The Center for Public Integrity

Tens of millions of Americans drink water contaminated with chromium (VI), a toxic compound the Environmental Protection Agency was poised in 2011 to conclude likely causes cancer. That finding would normally set the stage for setting stricter drinking-water standards. So far, the new standards have not been set.

If you want to know the story behind the delay, read our two-part investigation, Toxic Clout, including the latest report this week on how chemical industry scientists are able to stall action on a known carcinogen. Or, watch the excellent two-part PBS NewsHour series that documents how an industry uses its resources to raise questions, pay for studies and otherwise effectively block government agencies from taking action.

In some of our key findings, the Center for Public Integrity reported that the EPA’s delay was caused in part by waiting for new studies paid for by the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade group and lobbyist. And, some of the same industry-paid scientists involved in past efforts to stall government action on chromium worked on the studies delaying the EPA.

Chromium (VI), you may recall, is the same chemical compound featured in the movie Erin Brockovich. That Oscar-winning film did much to raise awareness of chromium pollution in drinking water.  Because of that pollution, the company involved, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., paid $333 million to the people of Hinkley,  Calif. But, as I’ve noted before, this story does not end with the Hollywood version of events. The EPA has still not acted.

The Education Writers Association has honored the Center for Public Integrity's Susan Ferriss this week with a first-place prize in the 2012 National Awards for Education Reporting, in the category of Investigative Reporting in a Medium Newsroom.

The series of pieces, by Ferriss, Krissy Clark, KQED and Vanessa Romo, KPCC, examined how students were being disciplined in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

"Great persistence. Great find. Great narratives of children caught up in system," wrote the judges.

The 62 winning entries in the contest were chosen from among hundreds of submissions. Winners will be honored at EWA’s National Seminar, to be held May 2-4 at Stanford University. 

Read the series:

It is always gratifying when the Center for Public Integrity’s investigative projects have a major impact AND win major award recognition.  That’s been happening a lot lately.

Most recently, our State Integrity Investigation—a corruption risk index for all 50 states—was named a finalist for the distinguished Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. This massive project has contributed to ethics reform efforts in 16 states so far, with more coming during this year’s legislative sessions.

The Goldsmith judges described the State Integrity project as "a wonderful blueprint for reporters all over the country to do enterprising stories on government." Produced in collaboration with Global Integrity and Public Radio International, this work has been written about in 1,500 other publications and been cited in more than 75 editorials. According to the Goldsmith Prize judges, the results of the State Integrity Investigation “include accelerated reform in government and an increase in disclosure requirements in many states.”

More than 80,000 chemicals are on the market in the United States, with hundreds added each year. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulators are supposed to protect the public from chemical contaminants in air, water and consumer products that can cause cancer and other illnesses. But the chemical industry's sway over science and policy is extremely powerful. Much like the clout of the NRA, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is an industry trade association that often acts to create uncertainty and delay, actions that ultimately threaten the public health.  

In a new series of stories called Toxic Clout, The Center for Public Integrity is exploring how the chemical industry operates behind the scenes. We want to shed light on how a cancer-causing chemical compound could escape regulation that EPA scientists say is  necessary. Please tune in to the PBS NewsHour next Wednesday, March 6th, to see a special report produced in partnership with The Center for Public Integrity.

This report features a chemical compound that more than 70 million Americans drink traces of every day. Since 2010, EPA scientists have concluded that even small amounts of this compound may cause cancer.  

The chemical compound is called hexavalent chromium, which gained infamy in the Oscar-winning film Erin Brockovich. The film ends in Hollywood fashion, with the corporate polluter paying $333 million to people suffering from illnesses. But in real life, that is not the end of the story.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) has announced two Center for Public Integrity projects as winners of its 18th Best in Business competition, which honors excellence in business journalism across all news platforms:

Skin & Bone: The Shadowy Trade in Human Body Parts

Contributors: Kate Willson, Gerard Ryle, Mike Hudson, Kimberley Porteous, David Donald and Marina Walker Guevara, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (USA) Vlad Lavrov, The Kiev Post (Ukraine) Martina Keller, freelance (Germany) Thomas Maier, Newsday and News12 Long Island (USA) Sandra Bartlett, Joe Shapiro and Susanne Reber, National Public Radio (USA) Mar Cabra, freelance (Spain) William Venuti and Antonio Aldo Palaleo, The Daily Slovakia (Slovakia) and La Voce della Repubblica Ceca (Czech Rep.) Alexenia Dimitrova, 24 Chasa (Bulgaria) Nari Kim, Channel A (South Korea)

Fraud and Folly: The Untold Story of General Electric’s Subprime Debacle

Contributors: Michael Hudson, Scott Reckard

More than 200 working journalists and academics served as judges, sifting through the record 1,120 entries from 195 news outlets across 68 categories.

Alan Berlow will appear on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" Thursday, Feb. 21 from 7:30-8 a.m. ET to discuss and take questions about his recent story for the Center for Public Integrity, Current gun debate may not help beleaguered ATF.

In his article, Berlow reports on how Congressional restrictions and the influence of the NRA have limited the effectiveness of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The program will air on C-SPAN and is also available streaming online at Live on C-SPAN.

The Center for Public Integrity can benefit from the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s latest crowd-funding campaign in support of “aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking in government.” A donation to this fund over the next two weeks will be matched up to $10,000 by actor and Foundation board member John Cusack.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has already raised about $200,000 for a select handful of organizations, from the National Security Archive to WikiLeaks.

Foundation support for the Center will go toward our National Security reporting on Pentagon spending. We’ll examine what makes up the biggest defense budget in the world. We’ll detail what’s gone wrong in some of the Defense Department's most troubled and costly projects like the F-35 fighter jet and the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships. We’ll look at the explosion of military entitlements, and map how top defense contractors in Washington regularly finance the election campaigns of the lawmakers who oversee or control their budgets.

Crowd-funding by the Freedom of the Press Foundation is built on the recognition that “this kind of transparency journalism — from publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate, to uncovering the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and CIA secret prisons — doesn’t just happen. It requires dogged work by journalists, and often, the courage of whistleblowers and others who work to ensure that the public actually learns what it has a right to know.” 

Rob Tornoe, a political cartoonist based in Delaware, is now drawing original cartoons for The Center, based on our stories. You'll see his work pop up on publicintegrity.org, our Facebook page and on Twitter. Tornoe also draws cartoons for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Press of Atlantic City, Media Matters and Philadelphia NPR affiliate WHYY, among others.

With just a little over a month until the deadline to apply for one of our summer internship spots, we wanted to talk about what it’s like to be an intern at the Center.

Our interns are a pivotal part of Center staff during the summer months. This isn’t the type of position where you’ll be going for coffee runs or answering phones — from the first day, Center interns are immersed in our newsroom and most begin work in their respective projects the moment paperwork is completed. Center internships are full-time, 40 hours/week positions, and compensated at an hourly rate.

The bulk of our internships are for reporting positions: each of our coverage areas or beats will choose a reporting intern, and that person will report to a section editor for the entirety of the program. Some of the areas we cover are: politics and campaign finance, national security, environment and health care, as well as global, investigative reporting on all topics. We will be offering two to four reporting positions this summer.

Additionally, we’re looking for what you might call “out-of-the-box” interns, such as candidates with experience in: computer-assisted reporting (CAR) or interactive news design.

CAR applicants should be adept at using Microsoft Excel, and experience with Microsoft Access is a big plus. Above all, the ideal candidate will have a staggering attention to detail. In lieu of writing samples, tell us about a few of your experiences with data sets (links to published work are greatly appreciated).

If you know your way around HTML, CSS and JavaScript/jQuery, we strongly encourage you to apply for an interactive design internship. We're especially interested in designers with some knowledge of responsive web design and experience with libraries, such as D3.js or Highcharts. Please include links to recent work.

The Center's Susan Ferriss discussed her story, 'Separated by Law': Families torn apart by 1996 immigration law' on NPR's 'Talk of the Nation' Tuesday at 3 p.m. 

The story, reported in collaboration with "The California Report," a statewide service of KQED Public Radio, tells about how citizens or legal immigrants who have who tried to legalize their undocumented spouses have seen them banned from the U.S. for 10 years, 20 years, even life, because of mandatory penalties.

You can listen to the show here: Talk of the Nation. 

Wednesday, PRI's "The World" aired a story by Amy Isackson of KQED's "The California Report." Isackson reported the story in collaboration with Ferriss and the Center.