April 10th, 2018
Rebecca Clarren dug through databases and tribal court files for her report, co-written with Jason Begay, on sexual discrimination, harassment and assault in tribal workplaces. Their piece for the InvestigateWest, “Confronting the ‘Native Harvey Weinsteins,'” which was also run by The Nation, showed the challenges in investigating such violations. Part of the problem, Clarren and Begay report, stems from the the federal government’s decision to exempt tribes from the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Fewer than twenty tribes have created their own legal codes to fill this void.
Navajo Nation Council member Amber Crotty, in photo, stunned her colleagues in a 2016 speech that spotlighted sexual harassment on her reservation. (Photo courtesy of Amber Crotty.)
[Funding for this project was provided by the Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation.]
April 10th, 2018
Marc Perrusquia’s new book, A Spy In Canaan: How the FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, tells how a long-running newspaper investigation uncovered civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ double life as a paid FBI informant. Released March 27 by Melville House in New York, the book reveals that Withers helped the FBI monitor a broad range of individuals and organizations active in the civil rights, peace and labor movements in Memphis between 1958 and 1976, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Communist Party, the Black Panthers, the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Student Organizing Committee. The Washington Post recently reviewed the book. The Washington Post recently reviewed the book.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Park Foundation.]
April 6th, 2018
Daffodil Altan and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, have teamed with FRONTLINE to tell the story of Guatemalan teens forced to work against their will on an egg farm in Ohio. The investigation into labor trafficking exposes a criminal network that exploits undocumented minors, companies that profit from forced labor and the role of the U.S. government. The documentary, “Trafficked in America,” is set to begin airing on April 24, 2018, on PBS stations.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation.]
April 4th, 2018
For decades, the Tennessee Valley Authority bought and traded mineral rights from energy companies in Illinois. During that time, from a period stretching from the 1960s into the 1980s, the TVA also signed deals with hundreds of farmers who agreed to sell their mineral rights and promised to sell their land if it was needed for mining. But as Kari Lydersen reports for Energy News Network, many of those farmers or their descendants now regret those deals, saying they never imagined the situation would play out as it has: with private companies profiting handsomely off the coal and using a destructive form of mining that was not common at the time they signed. Meanwhile the terms of TVA’s little-known leases seem like worse deals for the public than leases for BLM coal that have been widely criticized; and the mine continues to expand despite serious safety and environmental concerns.
In photo by Kari Lydersen for Energy News Network, Pat and Mark Kern could be forced to sell their farm because of a deal Mark’s father signed almost four decades ago.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Park Foundation and the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism.]
March 30th, 2018
The Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded $58,535 in reporting grants for eight projects that will help shine light on potential abuses of power, expose significant shortcomings in social institutions and give voice to people who seldom have the platform to share their stories.
Among the grant recipients:
Katti Gray, a veteran journalist who mainly covers health and criminal justice issues;
Christina Goldbaum, an independent investigative journalist based in East Africa;
InvestigateWest, a Seattle-based journalism nonprofit;
James McNair, a Cincinnati-based investigative reporter;
Aly Pachter and the staff of the Georgetown University newspaper, The Hoya;
Jenni Monet, an independent journalist who reports extensively on the rights of the country’s indigenous people;
Alisa Partlan and Hella Winston, two New York-based investigative journalists; and
Robin Urevich, a Los Angeles-based reporter.
Applications are now being accepted at investigate.submittable.com for the next round of grants. The deadline is Monday, May 7, 2018. Read the rest of this entry »
March 15th, 2018
In her first installment of a series of stories focused on anti-gang security policies in El Salvador, FIJ/Schuster Institute fellow Danielle Mackey reports on the rising number of
enfrentamientos — or “shoot-outs” — that have taken the lives of young El Salvadorans. The number of civilian victims in these
enfrentamientos has jumped from 39 in 2013 to 591 in 2016. But
as Mackey reports for World Politics Review (
non-subscription link here), the killings of many suspected gang members may not have been the result of shoot-outs, as police claim, but were extra-judicial executions carried out under a zero-tolerance policy put in place by national police. According to Mackey’s report, a group of middle-school boys were among the victims of the police crackdown on gangs, including the so-called MS-13, a violent street gang with origins in Los Angeles, California.
(In a 2010 file photo by Oscar Leiva (@oleivaphoto), a soldier performs a random stop-and-search in the neighborhood of a young father in the municipality of Mejicanos, San Salvador.)
[[Funding for this project was provided by the Ford Foundation.]
March 5th, 2018
Four Investigative Reporters Selected for 2018 Social Justice Investigative Reporting Fellowship and Grants
The fellowship is a collaboration of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, with support from the Ford Foundation
Feb. 26, 2018–The Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University are pleased to announce the 2018 winners of our nationally competitive journalism initiative funded by the Ford Foundation, with the express goal of increasing diverse and inclusive voices and topics in investigative journalism.
Four journalists have been awarded grants and fellowships for social justice investigative reporting projects: Danielle Mackey, Johnny Magdaleno, Luis Trelles and Chandra Thomas Whitfield. The fellows will investigate critical contemporary issues such as racial disparities in domestic violence cases, treatment for opioid addiction, Central American gangs, and the government’s handling of natural disasters.
Judges for the selection process said the need for such reporting is great and that the quality of the proposals received reflects the outstanding pool of talented independent reporters seeking funding and support for groundbreaking stories that can have far-reaching impacts.
“Journalism must take hard looks at all levels of society. We are proud to help these talented investigative reporters who are tackling such important topics,” said Marcia Bullard, president of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. “We’re especially grateful for the support of the Ford Foundation and the Schuster Institute and their commitment to social justice issues.”
“The wider perspective that diverse voices and experiences provide strengthens the effort investigative journalists make to keep government, corporations and others in power accountable. The truth is, the need for diversity among journalists investigating and telling important, under-covered stories has never been greater,” said Florence Graves, Schuster Institute founding director and editor-in-chief. “We are honored to be part of this initiative with our partners, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Ford Foundation, and are eager to work with the new fellows.” Read the rest of this entry »
February 26th, 2018
T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong have expanded their Pulitzer Prize-winning story into a book, “A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America,” published by Crown in February. The book tells the story of Marie, an 18-year-old near Seattle, Washington, who reported being raped, only to be branded a liar by police. Miller and Armstrong first wrote about the case for ProPublica and The Marshall Project. The story was also a “This American Life” episode and will soon be an eight-part series on Netflix.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation.]
February 23rd, 2018
Earth Island Journal and Truthout spent more than a year on a collaborative reporting project investigating the links between mass incarceration, environmental degradation, and social justice. Using federal and state data gathered through FOIA requests, and on-the-ground reporting from prisons and prison-adjacent communities in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania, the “America’s ToxicPrisons” series revealed that from coast to coast, prisons, jails, and detention centers are exposing prisoners to environmental health hazards — through their siting on contaminated lands and hazardous locations, and their use of polluted drinking water. Often, not unlike factory farms, prisons themselves also become significant sources of pollution.
Since the series was published, the Department of Justice withdrew plans to build a prison on a mountaintop-removal site in Kentucky, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to add prison locations to its online environmental justice mapping tool. What’s more, the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, citing the project, sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Acting Bureau of Prisons Director Thomas Kane, to demand that the Justice Department investigate and remedy the conditions.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Park Foundation.]
February 15th, 2018
FIJ/Schuster Institute diversity fellow Michele Chabin focused on the desperate plight of families touched by mamzer status, the closest thing Judaism has to a class of untouchables. The status is passed down from generation to generation. Writing for New York Jewish Week, Chabin sheds light on why so-called mamzerim are sentenced to a life of secrecy and shame. While wars and migration once allowed most families touched by mamzerut to hide their status, the advent of the internet, digital recordkeeping and increasingly stringent rabbinical standards is making it more difficult to safeguard their secret. Those advocating for mamzerim say Judaism’s most influential rabbis lack the courage to find solutions to mamzerut.
In photo courtesy of Nurit Jacobs-Yinon, an exhibit of “Mamzerim, Labeled and Erased” at the 2017 Jerusalem Biennale.
[Funding for this project was provided by the Ford Foundation.]
Click here to hear veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tell how – with financial support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism – he learned about the massacre of civilians in Vietnam, how he tracked down Lt. William Calley and, in so doing, changed the world’s perception of American intervention in Southeast Asia. It demonstrates how small grants from our fund have enabled talented journalists to produce big, important stories, changing the course of history.