WASHINGTON, D.C. March 25, 2008 — The Center for Public Integrity has won the 2007 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) award for online investigative journalism for Collateral Damage: Human Rights and U.S. Military Aid after 9/11. This recognition marks the eleventh time since 1997 that the Center has either won first place or was a finalist for an IRE award.

The Collateral Damage project was led by the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and took more than a year of reporting and research. The project included ten of the world’s leading investigative journalists on four continents. The Center reviewed thousands of pages of foreign lobbying records, U.S. military statistics and reports to create an easily navigable interactive map and sixteen special reports. The project included a comprehensive database of U.S. military assistance, foreign lobbying expenditures, and human rights abuses. The stories, broken down by region, examined the billions of dollars of U.S. military aid spent in the post-9/11 era in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and South America. The project also illuminated questionable foreign allegiances, foreign lobby ties, lack of accountability, and the controversial issues involving extraordinary renditions, torture, and interrogations.

The IRE Judges said that the Collateral Damage project provided, “A comprehensive and compelling examination of US military aid and assistance to foreign countries in a post- 9/11 world. The work of investigative journalists on four continents to track the origins of lobbying efforts and amounts of money involved was impressive by itself. But coupled with the power of an online database, readers were able to view unfiltered data broken into many categories. This made the project extremely accessible and easy to understand.”

“Collateral Damage represents international investigative reporting at its best,” said Center Executive Director Bill Buzenberg. “In an area of inadequate oversight, the Center for Public Integrity has explored the consequences of U.S. military aid involving enormous amounts of money and a lack of clear accountability.”

The annual IRE Awards recognize the best investigative reporting by print, broadcast and online media. The awards will be presented on June 7 at the 2008 IRE Conference in Miami. The Center’s Collateral Damage project was made possible by the generous support of the JEHT Foundation.

All of the Center’s award-winning investigative journalism can be found at www.publicintegrity.org.

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