In the 1970s Philip Knightly and the Sunday Times Insight team were pursuing the story of how thalidomide, which caused severe birth defects, was marketed as morning-sickness pill.
…the Sunday Times advertising manager, Donald Barrett had warned [Sunday Times editor] Harold Evans that Distillers [who had marketed thalidomide in the UK] was the paper’s single largest advertiser, spending £600,000 a year. Then he added, ‘I know that won’t stop you and it shouldn’t.’ Immediately the Sunday Times began its campaign, Distillers cancelled all its advertising….
Quoted from A Hack’s Progress by Philip Knightley, excerpted in Tell me no lies: Investigative Journalism and its triumphs, edited by John Pilger.