Theranos founder blames WSJ “advocacy reporting”

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes alleges “advocacy reporting” by the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou is what caused the federal government to come after her company as part of her defense strategy in her upcoming trial, reports Joel Rosenblatt of Bloomberg News.

Rosenblatt reports, “Through pretrial information sharing with prosecutors, Holmes has unearthed Carreyrou’s early contacts with New York state regulators and various federal agencies, as well as his interactions and emails with a doctor in Arizona.

“Holmes is pushing prosecutors to turn over every such communication they’re aware of because Carreyrou ‘went beyond reporting the Theranos story,’ her lawyers said in a court filing, He prodded sources to lodge complaints about the company with regulators, and then lobbied agencies to pursue the complaints, according to the filing.

“‘The jury should be aware that an outside actor, eager to break a story, and portray the story as a work of investigative journalism, was exerting influence on the regulatory process in a way that appears to have warped the agencies’ focus on the company and possibly biased the agencies’ findings against it,’ her attorneys wrote. ‘The agencies’ interactions with Carreyrou thus go to the heart of the government’s case.’

“The Wall Street Journal said Friday it stands behind Carreyrou’s reporting, which won multiple journalism prizes.”

Read more here.