A new 30-minute documentary, broadcast by New York University’s Inside Lens, examines the federal government’s practice of detaining asylum seekers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film tells the stories of Celeste and Maria, two undocumented women who endured COVID-19 and who reported human rights abuses while detained at Otay Mesa detention center in San Diego, California. With support from the ...
Investigate Midwest reporter Johnathan Hettinger, with a grant from the Fund, obtained a trove of documents showing internal concerns and debate at the Environmental Protection Agency about more than 400 pet flea and tick products that EPA regulates. Despite EPA staff’s concerns, the pesticides continue to be used in the collars, which could endanger pets and their owners. The documents ...
Freelance reporter Matt Chapman used Illinois’ public records law to reveal that the Chicago Police Department routinely rebuffs requests for records and incorrectly cites the law to justify denials. With a grant from the Fund, Chapman spent several months obtaining and reviewing 350 denials by the police department. In his comprehensive reporting for South Side Weekly, he found that police ...
The Daily Chronicle, which covers several communities in and around DeKalb County in Illinois, is publishing a series that examines the condition of public drinking water system in Sycamore, where residents are complaining about foul smelling, yellowish water running from their taps. With support from The Fund, the newspaper has filed public records request that showed that local officials have ...
In the multi-part series, “Diabetes: The Rising Storm,” Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting founder and reporter Jerry Mitchell, working with a team of students and photographers, exposed the human cost of this killer disease. With a grant from the Fund, the series highlighted the Mississippi Delta, which has the greatest frequency of diabetes of any community in the United States. This story chronicled how ...
The Arkansas Nonprofit News Network published a series of stories that showed that, contrary to officials’ claims, multiple inspectors over several years had missed serious problems on a bridge on Interstate 40 that links Tennessee and Arkansas. Arkansas officials had claimed that one inspector failed to detect a crack in the bridge, and that inspector was fired. With a grant from the Fund, the ...
In an investigation for Georgia Health News, reporter Rebecca Grapevine found that transportation services for Medicaid beneficiaries often leave clients waiting for hours for rides that sometimes never arrive. State Medicaid programs are required to provide transportation to and from healthcare appointments, and they contract with large transportation brokers to provide these services for millions of dollars. During an initial ...
Wisconsin Watch investigated a child abuse pediatrician whose declarations of abuse were rejected at least a dozen times by police, prosecutors, jurors, child protective services officials and other doctors. Dr. Barbara Knox was placed on leave from the University of Wisconsin in 2019 for allegedly bullying her colleagues. Now she is medical director of Alaska CARES, a statewide forensic child ...
City Limits published the first story in a planned series examining the role of “Community Benefits Agreements” in the city’s land use and development planning. Once a popular part of high-profile real estate deals, CBAs were seen as a way for community members to ensure that developers building neighborhood-changing projects – sports stadiums, university campus expansions, a shopping mall – ...
Following the George Floyd protests, Dallas Morning News reporters documented how a Dallas police sergeant blasted a Latina demonstrator in the breast at close range with pepper balls then arrested her and the photographer who captured the violence. Reporters Cassandra Jaramillo, Madi Alexander and Miles Moffeit soon heard whispers that this wasn’t the first time Sgt. Roger Rudloff had roughed ...