The Center for Public Integrity has won a 2023 national Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence.
It recognizes a body of work by the nonprofit investigative newsroom that confronts widening inequality in the U.S. through reporting that’s rooted in innovative data analysis, powerful storytelling, historical context and collaboration with local journalists and sources closest to the problems and solutions in question.
Presented by the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards recognize outstanding achievements in broadcast and digital journalism.
Public Integrity was also recognized with a 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting for senior reporter Yvette Cabrera’s examination of a Navajo man’s quest to heal his land, his people and himself from sickness caused by uranium mining, part of the federal government’s quest to build a nuclear arsenal.
“An overall excellence award is such wonderful recognition of the clarity and commitment Public Integrity colleagues have about the organization’s mission of confronting inequality through investigative reporting, and to the work of hundreds of local journalists who have collaborated and partnered with us in this work,” said Public Integrity Editor in Chief Matt DeRienzo. “Every single person at our small-but-mighty nonprofit, both newsroom and business-side staff, had a hand in making this work happen and the impact on people’s lives that has resulted.”
The portfolio of work recognized for Overall Excellence included:
- “Unhoused and Undercounted,” an investigation in partnership with The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist that exposed school districts’ failure to identify and serve homeless students across the country. It was followed by calls in Congress for accountability by federal agencies and an increase in federal funding for local schools to address the problem.
- “The Wealth Vortex” and Season 2 of “The Heist” podcast, which showed how government policies from Reconstruction to the present day have compounded to give the country a wider Black and white wealth gap than existed when civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s.
- “Unequal Burden,” an investigative series in partnership with ICT showing how state tax policy and federal tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have helped maintain and expand the wealth gap.
- “Who Counts?,” which found that 26 states made access to voting and political representation less equal in the past two years as the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election and a new super-majority on the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to attacks on democracy unprecedented in modern times.
- “Harm’s Way,” in partnership with Columbia Journalism Investigations and Type Investigations, which revealed the federal government’s failure to help communities forced to relocate due to the impacts of climate change.
- “Attacked Behind the Wheel,” in partnership with Newsy, which exposed the reality just below the surface of a Biden administration push for more women to become truck drivers as supply chain issues gripped the country: a pattern of sexual assault and labor abuses faced by women who have joined truck driver apprentice programs.
- And “Institution of One,” which investigated the lack of safe appropriate housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.
Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.