The Center for Public Integrity stories from The Center for Public Integrity

Join ICIJ's 'Secrecy for Sale' reporters for Google Hangout

2013-05-14T09:58:37-04:00

A little over a month ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) rolled out a massive piece of the 'Secrecy for Sale' investigation into offshore tax havens. Since then, the project has made waves in France, Germany, Canada, Mongolia, Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands, India, Venezuela and The Phillipines, to name (more than) a few. Stories using ICIJ's 260GB data trove ran in 47 countries, and thanks to the hard work of more than 90 journalists, the work has been cited close to 10,000 times worldwide. Just last week, tax authorities in Great Britain, the U.S. and Australia announced they are working together to investigate their own cache of offshore tax data for potential wrongdoing. That collaboration could be the beginning of the biggest tax probe in history.

On Tuesday, May 14 at 11:00am ET, six journalists from ICIJ will answer your questions on this groundbreaking investigative project in a live Google Hangout hosted by Wendell Cochran, senior editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop and former board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

The discussion will include:

Gerard Ryle, ICIJ Director
Marina Walker Guevara, ICIJ Deputy Director
Michael Hudson, ICIJ Senior Editor
Mar Cabra, ICIJ Data Research Manager and ICIJ member from Spain
Stefan Candea, ICIJ Assistant Project Manager and ICIJ member from Romania
Frédéric Zalac, ICIJ member from Canada and investigative reporter at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

You can watch the hangout live, or submit a question, here.

Authorities in the U.S., U.K. and Australia announce new international tax haven investigation

United Kingdom — 2013-05-09T14:49:35-04:00

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity, today acknowledged the announcement that U.S., British and Australian tax authorities are working with a gigantic cache of leaked data that may be the beginnings of one of the largest tax investigations in history.

The secret records are believed to include those obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that lay bare the individuals behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Singapore and other offshore hideaways.

The hoard of documents obtained by ICIJ represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever gathered by a media organization.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said in a statement the three nations “have each acquired a substantial amount of data revealing extensive use of such entities organized in a number of jurisdictions including Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands.”

It said the data “contains both the identities of the individual owners of these entities, as well as the advisors who assisted in establishing the entity structure.”

The statement said early analysis had uncovered information that may be relevant to tax administrations of other jurisdictions that they would be willing to share, at the request of other countries.

“This is part of a wider effort by the IRS and other tax administrations to pursue international tax evasion,” said IRS acting commissioner Steven T. Miller.

"Our cooperative work with the United Kingdom and Australia reflects a bigger goal of leaving no safe haven for people trying to illegally evade taxes.”

British tax authorities claim they have even more data than that unearthed by ICIJ.

The total size of the ICIJ files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of U.S. State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.

A statement from the British tax office puts the size of the data obtained by the three tax authorities at 400 gigabytes, compared to the 260 gigabytes gathered by the ICIJ.

“The 400 gigabytes of data is still being analyzed but early results show the use of companies and trusts in a number of territories around the world including Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands,” the British tax office statement said.

“The data also exposes information that may be shared with other tax administrations as part of the global fight against tax evasion.”

Last month, the ICIJ and 37 media partners began reporting on more than 2.5 million files that include the names of thousands of American, Australian and British citizens as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

The files leaked to ICIJ provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike.

The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories.

The ICIJ publication sparked government inquiries, resignations and a new sense of urgency from European leaders to fight tax evasion. A few days after the articles ran, Europe’s five biggest economic powers — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — announced they would begin regularly exchanging banking and tax information as a way of identifying tax dodgers and other financial wrongdoers.

Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze, ICIJ’s largest investigative reporting project in its 15- year history, is available at www.icij.org/offshore.

The stories released in April by the ICIJ and its partner outlets around the world are the first installment in an ongoing series. More ICIJ reports will be published throughout the year as ICIJ and its partners continue the investigation.

The files illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy to avoid taxes, fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations. The current banking crisis in Cyprus is one example of how the offshore system can impact an entire country’s financial stability.

The ICIJ worked with 86 investigative journalists from 46 countries and used data mining software and old fashioned shoe leather reporting to unveil the previously hidden but thriving world of fraud, tax dodging and political corruption.

To analyze the documents initially, ICIJ collaborated with journalists from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world.

Among the countries included in the data are: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela.

About the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a global network of reporters who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories. Founded in 1997, ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, focusing on issues that do not stop at national frontiers. With 160 members in more than 60 countries, ICIJ is dedicated to investigating cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power. Backed by the Center and its computer-assisted reporting specialists, public records experts, fact-checkers and lawyers, ICIJ reporters and editors provide real-time resources and state-of-the-art tools and techniques to journalists around the world.

About the Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and independent digital news organization specializing in original investigative journalism on significant public policy issues. Since 1990, the Washington, D.C.-based Center has released more than 500 investigative reports and 17 books to provide greater transparency and accountability of government and other institutions. It has received the George Polk Award and more than 50 other major journalism awards, including honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Online News Association, Overseas Press Club, Society of Environmental Journalists, and Society of Professional Journalists.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Emily Lenzner Emily@lenznerpr.com / 202.997.7776

Maureen Higgins Mhiggins@scottcircle.com / 202.207.3662

Center journalists to be honored at White House Correspondents’ dinner

2013-04-26T15:54:26-04:00

Center for Public Integrity reporters Jim Morris, Chris Hamby and Ronnie Greene will receive a prestigious White House Correspondents’ Association award Saturday night for a series of reports exposing workplace and environmental hazards afflicting blue collar workers nationwide.

Their series, Hard Labor, revealed how corporate irresponsibility and lax regulation contribute to thousands of worker deaths, injuries and illnesses in America each year. The series won the WHCA’s Edgar A. Poe Award for “excellence in news coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance to the American people.”

The reporters will be honored at the black tie White House Correspondents' Association dinner Saturday evening. President Obama will be among the attendees.

Other winners in 2013 are Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker for “journalistic excellence in covering the presidency,” and Julie Pace of the Associated Press and Terry Moran of ABC for White House news coverage.

Opening of Bush library a reminder of administration's 'Broken Government'

2013-04-25T14:51:13-04:00

Today’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum will bring together all of America’s living ex-presidents for what will likely be a warm and celebratory event. Protocol for the unveiling of presidential portraits and presidential libraries general calls for an abundance of courtesy and good feelings, with politics to be left at the front door.

Like all presidential libraries, this one — built on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas — largely reflects the president’s own view of his time in office. The library and museum also reflects the 43rd president’s unique demeanor — “straightforward, confident, unapologetic and willing to let history be the ultimate decider of his time in office,” according to the Washington Post.

But there are other views, of course. George W. Bush’s presidency — like most — was also marked by controversy, tragedy, bitter political rancor and failings large and small. As the Bush administration ended in Dec. 2008, the Center for Public Integrity took stock of what went wrong during those years in its Broken Government project. In a comprehensive assessment of systematic failures over the previous eight years, the Center found more than 125 examples of government breakdown.

Read the project: Broken Government

Earth Day 2013

2013-04-22T10:00:28-04:00

Today marks the 43^rd anniversary of Earth Day, an invention of Gaylord Nelson — then a senator from Wisconsin — that triggered the environmental movement.

Back in 1970, as the Earth Day Network notes, “Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity.”

Today, as officials with the Environmental Protection Agency are quick to point out, things are better. An EPA study predicts, for instance, that 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act will prevent some 230,000 premature deaths by 2020. In a speech last year, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the Clean Water Act “has kept tens of billions of pounds of sewage, chemicals and trash out of our waterways.”

Big problems remain, however. The EPA has become a lightning rod for forces hostile to regulation. The 37-year-old law under which it regulates toxic chemicals is widely acknowledged to be ineffective, yet attempts at reform have failed. Emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases in 2011 — while down 7 percent from 2005 – reached the equivalent of 6,702 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The Center for Public Integrity’s environment team will continue to highlight these and other issues, as it has in projects such as “Toxic Clout” and “Poisoned Places,” links to which can be found below.

Students from two colleges file federal complaints related to sexual assault

2013-04-19T11:02:47-04:00

Current and former students at two more prestigious colleges have reportedly filed federal complaints alleging mistreatment of campus sexual assault victims — the subject of a major investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

The New York Times reported that the complaints were filed against Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Occidental College in California, alleging violations of the Title IX civil rights law, and in Occidental’s case, the Cleary Act, which established strict rules on reporting of campus crime. Over the past couple years, other elite schools, such as Wesleyan, Yale, Amherst and the University of North Carolina, have been plagued by similar allegations.

In 2009 and 2010, the Center – in collaboration with NPR – did a series of investigative pieces entitled “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice.” The series revealed that students found “responsible” for campus sexual assaults often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down.

Center's Kristen Lombardi talks to 'Diane Rehm Show' about campus sexual assault

2013-04-11T13:51:00-04:00

The Center for Public Integrity’s landmark series on campus sexual assault continues to draw attention from other media outlets, more than three years after the initial stories were published. On Thursday morning, lead reporter Kristen Lombardi appeared on WAMU’s The Diane Rehm Show , which is carried by dozens of stations nationwide.

Listen to the program.

Lombardi’s investigation into campus rape cases for the Center won the Robert F. Kennedy Award and the Dart Award in 2011, as well as the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in 2010, among other recognitions.The stories are available below.

Center invests in finance, money-in-politics coverage

2013-04-03T13:17:43-04:00

The Center for Public Integrity is investing in the coverage of finance and money-in- politics issues with four new hires.

Alison Fitzgerald, a 2009 Polk Award winner, author and longtime Bloomberg economics and enterprise reporter, will oversee the Center’s financial coverage as well as much of its state money-in-politics work. She is joined by Dan Wagner, who comes to the Center from the Associated Press’ Washington bureau, where he specialized in financial regulation.

Both Alison and Dan will start, appropriately enough, on tax day, April 15.

The money-in-politics beat received a major boost this week when Ben Wieder, a computer-assisted reporting specialist, began work Monday. Ben will be joined by Alan Suderman, who has broken numerous stories on Washington D.C.’s government as a staff writer with the Washington City Paper. Alan and Ben will focus mostly on state-level political money coverage. Alan starts April 29.

Alison’s career highlights include writing the 2011 book “In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down.” Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, among other publications. Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2000, Alison worked as a reporter, and then international editor, for the Associated Press. She also has worked as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Palm Beach Post in Florida.

Alison is a graduate of Georgetown University and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University. Given her fluency in French and Italian, it’s perhaps appropriate that the long list of reporting awards she’s won includes a 2008 Overseas Press Club honor. Her coverage of secretive political donors won her a 2011 National Press Foundation Everett Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress.

Dan has worked at the Associated Press since 2008, where is most recent work focused on financial regulation reporting, particularly the banking industry’s relationship with official Washington. Among his many scoops and deep dives are stories on former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's close Wall Street contacts, government subsidies to abusive mortgage companies, lavish spending by bailed-out bankers.

Before joining the Associated Press, Dan worked for two years at Newsday, where he won a National Headliner Award for uncovering risky lending by American Home Mortgage — a practice that helped lead to the company’s demise. Dan, a graduate of Harvard University, has also worked stints at the Boston Globe and National Public Radio.

Ben comes to the Center from Stateline.org, where he worked as a staff writer focused on education policy and data analysis. He will track non-candidate political spending in the states as well as Federal Election Commission activity. Ben is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts and earned a master’s degree in print and digital reporting from the Missouri School of Journalism. He’s also interned with Newsday, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting.

Alan’s experience includes writing a weekly column and daily blog on Washington, D.C., politics, and his work covering shady government contracting practices and elected officials’ questionable ethics have led to formal investigations. Prior to joining the Washington City Paper, Alan worked as a reporter for the Washington Examiner, the Juneau Empire in Alaska and the Associated Press’ Helena, Mont., bureau. A graduate of Southwestern University in Texas, Alan also earned a journalism master’s degree from Northwestern University. He’s also a former Peace Corps volunteer who worked in the African nation of Guinea.

The new hires mark the Center's return to financial journalism and make the Consider the Source project team one of the largest focused on political influence issues in the nation.

'Hard Labor' wins award from White House Correspondents' Association

2013-04-02T14:31:05-04:00

The Center for Public Integrity’s Hard Labor series, which revealed how corporate irresponsibility and lax regulation contribute to thousands of worker deaths, injuries and illnesses in America each year, has been honored by the White House Correspondents' Association.

The project, which was launched in the spring of 2012 and continues this year, earned the WHCA’s Edgar A. Poe Award for “excellence in news coverage of subjects and events of significant national or regional importance to the American people.” The award will be presented to Center reporters Jim Morris, Chris Hamby and Ronnie Greene at the association’s annual dinner in Washington on April 27.

Judges in the competition said the series “compellingly shows how the government has failed to keep its promise to protect workers from injury and death on the job.

“Drawing on years of data and on-the-ground reporting in eight states and Canada, the authors demonstrate how corporate corner-cutting, government inability or unwillingness to impose meaningful penalties, and bureaucratic pressure to make caseload quotas have stymied real regulation,” the judges wrote. “They tell the workers' stories in a manner that evokes Studs Terkel, excellently weaving human interest with deep-data scrutiny and using numbers sparingly but with powerful effect.”

The Center’s work reached millions of readers, listeners and viewers through partnerships with outlets such as NPR, WBEZ, WBUR, Mother Jones, NBCnews.com, the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Poe award is funded by the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Newhouse Newspapers in honor of their distinguished correspondent, who also served as a WHCA president.

Other winners in 2013:

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker for “journalistic excellence in covering the presidency.”
Julie Pace of the Associated Press and Terry Moran of ABC for White House news coverage.

“One of our central missions continues to be holding government officials accountable,” WHCA President Ed Henry said. “I’m thrilled that all of these terrific journalists will be honored at our dinner this month.”

'Consider the Source' e-book tells story of how money dominated Election 2012

2013-04-02T06:00:01-04:00

People, parties and outside political players spent more money on Election 2012 than during any other — by a significant amount.

"Consider the Source," a new interactive e-book written by the Center for Public Integrity's political reporting team, provides the narrative behind how the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision affected the first presidential election in which it was a factor.

During the 2012 cycle, groups aided or enabled by the Supreme Court's ruling spent nearly $1 billion and voters experienced an unprecedented barrage of political advertisements.

As the nation prepares for major state-level elections in 2013 and critical midterms in 2014, the "Consider the Source" e-book also explains how professional politicking is influencing this flood of new spending.

View and download the "Consider the Source" e-book by clicking here.

The e-book is compatible with most tablet e-reader software. Click the following links for downloading directions for iBooks (iPad and iPhone) and Kindle.

Judges flock to company-sponsored seminars

2013-03-28T09:00:01-04:00

Conservative foundations, multinational oil companies and a prescription drug maker were the most frequent sponsors of more than 100 expenses-paid educational seminars attended by federal judges over a 4 1/2-year period, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation months in the making.

The Center identified instances where judges who attended seminars underwritten by certain firms and trade groups later issued rulings in the funders’ favor.

And the Koch Foundation and The Searle Freedom Trust, both major supporters of conservative causes, were sponsors for most of the conferences organized at George Mason University and Northwestern University.

Both schools conducted more judicial seminars than any other university or organization between mid-2008 and 2012, the Center's analysis found.

The project's main investigation, written by Center for Public Integrity reporters Chris Young, Reity O'Brien and Andrea Fuller, is found here.

Other components include:

How a secretive company run by the former president of Bolivia, who is sought by his native country for alleged human rights violations, sponsored a judicial seminar that U.S. federal judges attended.
Detailed analysis of how judges frequently ignore or improperly follow travel disclosure rules.
An interactive database allowing you to determine which federal judges attended what seminars.
A list of key findings from the investigation.
The project's methodology.

Follow the Center on Twitter at @PublicI and friend us on Facebook for additional project updates.

Next week from the Center: Tragic grain bin deaths and travel for federal judges

2013-03-21T14:59:35-04:00

The Center is publishing two major investigations next week that you can read here and will hear on NPR as well as other partners.

On Sunday, we are partnering with NPR and The Kansas City Star to look into the “drowning” deaths of people working around grain storage bins. The investigation found that federal regulators have routinely slashed fines in these cases, including a 2010 grain bin accident in Mt. Carroll, Ill., that took the lives of a 14-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man. A third worker, 20, barely escaped.

You can read that story Sunday here on our website on and in the Sunday Kansas City Star. NPR’s All Things Considered airs the grain story on Tuesday and you can also hear it on Wednesday's Morning Edition. If you miss either NPR story or the story in the Kansas City Star, we'll share those in next week's Weekly Watchdog.

The grain death story is part of our Hard Labor series on workers’ rights.

Coming midweek as part of our Consider the Source project, the Center will investigate the money behind all expense-paid seminars for federal judges.

Our lengthy investigation reveals that the top sponsors of judicial travel are some of the world’s largest oil and pharmaceutical companies and a relatively small number of right-wing, “free market” nonprofit organizations.

Seminars attended by judges have titles such as the “Moral Foundations of Capitalism,” which is sponsored by a cadre of corporate and nonprofit backers and taught by professors known for their free-market, anti-regulatory views.

The investigation also uncovered instances of judges’ ruling in favor of the sponsors of the seminars they attended. You can read the investigation here, on our website.

Praise from MIT for Center and PBS collaboration on post-Erin Brockovich Hinkley, Calif.

2013-03-21T12:46:42-04:00

Knight Science Journalism at MIT's Tracker blog writes about The Center for Public Integrity’s latest collaboration with PBS' NewsHour in our Toxic Clout series.

The story investigated the lack of regulation of the toxic chemical compound chromium (VI) found in the drinking water for Hinkley, Calif., almost 20 years after a class-action lawsuit. The suit was made famous in the Hollywood movie Erin Brockovich.

Regulators have been slow to act on the problem of chromium (VI) in Hinkley and elsewhere in the country because chemical industry scientists have cast doubt on whether or not the chemical is toxic.

The Center's David Heath and Ronnie Greene partnered with NewsHour science reporter Miles O'Brien to tell this story and others in our Toxic Clout series.

KSJ Tracker praises this collaboration as a way to tell this story that may not have otherwise been told. The blog's author, Deborah Blum, writes:

"In a media world in which these kinds of collaborations increasingly support in-depth reporting, this is an outstanding example of such work - thoroughly reported, beautifully told, and revealing. … It may never be the subject of a movie starring Julia Roberts. But it's a strong reminder that this is not just a story about the lives of people in a little desert community but it's the story of our own lives as well."

Invasion of Iraq, 10 years later

Iraq — 2013-03-22T09:47:31-04:00

On the evening of March 19, 2003 — ten years ago — U.S. warplanes bombed a site in Baghdad that military officials believed was the hideout of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Although the failed attempt to kill him was followed two days later by hours of missile and bomb strikes, and then a ground invasion, it was an inauspicious start to a war that would lead to a lengthy U.S. occupation of Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. treasury. Almost 4,500 American troops were killed in the conflict and more than 32,000 were wounded.

Five years ago, in an effort to hold accountable the officials who led the United States into the Iraq war and orchestrated the war’s expansion, the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism combed through thousands of statements made by those officials about the war. The “Iraq; The War Card” project found hundreds of falsehoods, demonstrating that the policy underpinnings of the conflict were based in large measure on poor understanding, at best, or a manipulative public relations campaign, at worst.

The findings were not controversial, as many official reports — by Congress and others — have reached similar conclusions. But the Center put a number on the falsehoods, and tallied them all in one place. Here is that work, for those who may wish to look back on a tragic record of error-filled official assertions.

Althought the war's tremendous costs helped to undermine the U.S. economy, the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was a financial boon for military contractors. As the bipartisan, congressionally-mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting pointed out in a 2011 report, the top 10 of these firms received around $83 billion for their involvement in the two wars, including $40.8 billion that went to one firm in particular: KBR, otherwise known as Kellogg, Brown and Root. KBR is a former subsidiary of Halliburton, which received a Pentagon contract to study the use of military contractors while Richard Cheney was secretary of defense. Cheney went on to become the chairman and CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. In addition, two private security firms, Blackwater and Triple Canopy, collected at least $3.1 billion, according to a March 19 tally by the Financial Times.

The commission, composed of lawmakers, security experts and businessmen, estimated that between $31 billion and $61 billion of the U.S. government's spending on contractors was lost to waste and fraud. After looking at a narrower slice of this pie, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction concluded in a newly-published report that at least $8 billion of U.S. spending on reconstruction was wasted solely in Iraq—a circumstance detailed in the article listed below. Two earlier investigative pieces by the Center — part of the Windfalls of War project—showed how much of the contracting was assigned without normal, healthy competition, and how many of the large contractors had been substantial contributors to the campaigns of President George W. Bush and the lawmakers who backed the war. Those stories are featured below as well.

Rick Perry zings fellow Republicans on national stage

2013-03-14T17:11:02-04:00

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday called the Medicaid expansion piece of federal health reform “fiscal coercion” and blamed “friends and allies in the conservative movement” who have embraced it, saying they have “folded in the face of federal bribery and mounting pressure.”

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Perry, who ran a failed bid for president last year, also seemed to take a shot at his party. He suggested that claims published in the media that voters had rejected conservative causes would only be true if Republicans had “actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”

To read the full story, co-reported by the Center for Public Integrity's Dave Levinthal and the Texas Tribune's Emily Ramshaw, click here.

Education writers honor Center series

2013-03-14T11:55:04-04:00

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:

Two Center projects win 'Best in Business' award

2013-02-26T13:21:03-05:00

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.

Writer to discuss ATF story on 'Washington Journal'

2013-02-20T13:32:02-05:00

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.

Reporter talks to NPR about immigration laws

2013-02-07T13:47:57-05:00

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.

Why 2013 matters: covering money in politics during the off-season

2013-02-05T10:54:06-05:00

With Election 2012 behind us, and Elections 2014 and 2016 still a long way off, you may be wondering what is left to say about money in politics. Consider the Source reporters Dave Levinthal and Michael Beckel will answer that, and any other campaign finance-related questions you may have in a live chat February 4, at 1:00pm ET. In the meantime, please feel free to leave your question in the comments section below, and visit Dave and Michael's new money-in-politics blog, Primary Source.

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