Alix Marian Freedman (born November 25, 1957, in New York City[1]) is an American journalist, and ethics editor at Thomson Reuters.
"[1][10] As the tobacco industry continued to face more scrutiny, Freedman reported on a libel lawsuit, seeking 10 billion dollars, filed by Phillip Morris against ABC television and its owner Capital Cities Inc.
The suit was filed over the word spiked, used in the broadcast story, referring to nicotine being added back to tobacco during the production process.
Capital Cities, having earnings of just 6.4 billion in 1994, settled with Phillip Morris, printing a public apology and paying 15 million to cover the tobacco companies legal fees.
In one of those reports, "Phillip Morris Memo Likens Nicotine to Cocaine," she wrote about a 15-page confidential internal document that pointed to the tobacco companies knowledge of the addictive nature of their product.
'"[13][14] The series of stories leading up to her Pulitzer are listed below: In 1998 Freedman, and Suein Hwang, shared the Gerald Loeb Award (deadline and/beat writing), for coverage of the tobacco industry's liability settlement.
[17] In 1998 Freedman wrote a series of stories on the chemical sterilization using quinacrine pellets, of more than one hundred thousand women, who lived in poor developing countries.
[24] In a 1999 article, published by the American Journalism Review, Freedman said she told Mumford that she would "give a fair and honest assessment of the method" that he was such a strong advocate of, and she did.