LISTEN: Charlie Ornstein & Tracy Weber on ‘The Influence of Medical Device Makers’

May 13, 2011, 7 a.m. EDT

ProPublica senior reporters Charlie Ornstein and Tracy Weber were on WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show yesterday to discuss the latest story in their Dollars for Docs series.

Their joint investigation specifically delves into the world of doctors and how they are bombarded by ads from pharmaceutical companies and device makers at medical conferences. Ornstein and Weber write how these companies spend millions of dollars every year to ensure their logos are prominently displayed on everything from conference buses to keycards in the hopes of influencing specialists to choose their products.

Ornstein and Weber were the first guests on The Leonard Lopate Show’s ‘Underreported’ segment, a new weekly feature tackling issues that continue to be largely ignored despite their tragic proportions.

Listen to their interview below:

Follow ProPublica

Latest Stories from ProPublica

As the Olympics Approach, Los Angeles Considers Crackdown on Illegal Vacation Rentals

UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access to Critical Treatment for Kids With Autism

A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.

The Biden Administration Is Separating Families at the Border. It Doesn’t Always Say Why.

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page