In 1998, Atlanta, like many other American cities, was made the beneficiary of a federal E-rate program to provide poor children with access to the internet. In the six years since the program began almost $13 billion was gathered for this purpose, and as reporting by Paul Donsky and Ken Foskett of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed, Atlanta took its share of the money and ran with it, literally.
Atlanta Public Schools misspent or mismanaged nearly $73 million, overpaying for a lavish computer network that cost taxpayers millions more to run and maintain. The district spent money without requiring bids for the best price, with little oversight from the school board members and few questions from the check writers in Washington who subsidized the work. At one elementary school, equipment powerful enough to operate a small school district was installed to support just 20 computers. At another, Atlanta billed the program for electronics for twice as many classrooms as the school had. Officials applied for and received millions for schools they knew they were going to close within a few years. Elsewhere, boxes of costly computer equipment, some still wrapped in plastic, gathered dust in storage.
As a result of the investigation, the federal pipeline to Atlanta Public Schools went dry, and in 2007, Arthur Scott, the former APS technical director who ran the district’s E-rate program, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for accepting nearly $300,000 in bribes from vendors.
Captive Clientele
Henriques exposed a trail of deceit through which thousands of American soldiers were sold misleading insurance policies, often by former military officials who were operating with the knowledge, if not the approval, of the Pentagon. Her reporting revealed how former military officers were allowed by base commanders to make formal, official looking presentations to financially inexperienced soldiers headed off to war. Soldiers were sold insurance policies at ten, twenty, even fifty times more than the insurance provided by the federal government. As she dug deeper, Henriques found complicity from the top for all kinds of deceptive tactics, all designed to trade on the presumption of the soldiers that they would not be cheated by their own. She showed too, how in the face of pressure from big financial interests, the military brass would cave, in one case abandoning the investigation of a big financial company whose products and sales practices were suspect. The impact of Henriques’ reporting was fast and powerful, resulting in new laws, refunds and the like.
Friends in High Places: Perks of Power
Phil Williams and Bryan Staples of WTVF-TV, Nashville, TN, focused on the unethical conduct of many Tennessee public officials, including the then-president of the University of Tennessee.
Big Green
The Washington Post exposed wayward practices by the Nature Conservancy, the nation’s largest private environmental group.
The Senators’ Sons
Los Angeles Times exposed how some U.S. Senators’ abuse of special interest groups accrue hundreds of thousands of dollars for family members acting as lobbyists and consultants.
Profiting from Public Service
Gannett New Jersey Newspapers shed light on the abuse of power by some New Jersey Legislators for the benefit of their family and friends.
Casualties of Peace
In this seven-part series, “Casualties of Peace,” Russell Carollo and Mei-Ling Hopgood examine problems in what is often looked upon as an almost sacred institution, the Peace Corps. Their investigation reveals, often in vivid detail, the widespread violence directed at Peace Corps volunteers, who since 1962 have died at a rate of about one every two months. The two also report on how the agency has responded to these incidents.
Dangerous Business: When Workers Die
The New York Times investigative series and Frontline documentary, “Dangerous Business,” found that hundreds of employers have killed their workers by willfully disregarding basic safety rules. Their work prompted a criminal investigation into safety and environmental records, leading to indictments, and to OSHA announcing steps to strengthen the oversight and punishment of persistent violators.
The Campus Files: Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare
An investigation of how then-governor Reagan and FBI head J. Edgar Hoover had abused their power at the University of California, Berkeley. It took Rosenfeld 17 years to overcome legal hurdles preventing him from publishing the story.
Corruption in the Wisconsin Capitol
The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wis., uncovered widespread corruption in state government.
