April 4, 2024
Hannah Dreier Wins 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting
Hannah Dreier of the New York Times is the winner of the 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for her five-part exposé “Alone and Exploited.” Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs unveiled the winner of the prize live at the Goldsmith Awards Ceremony on April 3, 2024, in the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School.
Dreier’s investigation into the wide resurgence of child labor in the United States began with a simple question: As more unaccompanied migrant children began crossing the border than ever before, where were they all going? In this 20-month long investigation, Dreier uncovered a culture of careless disregard for child labor laws at construction sites, slaughterhouses and in factories across the country and a “chain of willful ignorance” at every point in the system meant to protect children from exploitation. Dreier earned the trust of hundreds of migrant children, federal contractors, investigators and auditors, government social workers, and sources at the highest levels of the White House and federal agencies to bring the truth to light. The impact of her investigation was swift and prompted immediate reforms across state and federal agencies as well as dozens of major corporations and brands.
Though she was not able to attend the award ceremony in person, due to the happy reason of having an extremely new baby at home, Dreier accepted the award live via video connection with her daughter on her lap. “I want to accept this amazing honor on behalf of the children, who took huge risks in speaking out,” she said. “These were 14, 15 year olds, who had their arms shredded by industrial machines, who were waking up at the crack of dawn to work on roofs, and they had nothing to gain from sharing their experiences except the hope of helping other people.”
Other winners at the 2024 Goldsmith Awards included:
The winner of the inaugural Goldsmith Special Citation for Reporting on Government was “Overpayment Outrage” by Jodie Fleisher, David Hilzenrath, and the teams at KFF Health News and Cox Media Group.
This new citation honors explanatory and/or investigative reporting that focuses on the functioning of government and the implementation of public policy. The team behind “Overpayment Outrage” unearthed a significant problem in the Social Security Administration and revealed the structural weaknesses that caused it to happen — including chronic underfunding of the agency and outdated, incomplete data systems that made it impossible for people at the ground level to do their jobs effectively. They did this all in a collaboration that paired a national nonprofit newsroom with dozens of local TV news stations around the country, connecting the dots from the most local impacts to the highest levels of government.
The winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize – Academic, went to Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamic of State Violence by Anita R. Gohdes.
The winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize – Trade, went to Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden.
The Goldsmith Career Award went to NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who joined Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs in a fireside chat about lessons learned from her trailblazing career covering the U.S. Supreme Court.