Behind the Reporting: The Philadelphia Inquirer's "Toxic City: Sick Schools"
03/08/19 • 19 min
In "Toxic City: Sick Schools" The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed unsafe conditions in Philadelphia’s rundown public schools, with children forced to learn in buildings rife with mold, asbestos and flaking and peeling lead paint. By scouring maintenance logs and conducting scientific testing inside 19 elementary schools, and engaging teachers and parents in their reporting, the Inquirer built a comprehensive database of the shocking conditions putting children at risk on a daily basis.
Read the reporting: http://media.philly.com/storage/special_projects/lead-paint-poison-children-asbestos-mold-schools-philadelphia-toxic-city.html
In this episode of the Shorenstein Center podcast, Heidi Legg talks to reporters Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker, and Dylan Purcell, along with Investigations Editor Jim Neff, about how they found and analyzed data, tracked an expanding web of problems, and eventually uncovered the vast number of health hazards across the city's school system.
This episode is part of the Shorenstein Center's special series of interviews with the finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The Goldsmith Prize winner will be announced at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on March 12, 2019.
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com
In "Toxic City: Sick Schools" The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed unsafe conditions in Philadelphia’s rundown public schools, with children forced to learn in buildings rife with mold, asbestos and flaking and peeling lead paint. By scouring maintenance logs and conducting scientific testing inside 19 elementary schools, and engaging teachers and parents in their reporting, the Inquirer built a comprehensive database of the shocking conditions putting children at risk on a daily basis.
Read the reporting: http://media.philly.com/storage/special_projects/lead-paint-poison-children-asbestos-mold-schools-philadelphia-toxic-city.html
In this episode of the Shorenstein Center podcast, Heidi Legg talks to reporters Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker, and Dylan Purcell, along with Investigations Editor Jim Neff, about how they found and analyzed data, tracked an expanding web of problems, and eventually uncovered the vast number of health hazards across the city's school system.
This episode is part of the Shorenstein Center's special series of interviews with the finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The Goldsmith Prize winner will be announced at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on March 12, 2019.
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com
Previous Episode
Behind the Reporting: Frontline and the Investigative Reporting Program's "Trafficked in America"
FRONTLINE from PBS and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism produced an investigative documentary on labor trafficking happening today on U.S. soil. Reporters told the story of unaccompanied minors from Central America who were forced to work against their will at an Ohio egg farm, the criminal network that exploited them, the companies that profited, and how U.S. government policies and practices helped to deliver some of the children directly to their traffickers. The investigation uncovered widespread criminal abuse, and will be used as a Department of Justice Anti-Human Trafficking training tool for thousands of law enforcement officials and prosecutors.
Watch the film: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trafficked-in-america/
In this episode of the Shorenstein Center podcast, Heidi Legg talks to Daffodil Altan and Adrés Cediel about the shoeleather reporting required to find and get access to people who had been trafficked in the U.S., and the need for cultural competency and language fluency for reporting stories like these.
This episode is part of the Shorenstein Center's special series of interviews with the finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The Goldsmith Prize winner will be announced at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on March 12, 2019.
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com
Next Episode
Behind the Reporting: ProPublica's "Zero Tolerance"
ProPublica obtained and published a secret recording from inside a border patrol detention center that captured the sounds of children, recently separated from their families at the Mexican border, sobbing and begging for their parents. The audio clip was played on the floors of Congress, sparking widespread condemnation and having an almost immediate impact, with President Trump signing an executive order to end the family separation policy within 48 hours of its publication. ProPublica reporters then dug deeper into conditions at the detention centers, detailing abuse and assaults on immigrant children, directly countering the administration’s claims that the shelters were safe havens.
Read, and listen, to their reporting here: https://www.propublica.org/series/zero-tolerance
In this episode, Heidi Legg talks with reporters Ginger Thompson and Mike Grabell about getting the audio recording, and how their reporting unfolded and uncovered more and more layers from there.
This episode is part of the Shorenstein Center's special series of interviews with the finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The Goldsmith Prize winner will be announced at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on March 12, 2019.
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com
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