How Purdue planted its 'anti-story' to downplay risks of OxyContin 

STAT and ProPublica are out with a new story in our ongoing investigation of Purdue Pharma, which examines how the OxyContin maker facilitated publication of sympathetic articles in the news media, deterred negative coverage, and aggressively countered criticism over its role in the opioid epidemic. In one instance, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute wrote an essay for the New York Times that minimized OxyContin’s addiction risk, but the article didn’t disclose the author’s and AEI’s involvement with Purdue. Emails and documents obtained by ProPublica show that Purdue paid the think tank $50,000 annually, and that before publication, the author sent a draft to a Purdue Washington lobbyist to check if it “seems imbalanced.” Read more here.