On Opinion Page, a Lobby’s Hand Is Often Unseen. Susan Finston of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative research group based in Texas, is just the sort of opinion maker coveted by the drug industry.

In an opinion article in The Financial Times on Oct. 25, she called for patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology products. In an article last month in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal, she called for efforts to block developing nations from violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs.

Both articles identified her as a “research associate” at the institute. Neither mentioned that, as recently as August, Ms. Finston was registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry’s trade group. Nor was there mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies.

There’s no likelihood that industry and political groups will curb this sleazy practice. But the media organizations that fall for it need to take a much closer look at their own practices.

They’d better start doing more due diligence: asking hard questions about the provenance of articles that may well be nothing more than opinion-laundering for monied and powerful interests. The alternative is to lose their own credibility.