The Fortune cover that may lead to a guilty verdict

Parl Farhi of the Washington Post writes about the 2014 Fortune cover story by Roger Parloff about Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes that may lead a jury to convict her.

Farhi writes, “Nevertheless, the Fortune article vaulted Holmes to celebrity status. Journalists trekked to Theranos’s headquarters in Palo Alto, producing a flood of equally awed and flawed stories. Forbes, the New Yorker and USA Today, among others, profiled her. NPR, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC and CBS News put her on the air. Glamour magazine named Holmes one of its women of the year.

“The glowing coverage was typical of an era in which tech entrepreneurs were routinely lionized as masters of world-changing innovation, said Noah Shachtman, a former science and technology journalist at Wired magazine who now edits Rolling Stone magazine. Long before Holmes came along, business reporters had written rhapsodies to the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. Only later did many journalists turn their attention to the social harm caused by big tech, and problematic business practices inside their companies.

“‘If you look across business and tech reporting, [the Theranos boomlet] was a moment when the [news] industry was too credulous, too fawning, too deferential to power,’ Shachtman said. The reporting reflected ‘an urge among journalists to turn the subject of their stories into heroes or villains.’ (Wired ran a flattering story on Holmes, too).”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.