Power to Truth: Investigative Journalism, Hidden Harms, and the Battle for Public Trust

What happens when financial incentives and secrecy work together to weaken safeguards that protect people and prevent harm? In the latest episode of the web series, “Power to Truth” Stanford GSB Professor and CASI Faculty Director Anat Admati welcomed Walt Bogdanich, one of the country’s most respected investigative journalists. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner with a career spanning The Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, ABC News, and PBS, Bogdanich has spent more than two decades at The New York Times exposing corporate misconduct and the hidden consequences of institutional power. He is also the co-author, with Michael Forsythe, of When McKinsey Comes to Town, a sweeping investigation into the global consulting firm’s influence.

Admati began by asking about Bogdanich’s most recent reporting on how private equity is reshaping oversight of clinical drug trials. The story, published in October, grew out of an earlier investigation into a new Alzheimer’s drug, where Bogdanich discovered that some trial participants were not told that their participation carried an elevated risk of brain injury. When he investigated the process that led to study’s protocol approval, he found that the panel for ethical oversight, formally known as an institutional review board (IRB), was owned by a private equity firm.

“I discovered that, in fact, a drug company had bought part of one of these ethics panels. And then the drug company was sending its drugs for approval from a company that it partly owned. That struck me as sort of contrary to the purpose of these institutional review boards, which are supposed to be independent and are supposed to exist only, really, as advocates for volunteers and patients.”

The arrangement and financial advantages of owning an ethics panel, he argued, cut against the very purpose of IRBs, which were established after scandals like the Tuskegee syphilis study to protect volunteers who “are putting their lives on the line.” Yet these ownership structures were largely hidden from the public.

“And that kind of conflict of interest was not something that, it seemed to me, should have been a secret, and we were able to prove that.”

Admati pointed to an earlier investigation Bogdanich conducted on toxic drugs and global supply chains, citing it as another example of how his reporting has exposed dangers hidden from the public. Bogdanich explained that health reporting has always drawn him in because the stakes are universal.

“Obviously, health issues affect all of us, and editors like stories that people will read,” he said.

One of his most consequential investigations began with a brief Associated Press dispatch about a mysterious wave of deaths in Panama. The explanation was a “manufacturing mix-up” and struck him as implausible. Determined to understand what had happened, he traveled to Panama and traced the contaminated medicine through a chain of middlemen, eventually arriving at a chemical plant in China. The company had sold a toxic chemical, diethylene glycol, that mimicked pharmaceutical-grade glycerin. Mixed into cold medicine, it became a lethal ingredient that killed thousands in at least eight mass poisonings around the world before anyone understood the source.

His reporting revealed systemic vulnerabilities in the global drug supply and prompted the Chinese government to regulate chemical manufacturers and ban them from selling pharmaceutical ingredients that were never inspected or qualified. The changes did not solve every problem, Bogdanich noted, but oversight was tightened and likely saved lives. The investigation demonstrated once again how rigorous journalism can expose hidden risks and push institutions toward meaningful reform.

“I think one of the reasons that the story about the poisoned medicine resonated and reached around the world was we had discovered that they were also putting that in toothpaste,” he added. "You have children who were brushing their teeth, basically, with antifreeze and that reached a much wider audience. And when that happened, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry was rocked, and they made changes.”

Admati noted that reform often begins with public awareness: people must first understand that something is wrong and voice their concerns before any institution feels compelled to respond. In cases like toxic drugs or regulatory failures, the harm is visible and immediate. But with abstract forms of influence, such as the work of global consulting firms like McKinsey & Company, the damage can be indirect, obscured, or easily denied. In those situations, she suggested, change often depends on exposing misconduct and challenging reputations, a modern form of “naming and shaming” that forces powerful actors to confront issues they would otherwise ignore.

Bogdanich agreed that exposure remains one of journalism’s most effective tools. Reporters cannot compel testimony or enforce laws, he said, but they can reveal wrongdoing publicly and sustain pressure until corrective actions are taken, whether through voluntary reform or regulatory intervention.

“Holding the powerful to account is what we do for a living in the investigative unit, and we step in when the government isn't doing its job.”

Admati noted that the ability to persuade people to talk is an essential skill when reporting on powerful institutions that guard their information closely. Bogdanich quipped that such sources rarely present themselves willingly.

“They're not low-hanging fruit,” he remarked. “You have to sometimes climb to the top of the tree to get what you need.”

Often, sources are reluctant, afraid, or deeply embedded within an organization. However, once one person agrees to speak, he said, they point to others, creating a chain of insight that gradually reveals how decisions were made and who was responsible.

When it came to the McKinsey story, Bogdanich and his colleague, Michael Forsythe, had to dig far and wide before they uncovered a body of evidence that showed that the firm’s influence and conduct was substantial enough to justify publishing several investigations in The New York Times. Their goal was never to write a book; they simply set out to report the story as thoroughly as possible. But the reporting resonated widely, prompting publishers to encourage them to write When McKinsey Comes to Town. The book grew directly out of the depth of their sourcing and the public’s recognition that these stories exposed a form of power rarely scrutinized.

Admati drew a parallel between When McKinsey Comes to Town and Swimming with Sharks: Inside the World of the Bankers, a book by Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk that chronicles candid, anonymous conversations with financial-sector workers. Luyendijk’s portraits of people navigating powerful systems, often admitting they had little control or visibility into the risks they were helping to create, revealed an industry where incentives encouraged harmful behavior and accountability was hard to achieve. Admati noted that McKinsey’s story shares a similar dynamic: a system that rewards the wrong actions, obscures responsibility, and makes meaningful reform extraordinarily difficult.

Bogdanich agreed that change rarely comes easily, especially inside institutions that benefit from opacity or weak oversight.

“Change is always difficult. Hopefully, it's a good change, and not change for the worse, because it works both ways, too.”

The discussion turned to the growing power of artificial intelligence, its influence on today’s youth and other risks.  Admati described her increasing worry as both a teacher and a scholar: AI is transforming classrooms, complicating assessments, and tempting students to outsource thinking. More generally she raised concerns about the technology’s long-term consequences, its global extraction of data and resources and the emergence of tech firms with concentrated power that operate with the reach and logic of empires. She also noted that there is much uncertainty about the success of AI firms. Previous bubbles, from the dot-com era to housing, were only obvious in hindsight, and today’s trillion-dollar AI valuations raise similar worries about what will endure.

Bogdanich shared many of the same anxieties, urging young people in particular not to become “starry-eyed” about lofty promises without understanding the risks beneath them. Both he and Admati agreed that navigating this moment requires a mindset captured in the well-known phrase “trust but verify,” a Russian proverb that was popularized by President Ronald Reagan during nuclear negotiations in the 1980s. The line, they noted, is just as relevant today. Whether it’s a government claim, a corporate narrative, or the output of an AI chatbot, you have to check the facts to know what you’re dealing with.

And that, they emphasized, is why investigative journalism remains so essential. It reveals truths that would otherwise stay hidden and creates the kind of pressure that can push powerful institutions toward real change.