James S. Smith, who is now the chairman and former chief executive of Reuters news agency, has turned out to be a leading investor and board member of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer
This was reported in an article by The National Pulse. That’s all well and good, but the case smells of a conflict of interest. The problem is that Reuters has published more than 22,000 articles mentioning Pfizer in the last year alone.
It is worth noting that journalists have been far less favourable to competitors. Only just over eight thousand articles were written about a vaccine produced by Moderna. Johnson & Johnson received 18,000 articles, but they were much more negative in comparison with Pfizer.
Smith turned out to be a “jack of all trades”. As well as Reuters and Pfizer, he is on the board of the Partnership Against Corruption initiative, which is linked to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Smith also sits on the WEF’s International Business Advisory Councils for UK-American Business and the Atlantic Council.