The moment Jeffrey Epstein was found dead from a suicide in his federal jail cell, Associated Press reporters Mike Balsamo and Mike Sisak got to work. The two wanted to understand how the Federal Bureau of Prisons could have been so dysfunctional that its highest profile inmate in decades could have taken his own life. What followed was an investigation involving the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest law enforcement agency, that exposed systemic corruption, abuse of inmates and a culture that punished whistleblower employees while rewarding those involved in beatings of inmates and other serious misconduct with promotions, despite a record of dangerous behavior. In response to the AP’s investigation, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland fire then-director Michael Carvajal, leading to Carvajal’s resignation. The reporting also led to a series of hearings by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
How Hasidic Schools Are Reaping Millions but Failing Students
Over the course of their investigation, New York Times reporters Eliza Shapiro and Brian M. Rosenthal revealed that more than 100 boys’ schools operated by New York State’s fervently religious Hasidic community were providing only paltry instruction in English and math for their 50,000 students, and almost no science or social studies—and recording the worst test scores in the state. What’s more, the intensive religious instruction in Yiddish that made up nearly the entire school day was often punctuated by slaps, kicks and other regular uses of corporal punishment. All of it was being supported by taxpayer money—more than $1 billion in the past four years alone. After the stories ran, the State Board of Regents voted on rules aimed at holding private schools to stricter academic standards. Their reporting prompted multiple investigations at the state and federal level, and outraged lawmakers who pledged to introduce legislation that would bar corporal punishment in private schools.
Sacrifice Zones: Mapping Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution
In an unprecedented data analysis and interactive map, ProPublica revealed more than 1,000 hot spots of toxic industrial air pollution that the EPA has allowed to spread across America, elevating the cancer risk of more than a fifth of the nation’s population, including 256,000 people exposed to threat levels the agency deems unacceptably high. The series captured how the EPA, through weak policies and calculated choices, created “sacrifice zones” where overlooked communities next door to toxic manufacturing plants bear disproportionate health costs so that consumers can enjoy the products made there. The interactive map at the heart of this reporting provides residents – for the first time – with a way to see their own estimated risk from air pollution. As a result of this reporting the EPA committed to looking into hot spots, and pledged new cumulative risk guidelines and a “more robust” analysis of air pollution. More than 76 local news outlets reported on the findings from their area, expanding awareness of local air pollution risks and prompting local activism.
This reporting was done by ProPublica, with collaboration from the Texas Tribune and Mountain State Spotlight.
Unresponsive
In this months-long investigation into Sedwick County EMS – the lone ambulance provider for more than half a million people – reporters at The Wichita Eagle uncovered a public safety crisis that put an entire community at risk. Through open records, leaked documents, interviews, and direct research, the reporters built a database of response times, and direct testimony to back it up, that showed the department had dangerously slow response times and staffing shortages driven by mismanagement. While under the EMS director’s leadership, the department had fallen from one of the best in the Midwest to one that showed up late for over 11,000 potentially fatal emergency calls in two years. The series led to the prompt ousting of the EMS director, an apology by the county manager for his slow response to the crisis, and most importantly – a massive overhaul of the county’s EMS service.
Washington Post reporters spent 2021 traversing the corners of the country most ravaged by natural disasters to find out if the government really has people’s backs in the long-term. The reporters conducted 300 interviews and several databases, filed dozens of records requests, and analyzed thousands of pages of individual Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) case records and other documents. What they found was that FEMA was regularly not providing help when it was needed for survivors of disasters. They chronicled the agency denying help to Black families living on land passed down since a generation after slavery, abandoning poor families without assistance for transitioning out of FEMA trailer parks as they shut down, and denying aid to 90% of disaster survivors, often for minor errors in their paperwork. This reporting led to major process changes at FEMA to directly address these issues, and bipartisan legislation currently working its way through Congress.
Wires and Fires
Electrical fires are often treated as accidents in Milwaukee, but an investigation by reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that they are actually foreseeable tragedies that hit Black renters by far the hardest, with the government doing little to fix the problem. As part of their reporting, the team hired a master electrician to inspect a random selection of homes in Milwaukee’s hardest-hit area, which found that 80% of single and two-family rental properties in the study area had serious electrical problems. The investigation prompted an immediate outcry by leaders in state government and prompted city officials to reexamine and potentially restore an inspection program previously mothballed by state lawmakers. The city is also launching a tenant education program around the issue of electrical safety and is examining potential requirements for city agencies to better document electrical fires.
Poisoned
Hillsborough County had the highest number of adult lead poisonings in all of Florida. Reporters from the Tampa Bay Times set out to discover why. They interviewed more than 100 current and former employees at a local battery recycling plant suspected to be the cause. Johnson, Woolington and Murray gathered over 100,000 pages of documents and hundreds of photos and videos from employees that showed the perilous conditions inside the factory. They even became certified lead inspectors as they exposed how the factory had contaminated the surrounding community. After the initial parts of the series ran, OSHA sent inspectors into the plant for the first time in five years, confirmed the Times’ reporting, and issued one of the steepest fines in recent Florida history. Local children were screened for lead, and county regulators increased monitoring and oversight of the company, which also saw its credit rating downgraded and was driven to improve its safety systems. The Times’ project was supported by PBS FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which provided partial funding and consultation.
Juvenile Injustice, Tennessee
In 2016, police arrested four Black girls at an elementary school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Through more than 50 records requests and hundreds of hours of audio and video, reporters from WPLN and ProPublica uncovered a deeply unjust juvenile justice system that illegally arrested and jailed children, and disproportionately detained Black children. They discovered that the four girls, one as young as 8, were arrested for a crime that does not exist, in an investigation led by an officer who had been disciplined 37 times, on charges approved by judicial commissioners without law degrees, in a system overseen by a judge who failed the bar exam four times, in a county whose policy for locking up kids violated Tennessee law but was missed by inspectors year after year. Members of Congress have called for a federal civil rights investigation, and some members of the Tennessee legislature have called for the judge’s ouster. After the story was published, the judge announced she would be retiring at the end of her term this summer.
Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons
In a year-long collaboration between regional and national outlets, reporters assembled the a first-of-its-kind database of incidents nationwide in which police dogs were used to attack suspects, resulting in serious injuries. They found that most victims were suspected of low-level non-violent crimes, and some were just bystanders. Injuries, both physical and psychological, were often severe and long-lasting. They resulted in disfigurement, reconstructive surgeries, permanent disability, and at least three deaths. This collaborative reporting project started with one journalist examining a local case in Alabama, and expanded nationally, joining forces with a similar investigation that had started in Indiana. In response to the series, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police announced it was tightening its policies for deploying police dogs; a national police think tank is drafting new guidelines on the use of K-9 units; and lawmakers in several states are using the reporting to push for new restrictions on the use of police dogs to bite people.
The Tampa Bay Times discovered that the Pasco County, Florida sheriff’s office spent nearly a decade secretly collecting data and building an algorithm designed to predict which residents were likely to break the law. Using this algorithm, but often without probable cause or evidence of crimes, the department continuously monitored and harassed nearly 1,000 residents in the span of five years. The Tampa Bay Times’ interviews with former deputies discovered that the harassment tactics were designed to make these residents move out of the county or file a lawsuit. Some cases had far more dire consequences, including that of a teenager who died by suicide while under surveillance based on the sheriff’s algorithms. As a result of this reporting, state lawmakers have filed legislation to curb this style of policing in Florida, the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor has called for a federal investigation and four residents who were targeted are suing the sheriff’s office with the help of a national non-profit legal firm.
