story was, “Drug Maker Hired Writing Company for Doctors’ Book, Documents Say.” In other words, when the Times looked at the documents given to them from plaintiffs’ attorneys (who had their own financial conflicts of interest for disclosing these documents to the press), they interpreted the “documents [to] say” that GSK had hired a company to write the book, and that Drs. Nemeroff and Schatzberg therefore did not write it.
However, their correction acknowledges that “while documents show that SmithKlineBeecham (now known as GlaxoSmithKline) hired a writing company for the book, they do not indicate that the company wrote the book for the authors.”
The second “correction” the Times make is equally important. The original Times article asserted that a letter in 1997 established a relationship between the writing company and Dr. Nemeroff. The Times claimed that because the letter mentioned that the writing company had “a complete content outline” for Dr. Nemeroff’s comment, and had “begun development of the text,” that this clearly indicated that the handbook was ghostwritten.
However, their “correction” acknowledges that “the article also described incorrectly, in some editions, events outlined in [the] letter from the writing company to Dr. Nemeroff. The correspondence proposed a timeline for the writing company to furnish the doctors and SmithKline with draft text and final page proofs for approval; the letter did not say that the company had already provided those materials for final approval.”
Finally, the Times recognized that “the article misstated the context under which Dr. David A. Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, commented about the book’s production. The letter and other documents were described to him; he did not personally review the documents.” Since Dr. Kessler did not review the letter or documents, his comments were therefore misinformed.
Discussion
Given that this book was published over a decade ago, there was no urgency to have this story published. There could arguably be no real reason why the Times could not have spent more time investigating if this issue was of such importance for the “public interest.”
Reporters have an obligation and duty to the public to report the truth, objectively and entirely, and it is up the public to decide what to do with that information. Meeting deadlines is important, but journalists must make sure they convey the facts right first. There are no corrections in medicine because there, it’s a matter of life or death. Journalists should treat their stories the same way.