Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland, Jamiles Lartey, Ciara McCarthy, The Counted. The Guardian US, 31 December 2015. From the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy: ” The Guardian documented the number of people killed by police in the U.S., telling the stories of who they were, and establishing the hidden trends in how they died, through a database, special reports, and multimedia. The investigation’s final tally for 2015 of 1,134 deaths was two and a half times greater than the last annual total recorded by the FBI. After the publication of “The Counted,” the FBI announced at the end of 2015 that it would overhaul its system of counting killings by police. The Department of Justice also began testing a new program for recording arrest-related deaths, drawing on Guardian data.”
Archives for December 2015
For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions
Noam Scheiber and Patricia Cohen, For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions. The New York Times, 29 December 2015. Part of a series entitled Buying Power: “Articles in this series examine America’s growing concentration of wealth and its consequences for government and politics…. The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield billions in income…. With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”
Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too
Neela Banerjee, Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too. InsideClimate News, 22 December 2015. “The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation’s largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world’s climate far earlier than previously known.”
Investigation: [Fatal] Police Shootings in the US in 2015
The Washington Post, Investigation: [Fatal] Police Shootings [in 2015 in the US] The database is updated regularly. 2015. About this story: “How The Washington Post is examining police shootings in the U.S.” 30 June 2015. “The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015.”
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
Winner of the 2015 George Polk Award for National Reporting.
Reimagining Journalism: The Story of the One Percent
Michael Massing, Reimagining Journalism: The Story of the One Percent. The New York Review of Books, 17 December 2015. “Inequality, the concentration of wealth, the one percent, the new Gilded Age—all became fixtures of national debate thanks in part to the [Occupy Wall Street] protesters who camped out in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan [in 2011]. Even the Republican presidential candidates have felt compelled to address the matter [in 2015 and 2016]. News organizations, meanwhile, have produced regular reports on the fortunes of the wealthy, the struggles of the middle class, and the travails of those left behind. Even amid the outpouring of coverage of rising income inequality, however, the richest Americans have remained largely hidden from view.” This is the first of two articles. The second is How to Cover the One Percent, published in The New York Review of Books on 14 January 2016.
An Unbelievable Story of Rape
Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, An Unbelievable Story of Rape. The Marshall Project (Ken Armstrong) and ProPublica (T. Christian Miller), 16 December 2015. “An 18-year-old said she was attacked at knifepoint. Then she said she made it up. That’s where our story begins.” “‘An Unbelievable Story of Rape’ is the account of a failed police investigation and the trail of hurt and humiliation that followed. This 12,000-word piece tells the story of a young woman who reported being raped at knifepoint in her apartment, only to be disbelieved by police, and later prosecuted for lying to the authorities. Years later, two relentless female detectives in Colorado arrested a man suspected of raping a series of women and discovered that the original victim was telling the truth all along.”
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.
Winner of the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting.
Trafficking in Terror: How closely entwined are the drug trade and global terrorism?
Ginger Thompson, Trafficking in Terror: How closely entwined are the drug trade and global terrorism? The New Yorker, 7 December 2015. This piece is a collaboration between The New Yorker and ProPublia. “The DEA warns that drugs are funding terror. An examination of cases raises questions about whether the agency is stopping threats or staging them.”
Joe Posner, How the DEA invented “narco-terrorism.” Vox video, 7 December 2015.