Madeleine Baran, Betrayed by Silence: A Radio Documentary. How three archbishops hid the truth. MPR (Minnesota Public Radio), 14 July 2014. “For decades, the archbishops who led the Catholic archdiocese in the Twin Cities [Minneapolis/St. Paul] maintained that they were doing everything they could to protect children from priests who wanted to rape them. Reporters picked up those assurances and repeated them without question. Police and prosecutors took the assurances at face value. Parents believed the assurances and trusted priests with their children. But the assurances were a lie, and the archbishops knew it. Three of them — John Roach, Harry Flynn…and John Nienstedt — participated in a cover-up that pitted the finances and power of the church against the victims who dared to come forward and tell their stories. [This] radio documentary…draws on dozens of interviews, thousands of never-before-published documents and insider accounts to explain how and why powerful men protected priests who abused children.
Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven for Money Laundering into Real Estate
Michael Hudson, Ionut Stanescu and Samuel Adler-Bell, Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze: Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 3 July 2014. “Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments…. Government officials and their families and associates in China, Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts. The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.” Winner of the 2014 George Polk Award for Business Reporting.
The Case for Reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic, 21 May 2014. “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”
Workers at N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi Site Faced Harsh Conditions
Ariel Kaminer and Sean O’Driscoll, Workers at N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi Site Faced Harsh Conditions. The New York Times, 18 May 2014. “Facing criticism for venturing into a country where dissent is not tolerated and labor can resemble indentured servitude, N.Y.U. in 2009 issued a “statement of labor values” that it said would guarantee fair treatment of workers. But interviews by The New York Times with dozens of workers who built N.Y.U.’s recently completed campus found that conditions on the project were often starkly different from the ideal.
Virtually every one said he had to pay recruitment fees of up to a year’s wages to get his job and had never been reimbursed. N.Y.U.’s list of labor values said that contractors are supposed to pay back all such fees. Most of the men described having to work 11 or 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, just to earn close to what they had originally been promised, despite a provision in the labor statement that overtime should be voluntary.
The Resegregation of America’s Schools 60 Years After Brown v. Board of Education
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Segregation Now: The Resegregation of America’s Schools. ProPublica, 16 April 2014. “60 years ago [1954], the Supreme Court ruled that ‘separate but equal’ had no place in American schools. ‘Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments…. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.’ Brown v. Board, 1954. The ruling spurred years of protests, school closures, military intervention, and resistance across the South before a wave of court orders finally forced schools to integrate. Now, the South is seeing a resurgence of segregation. This is the story of schools in Tuscaloosa, Ala–where a series of backroom deals and difficult compromises have had devastating consequences.”
VA [Veterans Affairs] in crisis: The Arizona Republic investigation
Dennis Wagner, Deaths at Phoenix VA hospital may be tied to delayed care. The Arizona Republic, 10 April 2014. Winner of the 2014 IRE [Investigative Reporters & Editors] Award for Print/Online–Meduim. “IRE Judges’ comments: While the story of poor care for veterans has been told well by media outlets across the country, reporting by the Arizona Republic propelled this story into a national scandal with sweeping results. The team’s stories revealed that veterans were dying while waiting for basic health care services at the Phoenix VA. Meanwhile, officials were manipulating records to hide the long wait times. Writing more than 100 stories during the year [2014], the reporters told the stories of individual veterans whose pleas for treatment were ignored until it was too late. This skillfully reported series helped lead to national reform, investigations and resignations, including U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. The project demonstrates the benefits of solid beat reporting and not letting go of a story once the national media jumps in.”
Fatal Flaws: Crisis in Auto Safety
Rebecca Ruiz, Danielle Ivory, Hilary Stout, Bill Vlasic, Hiroko Tabuchi, et al., Fatal Flaws: Crisis in Auto Safety. The New York Times, 17 February-30 December 2014. In this multipart, multiplatform series, “The New York Times has exposed missteps and delays by automakers and federal safety regulators in responding to deadly defects in automobiles during what has become a record year for recalls — more than 60 million in the United States in 2014. Overview: Spurred by a decade-old ignition-switch defect in millions of G.M. vehicles, the auto industry this year has issued more recalls involving old models — those made five or more years ago — than ever before. More than 60 million vehicles have been recalled in the United States, affecting the equivalent of one in five vehicles on the road, as automakers clean up years of defects that previously went undetected or ignored.”
Wells Fargo’s pressure-cooker sales culture comes at a cost
E. Scott Reckard, Wells Fargo’s pressure-cooker sales culture comes at a cost. Los Angeles Times, 21 December 2013. “Wells Fargo & Co. is the nation’s leader in selling add-on services to its customers. The giant San Francisco bank brags in earnings reports of its prowess in “cross-selling” financial products such as checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages and wealth management. In addition to generating fees and profits, those services keep customers tied to the bank and less likely to jump to competitors. But that success has come at a cost. The relentless pressure to sell has battered employee morale and led to ethical breaches, customer complaints and labor lawsuits, a [Los Angeles] Times investigation has found.”
Related:
James Rufus Koren, Wells Fargo to pay $185 million settlement for ‘outrageous’ sales culture. Los Angeles Times, 8 September 2016. “Calling it “outrageous” and “a major breach of trust,” local and federal regulators hammered Wells Fargo & Co. for a pervasive culture of aggressive sales goals that pushed thousands of workers to open as many as 2 million accounts that bank customers never wanted. Those practices, first uncovered by the Los Angeles Times in 2013, led to a massive $185-million settlement package announced Thursday [8 September 2016].
Pete Vernon, Q&A: Former LA Times reporter on story that led to $185 million Wells Fargo fine. Columbia Journalism Review, 12 September 2016.
Adam Davidson, How Regulation Failed With Wells Fargo. The New Yorker, 12 September 2016.
Breathless and Burdened: Dying from black lung, buried by law and medicine
Chris Hamby, Breathless and Burdened. The Center for Public Integrity, three-part series, 29 October, 30 October, and 1 November 2013. “This yearlong investigation examines how doctors and lawyers, working at the behest of the coal industry, have helped defeat the benefits claims of miners sick and dying of black lung, even as disease rates are on the rise and an increasing number of miners are turning to a system that was supposed to help alleviate their suffering.” This series won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. One part of the three-part, 25,000-word series was produced in partnership with the ABC News Investigative Unit, whose work included an in-depth Nightline segment.” Updates from The Center for Public Integrity, 30 September 2015: “‘Sweeping reforms’ proposed for black lung benefit program” and “Johns Hopkins terminates black lung program.”
Winner of the 2014 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Nevada Patient Busing: Las Vegas mental hospital used commercial buses to “dump” more than 1,500 psychiatric patients in 48 states over five years
Cynthia Hubert and Phillip Reese, Nevada Patient Busing. The Sacramento Bee, Series of 5 stories published on 7 April, 14 April, 5 May, 23 June, and 15 December 2013. “The Bee began this investigation after learning of a mentally ill man who, according to sources in the social services community, had been bused from a Nevada state psychiatric hospital to Sacramento, with a minimal supply of food and medication and without any arrangements for his treatment or housing. After locating him in a boarding home in Sacramento, The Bee pieced together James Flavy Coy Brown’s story by interviewing him at length, tracking down relatives across the country, and talking to doctors, social workers and caregivers he encountered after his arrival in Sacramento. Brown gave us permission to access his confidential medical information….”
Finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting.