A dozen years ago, the federal government came down hard on Purdue Pharma, fining the drugmaker and three of its executives a record $634 million for misbranding its blockbuster OxyContin pill as safer and less addictive than other painkillers. In the decade leading up to the 2007 fine, Purdue helped change the culture of prescribing …
MaryBeth Moore Zocco used to send her son, Ryan Moore, care packages. Last December, days before Moore, 25, died from an overdose, his mom mailed him a box with fun winter-themed items: hot chocolate ingredients, an ornament and a red plush blanket. Moore, who struggled with addiction on and off for at least seven years, …
Do members of Congress know whether an expert testifying before them has any monetary connections to the outcome of their committee hearings? Do those testifying before them have an affiliation with a group or groups that might want to weaken oversight by an agency or strengthen ties with particular foreign governments? These were some of …
Scholars and experts are frequently called before Congress to testify, and sometimes do so without disclosing potential financial conflicts. A lack of accountability helps witnesses not disclose foreign funding as required, whether intentionally or not.
Our story on truth in testimony forms used a combination of data collection, manual data-entry and and field reporting. To build our Truth in Testimony database, we wrote a computer program to automatically capture the publicly available data about who has testified before House committees, including their Truth in Testimony disclosure forms, from the U.S. …
Continue reading “Foreign influence? How we built the database of expert testimony”
From transportation to climate change, members of Congress listen to expert testimony before they make decisions on important issues. But who gets a seat at the table and why? Is it possible they are advocating for a foreign government under the guise of expert advice? In an attempt to know more about any conflicts of …
Continue reading “Foreign influence? House transparency in numbers”
Journalists, often the subject of the president’s ire, continue to chronicle how his rhetoric inspires divisiveness and even violence. Yet such efforts to vilify the press have not deterred many young people from studying the field. Here’s a look at the latest news detailing the difficulty of practicing journalism today. In his first public speech …
Continue reading “Timeline: Reporters chronicle upshot of president’s disparaging remarks”
In an age of distortion, propaganda and fake news, medical literature might seem to be a safe space for honest scientific inquiry, with no room for bias or spin. It isn’t so.
The Washington Post announced a new hire this week: Marisa Iati, who graduated this past summer from American University’s master’s program in journalism and public affairs. Iati was an outstanding student in a strong cohort who worked at IRW as an intern/graduate assistant and also was in the practicum at the Post. Other Post hires …
Continue reading “IRW partnership with The Washington Post leads to new hires”
Public records are integral to the work of investigative reporters, but the process for gathering this information can be a lesson in frustration and patience.
Seeing a need to streamline public data sets, we built The Accountability Project to put much of that data in one place so journalists, researchers and others could search across otherwise siloed data.
Investigating Power is a history of breakthrough investigations that revealed news and changed the national narrative on many major topics since the 1950s, from war to health to civil rights.
An interactive timeline examines President Trump’s use of executive orders to restrict access to the U.S.
In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets. A Washington Post investigation.
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