Duffy, Novak and Weisskopf labored at the nexus of big money and politics. This required them to pore for days at a time over cartons of Federal Election Commission and court documents, to wheedle information from reluctant sources a sentence at a time. Their persistence paid off in three dozen pathbreaking stories on campaign finance in 1997, many of which were picked up and credited by major newspapers and TV news shows.
The team of reporters from the Los Angeles Times uncovered large contributions to the Democratic party by influential Asian donors. Subsequent to the reportage, the Democrats returned nearly $1.2 million in donations and sparked a nationwide debate on campaign finance reform.
Drawing on both laboratory experiments and the real world of America’s presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races, the authors show that negative advertising drives down voter turnout – in some cases dramatically – and that political consultants intentionally use ads for this very purpose.
The Sun Times story, led by journalists Charles Neubauer, Mark Brown and Michael Briggs, uncovered a corruption case against Rep Dan Rostenkowski’s campaign that had paid Dan Rostenkowski $73,000 in building rent and used taxpayer’s funds to personally acquire cars for himself.
The news story broken by journalists David Boardman, Susan Gilmore, Eric Nalder, and Eric Pryne described in detail the sexual harassment and abuse faced by 8 women at the hands of former Senator Adams. The story examines the complicity of those around Senator Adams who knew of his behaviour and either denied it or excused it.
In a continuing series of articles, that first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, journalists Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas documented the clandestine efforts of the US government to supply money and weapons to Iraq in the 1980s in the lead-up to the Gulf War. The focus was on exposing the duplicity and hypocrisy of the Bush administration on Iraq.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post was awarded the first-ever Goldsmith Award, in its inaugural year in 1992, for his career achievements in investigative journalism.