The Fund for Investigative Journalism

A year ago, the Trump administration approved a land swap allowing a road to be built through a remote national refuge in Alaska. The road was supposed to be a route for evacuating sick people from a small Aleut town. But an investigation revealed a little-known loophole in the agreement that allows for transport of millions of dollars of seafood.

Grant recipient Jane Kay and photographer Ash Adams explore the impact of the road on wildlife and the people of King Cove in an article for Reveal.

At the personal urging of President Trump, the Interior Department ignored two federal reports saying the road would harm irreplaceable, extraordinary wilderness and that patients could be transported via water instead. Interviews and documents obtained by Kay show that the intent of local leaders was to link its harbors to ship fresh fish. The agreement allows the road to be used by small businesses, which can sell tens of millions of dollars in seafood yet still qualify as “small.” Local leaders pushing for the road all own commercial fishing boats.

Frosty Peak, more than a mile high, looms over Izembek Lagoon in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Ash Adams for Reveal

In a story for The Intercept, Roy Gutman interviewed four Syrian deserters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who recounted recruitment at gunpoint; recruitment of child soldiers; jail terms for relationships with women; sending conscripts to the front lines; and conscripting family members to replace deserters. The PKK – an ally in the U.S. fight against ISIS in Syria – restricts media access, so Gutman interviewed the four in northern Iraq.

The four also spoke of the PKK as a movement – one that is listed as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and E.U. They say its decades-long armed struggle for an independent state has not improved the lot of Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Reinforcing that thought is an interview with Osman Ocalan, the brother of the jailed leader of the PKK, and a founding member who also deserted the group, 15 years ago.

PKK-led Syrian Democratic Forces forced this family to flee Jarablus in in advance of the American bombing in Raqqa, Syria. Photo by Roy Gutman

The past two weeks have brought in three substantial funding grants for 2019.

The Weissman Family Foundation donated $75,000 to again support FIJ reporting grants in the coming year.

In addition, The Nara Fund donated $21,000. Of that, $6,000 is earmarked for continuing diversity outreach. Jonathan Ingbar, president of the Fund wrote, “All of us at The Nara Fund are inspired by the work that you do and we are honored to help support it, especially so at this time.”

That money had the added benefit of fulfilling a $25,000 matching challenge grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

And The Reva and David Logan Foundation – a long-time supporter – made a grant of $50,000 to fund even more reporting.

The FIJ board and reporting grant recipients are deeply grateful, and hope that the generosity will continue flowing through the holiday season.

FIJ is happy to announce two new board members, Alan Berlow and Anu Narayanswamy.

Alan Berlow is a freelance reporter, a former foreign correspondent for NPR, and author of Dead Season, A Story of Murder and Revenge. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and Harpers. Berlow has himself received two FIJ grants, in 1977 and 1991. He is a board member of the Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation.

Anu Narayanswamy is a data reporter for The Washington Post, working on the political enterprise team with a focus on money in politics and government accountability. She has previous investigative reporting experience both at the Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation. Originally from Mumbai, India, she has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Missouri – Columbia and is a member of the IRE/NICAR.

At the same time, Doris Truong will be leaving the board after a three-year term. FIJ wishes her the best of luck as she continues as the director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute.

In two stories for The Intercept, FIJ/Schuster Institute diversity fellow Danielle Mackey reports on the difficulty and politics of leaving criminal gangs in El Salvador.

The first piece follows a 21-year-old who wants to retire after 10 years of murder and extortion with the gang Barrio 18. He hopes for a new life working with an evangelical Christian church. To his surprise, the gang lets him go, with conditions.

Besides entanglements with their old gangs, former gang members are ostracized by society and are targeted by police and other gangs. There are about 60,000 gang members in El Salvador. Mackey asks, “What is the solution to this problem if they can’t retire?” This story was highlighted in the New York Times and Longreads.

The second piece reports on a historic change in U.S. foreign policy toward El Salvador that allows aid money to be used to help people leave gangs. The unannounced policy shift happened after a years-long political battle fought in both Washington and the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.

A view of prisoners inside Apanteos prison, west of San Salvador, El Salvador. Photo by Salvador Meléndez/Revista Factum

[FIJ thanks The Ford Foundation for providing the funding for this project.]

Over five months, PublicSource in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, investigated the use of “piggybacking” contracts used by city and county governments in the region. The practice allows some government officials to circumvent contract vetting processes by “piggybacking” on contract requests already approved by other agencies. Doing so can save governments time and money by avoiding negotiation and approval steps. But critics say the practice has led to higher costs for taxpayers and leaves government agencies vulnerable to fraud.

According to data compiled by PublicSource from Pittsburgh’s contract repository, only 10 percent of 1,135 contracts that were active as of December 1, 2018, were actually negotiated by the city.

City Controller Michael Lamb told PublicSource, “When you just automatically jump to these cooperative contracts rather than doing a local competitive process, I think you’re cheating taxpayers.”

View of the City-County Building in Pittsburgh. Photo by Kat Procyk

[FIJ thanks the Park Foundation and the Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation for providing the funding for this project.]

The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) has awarded $67,810 for eight grants to nine investigative journalists in its most recent round of funding.

The grants will help investigative reporters cover the costs of reporting work, such as travel, document fees, and other out-of-pocket expenses.

The grant recipients are:

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan & Maddy Crowell, New York-based journalists

Naveena Sadasivam, a journalist based in Austin, Texas

David Armstrong, of the Georgia News Lab in Kennesaw, Georgia

Burt Glass, a journalist from Boston

Kira Zalan, a freelance reporter from Washington, D.C.

Marc Perrusquia, a journalist based in Bartlett, Tennessee

Victoria Mckenzie, an investigative journalist based in New York City

Suman Naishadham, an independent journalist currently studying at the Missouri School of Journalism

The deadline to apply for the next round of grants is February 4, 2019.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate the massacre of civilians in My Lai during the Vietnam War. Since then, FIJ has supported the work of hundreds of reporters who have uncovered and published important investigative stories from across the United States and around the world.

Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003 to “prevent, detect, and respond to” sexual abuse in American prisons. Yet at least 11 lawsuits alleging criminal sexual abuse of inmates have been filed against former employees of New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women since 2015.

So, when PREA auditors examined the prison in 2014 and 2016, how did it pass?

This question is at the center of FIJ grant recipient Lauren Lee White’s story, “#MeToo Behind Bars: How Federal Investigators Are Ignoring Prison Sexual Assaults They Are Hired To Report,” the first in a series for WitnessLA.

Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, calls one of the Edna Mahan audits a “rubber stamp.” It includes nearly verbatim passages found in at least 12 other audits of other facilities conducted between 2015 and 2018. Wright’s story explores this apparent failure of the PREA auditing system and shows how that affects incarcerated women across the country.

View of the entrance to the L.A. County women’s jail. Photo by Lauren Lee White

[FIJ thanks the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation for providing the funding for this project]

With gratitude for their moral and financial support, the board and staff of the Fund for Investigative Journalism would like to acknowledge the many individuals and organizations that have sustained the work of independent investigative reporters throughout the year.

Major Supporters:

Mentors:

Partners:

Advisors:

Thanks to all!

Kickback, a new book by FIJ grant recipient David Montero, traces the ways that international corporate bribery foments poverty, violence, and environmental disaster around the world.

The book notes a litany of foreign and domestic companies accused of bribery and kickbacks, both historically and today, from the British East India Company to the international conglomerate Siemens.

One chapter explains how a history of ingrained bribery in Greece contributed to that country’s economic collapse. And an FIJ grant helped Montero complete reporting on a chapter documenting international pharmaceutical firms’ payoffs to gain market share in China.

But a main point is that “corruption rarely stays ‘out there,’” Montero says.

“Bribes eventually harm Americans, American society, American values, and American interests, both domestically and around the world, in ways that are difficult to gauge.”

[FIJ thanks The Reva and David Logan Foundation for providing the funding for this project.]