The National Press Club named three ProPublica projects — including one with the Miami Herald, a Local Reporting Network partner, and another in collaboration with PBS FRONTLINE and Retro Report — winners of two of its Consumer Journalism awards and the Edwin M. Hood Award.
“Unchecked: America’s Broken Food Safety System” won a Consumer Journalism Award in the periodical category. Bernice Yeung, Michael Grabell, Irena Hwang, Mollie Simon, Andrea Suozzo, Ash Ngu and Maryam Jameel contributed to the project. Yeung and Grabell combed through Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outbreak reports and found that a drug-resistant salmonella strain had run rampant through the country’s chicken supply, affecting the entire industry.
The team analyzed genomic sequencing data to show that, while the CDC had closed its salmonella investigation in 2019, U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors continued to frequently find the dangerous strain of salmonella in chicken samples. The analysis, along with hundreds of internal government records and interviews with nearly two dozen scientists, allowed ProPublica to piece together how gaps in regulations had allowed the strain to spread and to get the CDC to acknowledge for the first time that the outbreak was indeed ongoing, sickening tens of thousands of people. News apps developers Suozzo and Ngu, along with engagement reporter Jameel, assembled federal inspection data to build the Chicken Checker, an interactive database that allows users to look up the salmonella records of the plants that produced their chicken or turkey. A week before the series’ first story was published in October, the USDA announced that it was rethinking its approach to salmonella and asked an advisory committee for suggestions on how to improve its testing program. The agency said it specifically wanted recommendations on how to focus on the riskiest types of salmonella, how much salmonella was present and how to better control the bacteria on farms — all vulnerabilities highlighted by ProPublica’s reporting. In December, the USDA asked poultry companies for project proposals to test new strategies for reducing contamination. And in March, the agency announced that it would begin releasing genetic data that would show which plants were selling poultry contaminated with dangerous strains like the one ProPublica revealed.
“Birth & Betrayal,” a series on Florida’s Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, won a Consumer Journalism Award in the newspaper category. Miami Herald reporters Carol Marbin Miller and Daniel Chang, in collaboration with ProPublica, investigated the program, which strips parents of brain-damaged newborns of their right to sue. In return, the program offers parents a one-time payment and promises to cover medical expenses throughout the child’s life. Yet NICA has frequently denied or delayed help for struggling families — sometimes spending tens of thousands more in legal fees fighting requests for benefits than it would cost to help parents who depend on the program to care for their children. The searing investigation documented how NICA amassed assets of nearly $1.7 billion while repeatedly refusing pleas from parents for medication, wheelchairs, specially equipped vans, therapy, in-home nursing care and home modifications.
Hours after the initial story was published in April 2021, the state’s chief financial officer initiated an audit of the program that, months later, validated many of the reporters’ findings. By the end of the month, Florida lawmakers had passed sweeping legislation — later signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis — to increase benefits and protections for families of brain-damaged babies. The reforms included funding for mental health services, adding a parental representative to the program’s board of directors and retroactively compensating families. The following day, the executive director of NICA announced a host of additional reforms that went beyond those mandated by lawmakers. By the end of the year, the program’s executive director had resigned, ending a nearly two-decade term at the helm of the organization.
In addition, “Massacre in El Salvador,” a documentary by ProPublica, PBS FRONTLINE and Retro Report won an Edwin M. Hood Award, and “Black Snow,” a collaboration between ProPublica and The Palm Beach Post, received an honorable mention for the Joan M. Friedenberg Award.
