White House Correspondents Dinner to Celebrate Investigative Local Journalism From Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, ProPublica
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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner will return this weekend after two years of suspension from the coronavirus pandemic, and amid all the expected festivities in Washington D.C., the event will take time to applaud the excellence of local journalism.
The Miami Herald, the Charlotte Observer, and ProPublica will be honored at the dinner as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners of the 2022 Collier Prize for State Government Accountability. The award is offered by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in recognition of investigative and political reporting, and the school acclaimed the outlets for publishing stories that “resulted in genuine reforms and resignations.”
The Miami Herald and ProPublica will share the first place for their “Birth & Betrayal” series, which examines Florida’s Neurological Injury Compensation Association (NICA) program. The program was created to protect obstetricians and gynecologists from malpractice lawsuits in the event that a baby is born with severe brain injuries at birth, while also providing aid to the child’s family. The program often failed to provide the aid it was supposed to give to these families, however, and after the series’ publication on the matter was followed by an audit, every member of NICA’s board of directors wound up resigning.
From the University of Florida’s summary:
“The Miami Herald’s [Deputy Investigations Editor] Carol Marbin Miller and [Reporter] Daniel Chang saw a flagrant injustice,” said Casey Frank, the Herald’s Senior Editor for Investigations. “A Florida program called NICA, created to aid families whose children suffered catastrophic brain injuries at birth, was depriving those families of the most basic needs — from medicines to home health care — while hoarding in excess of $1.7 billion. When Marbin Miller and Chang shined a light on this travesty, lawmakers were compelled to act. We are grateful for this honor and especially grateful for the difference our work, in conjunction with ProPublica, has made in these families’ lives.”
The Charlotte Observer is in 2nd place for their “Death in the Fast Lane” 5-part series, which examines how extreme speeding on North Carolina’s highways claimed more lives than alcohol. The investigative series led to beefed-up safety measures, and the University of Florida notes that it also put a spotlight on “lax treatment of speeders by judges, repeat offenders and a lack of enforcement by police.”
In 3rd place, ProPublica is honored for their “Welfare States” series, which scrutinizes how several states have managed federal welfare funding for struggling families. The series looked at how some state governments forced single mothers to reveal personal information about themselves, hoarded federal welfare assistance, and how states eventually made welfare changes after ProPublica’s investigations.
