Why a former CIGNA PR person is now exposing companies

Jonathan Valania of Philadelphia magazine profiles Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA public relations executive who has founded the news site Tarbell to write about companies and their influence.

Valania writes, “As of press time, Potter had raised some $500K of a $1 million fund-raising goal that will, upon Tarbell’s official launch at the beginning of January (at tarbell.org), underwrite a physical office here in Philadelphia with a staff of a dozen-plus editors, reporters and support staff, as well as a nationwide network of crack investigative journalists. Tarbell’s unspoken motto: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

“In addition to reporting from the trenches of the forever war on health care, Tarbell will shine its disinfecting sunlight on Big Pharma’s rapacious price-gouging and influence peddling in the deadly opioid crisis of its own making; the predatory lending, onerous student loan debt and fraudulent practices of for-profit colleges; Big Soda’s ongoing $100 million campaign to defeat municipal soda taxes across the land; and the dirty deeds of deep-pocketed dark money and legalized graft that corrupt the nation’s campaign finance system and render government unresponsive to the needs of average Americans. The venture will mark a return to Potter’s journalistic roots — he was a daily newspaper reporter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar and later covered Congress for Scripps Howard before transitioning into the health insurance sector.

Read more here.