When a billion gallons of coal ash broke loose from a holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant near Harriman, Tenn. in December 2008, registered nurse Penny Dodson was living nearby with her 18-month-old grandson, Evyn. Like most of her neighbors, Dodson never gave much thought.. (Read the 5-part series in Facing South)

WASHINGTON – (July 1, 2010) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded grants totaling $48,000 for thirteen investigative reporting projects that will be published or broadcast by local, regional, and overseas media.

The names and projects of recipients are confidential until their work is completed, but the topics supported by the latest round of Fund grants include investigations of the misuse of federal funds, corrupt public servants in the US and abroad, and unmitigated environmental hazards.

Many of the grants will support multi-media projects and emerging media, including nonprofit investigative centers and ethnic media in the United States. In addition to domestic stories, the Board approved funding for investigative projects in Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, and Africa.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

Since then, recipients of Fund grants have won nearly every major award in journalism, including another Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk Award, and two National Magazine Awards. 

Recently released work has continued to win accolades. Columbia University graduate students Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann were finalists for the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors Student Award for their documentary on unlicensed surrogacy agencies. Reporting by Scott Carney on investigations of children kidnapped in India for adoption in America won the 2010 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism award. 

Links to their award winning work can be found on the FIJ website, www.fij.org, along with groundbreaking reports on the devastating second-generation health consequences from Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, the abuse of prisoners at secret detention sites in Afghanistan, and the recycled use of lead and arsenic-laced ash from coal-burning power plants in construction materials throughout the United States. 

Writers supported by the Fund have impact well after their initial work is published. Jason Berry’s reporting on sexual abuse by a prominent Roman Catholic priest was cited as groundbreaking in recent coverage by the New York Times. 

The Fund was founded by Philip Stern, a progressive-minded philanthropist who believed that by putting a small amount of money into the hands of aggressive reporters, they would generate stories that would, as he put it, help “balance the scales of justice.”  The Fund supports investigative projects solely through contributions from individuals and grants from private foundations such as the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Todd Melby and Diane Richard’s radio documentary No Brother of Mine offers an unflinching look at U.S. sex offender policy that reaches beyond the headlines and into the lives of real people. Award-winning independent producers Todd Melby and Diane Richard dare to humanize men that society demonizes: convicted sex offenders. Melby and Richard were granted extraordinary access to interview four offenders, first while the subjects were incarcerated in a Minnesota prison, and after being released as they look for work and forge new relationships. Reported over a period of four years, the documentary examines the efficacy of in-prison treatment programs and provides a nuanced examination of law enforcement efforts to keep the public safe using online registration, residency restrictions and civil commitment. The one-hour program aired on public radio stations nationwide, including KFAI (Minneapolis/St. Paul), WBEZ (Chicago), NHPR (New Hampshire Public Radio), KUT (Austin, Texas), KUOW (Seattle) and Minnesota Public Radio. Click here to listen and here for the story behind the story.

Anand Gopal’s article in The Nation exposed how innocent people were killed in U.S. military raids on homes in Afghanistan; others disappeared following the raids. Conducted at night, these raids are even more feared and hated than Coalition air strikes. Gopal also investigates detainee abuse in secret jails on US military bases in Afghanistan. He reports that prisoner mistreatment shifted to these remote secret “field detention sites” after abuses were exposed at the Bagram Air Base prison. The story, America’s Secret Afghan Prisons prompted a re-examination of U.S. battlefield detention methods in Afghanistan by U.S. military leadership.

Kenyan Journalist John Kamau unearthed archival documents that for the first time revealed just how land initially occupied by white settlers in colonial Kenya was transferred to politicians and their allies shortly after the country became independent. These unjust land practices have had a lasting impact in Kenya, contributing to political violence after the 2007 elections. Kamau details how funds from both the World Bank and UK Government – meant to settle the landless in the 1960s – were squandered. The series of 22 articles, published by both Daily Nation and Business Daily, collected evidence, named those who masterminded this land-grabbing in Kenya, and demonstrated how this history informs current politics.

Trevor Aaronson traveled to rural India to investigate the reasons why more than 200,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves in the last decade. Published in Columbia City Paper, The Suicide Belt examined how loans used to buy expensive, genetically modified cotton seeds are trapping subsistence farmers in a cycle of debt that ends in shame and, in the most tragic cases, suicide.

MAC McCLELLAND – In the April 2010 issue of Mother Jones, Mac McClelland reports on refugees who are documenting cases of human rights violations, torture, and genocide in Burma. She also turned her research into the book For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma’s Never-Ending War, published by Soft Skull Press.

Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, by Marites Vitug, is the first book to lift the veil off the elusive Philippine Supreme Court. It looks at the inner workings of the Court, the least scrutinized of the three branches of government, including how the Justices arrive at decisions and the dynamics between the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The secrecy surrounding the Court has a direct impact on the quality of appointments. Vitug writes that loyalty to the appointing power is more important than merit in selecting people for the Supreme Court in the Philippines.

TIM MATSUI – The Seattle photojournalist traveled to Cambodia to document human trafficking. He contributed to a multi-media investigative series on trafficking published online by KUOW Radio (Seattle).

Christopher Pala investigated the activities of a Honolulu-based fishing advisory council called Wespac. He found that it liberally distributed grants and travel perks to leading politicians in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas for years to ensure their loyalty. They then obligingly backed Wespac in vociferously opposing the creation by President George W. Bush of the Marianas Trench National Marine Monument, which would have protected a corner of the Pacific archipelago from commercial fishing. Their campaign resulted in a much smaller protected area than the White House had first envisioned, with few practical benefits.

WASHINGTON DC (February 23, 2010) — The Fund for Investigative Journalism is proud to announce it has received a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, based in Oklahoma City.

The grant will support reporters working on investigative stories that focus on their states and local communities. It also will provide funds for investigations done by reporters in the ethnic media.

“This grant will address a pressing need for watchdog reporting in regions where newsroom cutbacks have hollowed out investigative staffs and in communities covered by the ethnic media,” said Brant Houston, president of the Fund.

Houston said the Foundation, www.journalismfoundation.org, is playing a key role in ensuring that investigative reporting continues to flourish across the nation by supporting the Fund and other nonprofit journalism efforts.

WASHINGTON (January 15, 2010) — Sandy Bergo, an experienced investigative reporter, has been chosen to serve as executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Bergo, who replaces Cheryl Arvidson, has previously worked as an investigative producer for WBBM-TV (Chicago) and WJLA-TV (Washington DC), a senior writer for the Center for Public Integrity, and a freelance investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Monthly. She shared in many awards for her work in television, including the DuPont-Columbia Award, the Peabody Award, and the Investigative Reporting and Editors Award.

The Fund is a nonprofit organization with a 40 year history of supporting independent investigative reporters with grants ranging from $500 to $10,000. These grants help launch groundbreaking work exposing corruption, malfeasance, incompetence, and societal ills. Shortly after the public-spirited philanthropist Philip M. Stern founded the Fund, it awarded small grants to pay Seymour Hersh’s expenses for investigating the My Lai massacre.

WASHINGTON (January 7, 2010) – Chicago Tribune reporters Jason Grotto and Tim Jones authored a chilling five-part series describing the devastating health consequences suffered by U.S. military veterans and Vietnamese nationals who were exposed to Agent Orange and other dioxin-laced defoliants during the war in Vietnam. Birth defects have extended the impact to a second generation. But the U.S. government has done little to make amends, either in the United States or overseas.

Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek produced a video, Guatemala: A Tale of Two Villages, that appears on Frontline Rough Cuts website. It tells about the Guatemalans who were rounded up in a large immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, and sent back to their home country.

Murder in the High Himalaya, a book by Jonathan Green about the brutal murder of a 17-year-old nun fleeing to India by Chinese border guards. Will be published in the Spring of 2010.

“Murder in the High Himalaya is the unforgettable account of the brutal killing of Kelsang Namtso—a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun fleeing to India—by Chinese border guards. Witnessed by dozens of Western climbers, Kelsang’s death sparked an international debate over China’s savage oppression of Tibet. Adventure reporter Jonathan Green has gained rare entrance into this shadow-land at the rooftop of the world. In his affecting portrait of modern Tibet, Green raises enduring questions about morality and the lengths we go to achieve freedom.”

Thomas A. Bass’ The Spy Who Loved Us was published by PublicAffairs in 2009.

Pham Xuan An was a brilliant journalist and an even better spy. A long-time correspondent for Time and friendly with all the legendary reporters covering Vietnam, he was an invaluable source of news and font of wisdom on all things Vietnamese. At the same time, he was a masterful double agent, a North Vietnamese intelligence agent whose secret reports were so admired by Ho Chi Minh that he clapped his hands with glee on receiving them and exclaimed, “We are now in the United States’ war room!” An inspired shape-shifter who kept his cover in place until the day he died, Pham Xuan An ranks as one of the preeminent spies of the twentieth century.”

Pratap Chatterlee’s Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War, published by Nation Books, was written up in Vanity Fair and praised in other reviews. The book received FIJ’S 2005 Robert I. Friedman award.

“From Halliburton’s vital mission as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq—without it there could be no war or occupation—to its role in covering up gang-rape among its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburton’s Army is a devastating exposé of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism. In shocking detail it shows how Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) really do business in Iraq, and around the world. “

Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove’s Normal at Any Cost, was the recipient of FIJ’s $25,000 book award in 2003. The book about hormones that affect the growth of children, was published in March 2009 and widely reviewed.

Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World by Jessica Snyder Sachs, winner of the 2005 book award, has been published by Hill and Wang and is available in bookstores. Her argument is that “antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times”.