| December 13, 2010: From time to time we run pieces from Nieman Reports to help bring attention to exceptional stories. In this item by David Cay Johnston, “A devastating commentary on basic American news reporting,” he says beat reporting in America is crumbling and he cites “cheap news” — stories and beats covered on the cheap — as a main reason. |
| January 7, 2011: A Dallas Morning News editor contacted Watchdog and then wrote for us about an investigative report she was proud of, resulting in The Morning News takes a long, hard look at hospital care in Dallas. In a year-long examination of Parkland Memorial Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the paper found much reliance on doctors in training but little supervision of them, harm done to patients, allegations of billing fraud and a “class-based culture of care.” |
| January 31, 2011: After the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the issue of gun control was pooh-poohed in the United States. But Bill Claiborne, an occasional contributor from Australia, described how that country responded to a shooting massacre some years ago, enacting strong gun control measures. Want to avoid gun massacres? Australia shows how |
| March 27, 2011: Bruce Kushnick, a provocative telecommunications analyst and frequent contributor wrote If hype were broadband, the U.S. would be No. 1. As it is, we are 15th. A new FCC report and database describe broadband availability and speeds by zip code. Kushnick entered his own zip code and found that just about all the important information listed was incorrect. |
| April 4, 2011: About the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC): What is the GOP looking for in Bill Cronon’s emails? What kind of chilling effect are they trying to create? We first wrote about ALEC in 2007: How much of your state’s legislation is being drafted by industry? |
| April 13, 2011: Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch tells reporters to dig deep when states or school districts or even individual schools claim big educational gains; chances are someone is gaming the system. She shows how such gaming works. Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flam |
| May 9, 2011: More than 100 editors and graphic artists from around the world, including a number from leading news organizations, signed on to a Nieman Watchdog story criticizing many of the infographics depicting the raid on and killing of Osama bin Laden. Editors, artists chafe at the errors and hype in bin Laden death story graphics |
| June 17, 2011: Another piece by Kushnick, in which he says Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast are dragging down the nation’s economy and bilking millions of Americans. The chief firms in the communications oligopoly received $340 billion to upgrade telephone and broadband systems but have almost totally reneged on doing the work. Instead, they manipulate data and buy support from experts and citizens groups. Time to break up the communications trusts? |
| August 18, 2011: One of our most knowledgeable, frequent Watchdog contributors is Henry Banta, a Washington attorney with earlier experience as a Capitol Hill aide. In The press nods as absurdity, lies prevail in the budget debate, he asks if more accurate coverage might prompt Tea Party and Republican leaders to pay more attention to facts in their assertions about the economy and then points out that if news coverage continues at its present dismal level, we’ll never find out. |
| September 20, 2011: Judith Bell, a poverty expert, wrote that before long, people of color will be the majority in America but right now the outlook for many of them is grim. She posed questions on that topic that reporters should ask of elected officials and, on the local level, of demographers and other researchers. Why the new poverty numbers are bad news for tomorrow's America |
| October 31, 2011: An editor from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel informed us of a special investigative series, and the reporter on the story, Gina Barton, wrote about it for us. Her stories dealt with police officers who ran afoul of the law but often didn’t get fired or prosecuted. For Nieman Watchdog, Barton described how the three-part series had a sharp impact even before publication. Where scrapes with the law are no impediment to being a cop |