Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8293

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Sutel S.
NYT Staffer Won't Appear in Zyprexa Case
Associated Press 2007 Feb 6
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/n-y-times-journalist-wont-testify-in-pharmaceutical-case

Full text:

New York Times Declines to Send Reporter to Appear in Court in Zyprexa Case

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times Co. on Tuesday declined a request from a federal judge to have one of its reporters appear in court to discuss how he obtained confidential documents related to the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa.

In a letter to Jack B. Weinstein, a judge in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, New York Times attorney George Freeman said that as a matter of “long-held principle,” the company believed it would be “inappropriate” to discuss how its reporters gather news or how editorial judgments are made at the newspaper.

Last week Weinstein had requested that the reporter, Alex Berenson, appear in court on Wednesday to discuss testimony that the judge said had implicated the writer in a “conspiracy” to obtain the documents, which had been placed under seal by the court.

“We guard quite zealously our role as a member of a free and independent press and believe quite passionately that, consistent with the principles embodied in the First Amendment, it is not the role of the newspaper or its reporters to submit to cross-examination about such matters even where it may otherwise serve our particular interests in a particular case to do so,” Freeman wrote.

Berenson wrote a number of articles beginning late last year saying that Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., which makes the drug, had downplayed its risks and marketed it for unapproved uses. Lilly has denied the charges.

Weinstein wrote in a court filing last week that he was requesting Berenson to appear voluntarily after hearing testimony from James Gottstein, an Alaska-based lawyer named in Berenson’s stories as the source of the documents.

Gottstein had testified that Berenson told him that a plaintiff’s expert named Dr. David Egilman had a number of documents that Gottstein could obtain by subpoena.