Pharma 'Muckraker' Top Choice for New Journalism Project

Reporter Glenn Greenwald,  who has been in the news recently for disseminating  the whistle-blower and former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s information on the US’s mass surveillance  program has left The Guardian where his initial articles appeared. Along with filmmaker Laura Poitras (also covering the Snowden story) and Jeremy Scahill, Greenwald is joining up with Pierre Omidyar, one of the founders of Ebay, who has announced that he’s funding a journalism project with $250 million dollars in seed money.

It’s intriguing media news in a world where the line between editorial and advertising is increasingly blurred, and publications are dying off like flies.

Omidyar  intends to publish  progressive, long-form, investigative stories written by the country’s best specialist writers on a variey of different subjects.

Whose on his dream team?  He published his wish list on Tuesday on Opednews.com.

And who would he pick to cover the pharma industry? Martha Rosenberg, he says,  “who does great investigative reporting on food and drug safety and Big Pharma and Big Agra.”

Her work is certainly provocative and hardhitting, and sometimes loads of fun to read, but is it fair?

Writing for a variey of publications, here are just a few of her recent titles:

6 New Ways Big Pharma Is Scheming to Make Billions at the Expense of Your Health

Big Pharma Company Mocked Patients Who Got “Jawbone Death” from Drug

How Kids Are Getting Hooked on Pills for Life

You get the idea. My personal point of view is that it’s easy to muckrake, but a lot harder to dig deep to reveal texture and complexity of a topic. But we will wait and see. There’s always room for other voices.