Kirsten Berg
Kirsten Berg is a research reporter with ProPublica.
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Kirsten Berg is a research reporter at ProPublica.
Her collaborations with colleagues in the newsroom have received numerous honors, including the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a Selden Ring Award, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and medal, and recognition as a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
She has contributed to investigations on a range of topics, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s hobbled response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise and ramifications of Chinese transnational repression and organized crime, and the federal judiciary’s repeated failures to provide ethical oversight for its judges.
Prior to joining ProPublica, she was an editor at Future Tense, the deputy director of the New America Fellows Program, and a reporter at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. She was also once an intern at ProPublica.
You can email her securely at [email protected].
How Often Do Health Insurers Say No to Patients? No One Knows.
Insurers’ denial rates — a critical measure of how reliably they pay for customers’ care — remain mostly secret to the public. Federal and state regulators have done little to change that.
Inside the Secretive World of Penile Enlargement
How a doctor’s two-decade quest to grow the penis is leaving some men desperate and disfigured.
How South Carolina Ended Up With an All-Male Supreme Court
An abortion ban struck down. The lone female justice retiring. And a majority-male legislature rallying behind the one male candidate to replace her. This is how South Carolina ended up with an all-male Supreme Court as new abortion legislation looms.
The Company Testing Air in East Palestine Homes Was Hired by Norfolk Southern. Experts Say That Testing Isn’t Enough.
“It’s almost like if you want to find nothing, you run in and run out,” says one expert.
Muzzled by DeSantis, Critical Race Theory Professors Cancel Courses or Modify Their Teaching
As fewer faculty members are protected by tenure, they’re finding it harder to resist laws that ban certain racial topics. Their students suffer the consequences.
They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.
Tracing the fallacy of 911 call analysis through the justice system, from Quantico to the courtroom.
The Globetrotting Con Man and Suspected Spy Who Met With President Trump
Tao Liu’s criminal odyssey took him from money laundering in Mexico to a massive scam in China to Trump’s exclusive New Jersey golf club. Investigators believed he may have infiltrated U.S. politics as part of a Chinese intelligence operation.
How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels
Xizhi Li pioneered a new method that enriched Latin American drug lords and China’s elite. A DEA investigation found the Chinese government may have been involved.
The Other Cancel Culture: How a Public University Is Bowing to a Conservative Crusade
With a rising national profile and donor base and relatively little state funding, Boise State University should be able to resist pressure by the Idaho Legislature. Instead the university, led by a liberal transplant, has repeatedly capitulated.
Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth
Internal emails and interviews with key participants reveal for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the rigged election theory touted evidence they knew to be disproven, disputed or dismissed as dubious.