Pain Relief Network

Feb 16, 2004
By: Howard Kurtz
The Washington Post (D.C.)

The Orlando Sentinel portrayed David Rokisky as a happy newlywed — “Life was perfect,” he said — whose life was ruined when he started taking the painkiller OxyContin.

Unfortunately for the Florida paper, Rokisky’s life had not been so perfect. He had pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy in a cocaine case four years earlier. Why the Sentinel didn’t know that — and why the paper waited three months to tell its readers after being notified — is now the focus of two internal investigations.

“We made a couple of mistakes,” says Managing Editor Elaine Kramer. “We still don’t know exactly what happened. We’re looking into it pretty actively and aggressively.”

“The reporting should have been more thorough,” adds Public Editor Manning Pynn.

Rokisky’s mother-in-law, Vivian Satz, says she told reporter Doris Bloodsworth on Oct. 20 — the second day of the five-part series on OxyContin — there was a huge gap in her work, and followed up with an e-mail. “I told her this was a nice little fantasy story,” Satz says. “I told her about David’s probation. . . . Doris promised me repeatedly they’d be coming forth with a correction.” But the paper did not publish a follow-up story on Rokisky’s background until Feb. 1.

News organizations often look for someone to humanize a complicated story. The 36-year-old former police officer with a “bodybuilder’s physique,” repeatedly featured in sidebars and pictures, was tapped for the role of an “accidental addict” who went through a detox program. But the failure to fully check out such a person can be journalistically disastrous. Rokisky, who could not be reached, has also had domestic-violence disputes with his wife, according to police records.

Timothy Bannon, a spokesman for Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, says the company immediately complained to the Sentinel about the series, which prompted House hearings last week. “Clearly, it would appear the newspaper did not do an accurate job of researching the story, and compounded that by concealing information that was known to them for some period of time,” he says.

Bannon says a quick database search found articles in the Albuquerque Journal from 2000 that reported Rokisky’s conviction. “This was all readily available, one mouse click away,” he says.

But it was not until after a Jan. 29 Journal article reported on the flaws in the Sentinel series that the Florida paper ran its first story-length correction. The paper would not allow Bloodsworth to comment on her nine-month investigation.

Rokisky was no typical patient in another respect as well. Rick Sponaugle, the physician who treated Rokisky and was featured in a sidebar, says he had “no reason” to tell the Sentinel that he provided the $10,000 treatment for free.

“We gave him financial assistance so he would share his story” with journalists on a subject most people wouldn’t discuss, Sponaugle says.

Pynn, the public editor, initially praised the series for its “meticulous reporting.” Now he’s in charge of one of the investigations, reporting to the publisher; the other will be conducted by Sentinel reporters. “It’s not an ideal circumstance to have an organization investigate itself,” he says, but that is part of his job.

Kramer says Rokisky’s checkered background does not undermine the larger findings on problems with OxyContin, although Purdue Pharma strongly disagrees. She could not explain why the Sentinel did not report Rokisky’s background for weeks, either after being tipped off by his mother-in-law or after receiving a Dec. 15 letter from Purdue Pharma. Kramer blames internal communications problems.

“I can sure understand why the public would react as they probably are, saying ‘Why didn’t you report this sooner?’ ”

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