This was sensationalistic journalism of the worst sort and should serve as an embarrassment to this so-called 'flagship' investigative program," of fifth Estate the judge thundered.Dealing with CBC fifht estate Two doctors, the CBC and a judgment
His whistle blower was disaffected former HPB employee Dr. Michelle Brill-Edwards. What viewers were never told was that she had been passed over for promotion and had fought the agency repeatedly at the labour board. "She became the perfect vehicle through which Nicholas Regush could vent his long-held negative views," wrote Judge Cunningham.
The program told the story of nifedipine, a controversial heart medication whose dangers HPB supposedly had hushed up.
In the real world, the debate over nifedipine was a highly nuanced argument among experts -- one that everyone agreed could not be squarely resolved without a great deal more time and evidence. But on prime-time television, it morphed into a story of villains and victims, of "boxes holding files containing secrets" and "the tainted history of a drug that's been swallowed by thousands of Canadians, a drug that may have caused a huge number of deaths."
Dr. Myers and Dr. Leenen wore the black hats as men who pushed around the toothless government agency.
The program made much of the two doctors' ties to drug companies Bayer and Pfizer, without explaining that it is common for companies to finance drug studies and for doctors to consult them. It wildly exaggerated the differences of opinion between the two doctors and other scientists. It also dramatically misrepresented their real views, making it seem that they were not cautious about the drug.
The program characterized a Pfizer meeting in Egypt that Dr. Leenen was to attend as "a cruise down the Nile," and insinuated that the trip was a drug-company reward for his support. It accused Dr. Leenen of violating conflict-of-interest guidelines that he had never heard of. Other omissions included the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had recently conducted a full review of this class of drug, concluded that it was not unsafe and had guidelines for its use that were essentially identical to Canada's. Trish Wood, the program's host, is one participant who will speak for the record. She has a reputation as a tough, stubborn journalist. She parted ways with the CBC two years ago under not entirely happy circumstances. She was let go over a conflict-of-interest issue involving her personal relationship (now ended) with lawyer James Lockyer, a figure in stories she was working on for the program.
"The show said what it said for valid journalistic reasons," she maintains today. "I think Dr. Brill-Edwards has a lot of credibility. Most whistle blowers are disillusioned by something or they wouldn't risk so much by coming forward."
She is adamant that malice played no part in shaping the broadcast. "Our job is to get people in positions of power on the record on issues of public policy. We did it without malice."
Does she now second-guess any of the show's editorial decisions? "It's not an exact science and we did the best we could," she says. "Speaking for myself, I did the best I could with the information that we had."
To turn this esoteric subject into good TV, the fifth estate journalists faced one monumental narrative problem. There were no victims to put on camera. The toll was alleged to be huge, but no actual dead people could be linked directly to the drug. There were just epidemiological studies, which make for dull TV.Television, far more than print, must tell its stories through people. The medium demands that story lines be distilled, simplified and personalized. It is very likely that the fifth estate did not (despite the view of Judge Cunningham) set out from the start to pillory the two doctors.
What's more likely is that everyone all the way up the line developed an unshakable conviction that their story was so urgent and so important to the public interest that it didn't really matter who was sideswiped along the way. Where were the skeptics? Who asked the hard questions? How rigorously was Mr. Regush, the freelancer who worked only once for the CBC, held to account? Insiders aren't saying. Outsiders say that relying so heavily on one disaffected whistle blower was a fatal weakness. As well, only one week before the air date, no one had bothered to ask Dr. Myers to respond to the damning case against him. The researcher said he left messages requesting another interview; Dr. Myers said he never got them.
Outsiders wonder why Mr. Studer didn't keep a closer eye on the project. After all, it's the boss's job to make sure the rope is stout enough. The judge wondered too. "To say the least, David Studer failed in his duty as executive producer of the program." But the judge reserved his harshest words for Mr. Regush, who in his view "exhibited a significant disregard for the truth." Mr. Regush himself was ordered to pay Dr. Leenen $200,000 in aggravated and punitive damages.
The judge also was furious at the CBC's conduct of the case. He called it "a scorched-earth policy" from start to finish. Most important of all, he found that the program had actually harmed Canadians, not helped them. "I think it reasonably could be said that the program was contrary to the public interest because of its real potential for harm by inciting panic amongst patients suffering from high blood pressure," he wrote. The Monday after he saw the broadcast, a shaken Dr. Leenen reported back to work as director of the Heart Institute's hypertension unit. "I saw the program," said a colleague. "You have my sympathies." The next day a patient told him: "Dr. Leenen, you wrongly prescribed nifedipine for me and you did it for personal gain, to make money." He lost patients and fell under a professional cloud. Friends and neighbours avoided him and his wife, and he sank into a depression that lasted for months.
Dr. Myers also had a rough time. In a heartfelt piece written for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Myers asked: "Should public affairs be portrayed as entertainment, with science and drama interwoven? . . . Is medicine becoming another form of mass entertainment, with physicians serving as actors in million-dollar productions?"
He might be surprised to learn that most people who work at programs like the fifth estate don't feel all that powerful. They feel like the embattled underdogs, crusading for the truth in a world that wants to keep it from them. "When you are the outsider, getting information is extremely difficult," says Trish Wood. "Sometimes people view us as the Goliath and the subject as the David. I think we see ourselves quite the other way around."
The doctors beg to differ. "The only commodity you have is your reputation and credibility," says Dr. Leenen, who mortgaged his house to pay for the lawsuit. "You are basically damaged goods for a long, long time."
"Dr. Leenen and I are not big-name millionaires or high-profile people," Dr. Myers says. " . . . I do believe in the CBC as an institution. I didn't really expect this from them. That hurt."
Lambros Kyriakakos
204 7944981 e-mail: Â lkyriak_at_shaw.ca
Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc .
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Received on Sun Feb 14 2016 - 06:53:27 EST