Not Everything Has Changed REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 Not Everything Has Changed

Much has changed since Election Day, November 8, including at ProPublica. We added new beats on immigration, the President’s personal business interests, white supremacy and hate crimes, extra reporting firepower on environmental issues, and much more—not to mention extensive coverage of the new administration, much of it focused on transparency.

But the need for the deep-dive investigative report- Renee Montagne. It takes an unsparing look at why ing for which ProPublica is best known remains as the U.S. has the highest maternal death rate in the de- critical as it has ever been. In a short attention-span veloped world. Every year, 700 to 900 American wom- world, in an atmosphere of politics that sometimes en die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes seems divorced from policy, in a news ecosystem of- (with 60 percent of these deaths being preventable), ten addicted to quick clicks, shallow answers and an and some 65,000 women come very close to dying. absence of context, ProPublica proudly marches to a And while maternal mortality has declined signifi- different drummer. cantly in other wealthy countries in recent years, it is Over the middle period of 2017, ProPublica took on rising in the U.S. stories that other news organizations would pass on as After launching the series with the harrowing being too complex, time-consuming or legally risky. story of Lauren Bloomstein, a neonatal nurse who This kind of is an essential and effective died in childbirth in the hospital where she worked weapon against abuses of power and betrayals of the — of preeclampsia, a preventable type of high blood public trust. Here are just a few ways that we have pressure — Martin and Montagne are continuing to shined a light on such issues wherever we find them. illuminate factors that contribute to the problem. This includes confusion over how to recognize and treat obstetric emergencies, a lack of awareness that Improving Maternal Health treats maternal mortality as a private tragedy instead of a public health crisis, disparities in care that put One of the our most resonant series this year has been African-American women at significantly greater risk Lost Mothers, a collaboration between ProPublica than white women, and a health care system that fo- reporter Nina Martin and NPR special correspondent cuses on babies but often ignores their mothers.

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 1 Our Lost Mothers series launched with the harrowing story of Lauren Bloomstein, a neonatal nurse who died in childbirth in the hospital where she worked. (Bryan Anselm for ProPublica)

Holding the DEA Accountable information with Mexico. The U.S. government has done nothing to help the Mexicans who bore the Senior reporter Ginger Thompson, who covers the brunt of the Zetas’ attack. U.S.-Mexico border, partnered with National Geo- graphic to give an inside look at what went wrong in Allende, a Mexican town just south of the border, Exposing Toxic Fires which suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of the Zetas drug cartel. In 2011, after learning of a DEA Thirty years ago, citing adverse health effects and informant, cartel leaders demolished homes and environmental hazards, Congress banned industries businesses, kidnapping and killing dozens — possi- and local governments from burning hazardous waste bly hundreds — of men, women and children. In a in open pits. Yet this practice of “open burning” still remarkable feat of reporting, Thompson repeatedly takes place in our country, with the military disposing traveled to the small Mexican town and persuad- of unused munitions and raw explosives nearly every ed eyewitnesses to participate in an oral history of day — releasing millions of pounds of toxic chemicals the attack. and pollutants into the air. Thompson’s research led to a startling discovery: In an unprecedented examination of the disposal The massacre was inadvertently set in motion by of military waste and how it affects poor communities the DEA. She learned that DEA agents in Dallas had across the U.S., senior reporter Abrahm Lustgarten shared intelligence, obtained from a source inside collected tens of thousands of pages of documents, the Zetas, with a Mexican police unit known to leak and interviewed more than 100 state and local offi- to traffickers. Within days, the Zetas suspected that cials, lawmakers, military historians, scientists, toxi- someone in Allende had become a U.S. informant, cologists and Pentagon staff. Along with data report- and they unleashed an attack that left scores of peo- ers Lena Groeger and Hilary Fung, he identified 61 ple dead. The DEA insists it bears no responsibility sites where open burns are actively being conducted, for what happened. It has not investigated the source exposing people to dangers that experts say will per- of the leak, or changed its rules for sharing sensitive sist for generations.

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 2 Pharmacist and toxicologist Lee Cantrell tested drugs that had been expired for decades. Most of them were still potent enough to be on the shelves today. (Sandy Huffaker for ProPublica)

Debunking Health Care Myths Hate project, which has been collecting data and re- porting on hate crimes and bias incidents since Janu- This year reporter Marshall Allen has been covering a ary, had already established that instances of hate are type of medical waste that is seldom tracked, from the actually all too common. Documenting Hate involves valuable supplies that hospitals throw away to wildly 125 newsrooms across the country. We asked people to overpriced drugs whose true costs are hidden from tell their personal stories and have so far have collect- doctors and patients. His latest story laid bare the ed more than 3,000 incidents. myth of expired drugs. Hospitals and pharmacies are In addition to collecting data that documented required to dispose of drugs that have passed their ex- surges in anti-Semitic activity and anti-immigrant piration date, no matter how expensive or vital. Allen sentiments, we told the stories behind the statistics. reported, however, that the Food and Drug Adminis- Reporter A.C. Thompson chronicled how members of tration has long known that many drugs remain safe the Sikh community in America have faced suspicion and potent for years after their expiration date. The and violence for more than 100 years, in part because U.S. health care system wastes an estimated $765 bil- of the erroneous assumption that they are Muslim. lion a year — as much as a quarter of all the country’s Thompson also delivered on-the-scene dispatches health care spending. from Charlottesville, reporting on the new face of America’s white supremacy movement. Many of the marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us” were Documenting Hate clean-cut, college-educated young people who aban- doned the political mainstream in recent years for As always, not all important coverage comes in extremist ideologies. the form of a deep dive. When news of murder at a With a goal to build the most complete national neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., spread across database of hate crimes and bias incidents, the Doc- the country last month, many responded with disbe- umenting Hate team is working through the tips we lief, insisting that such abhorrent views and behavior receive and tackling the questions of why the nation’s were un-American. But ProPublica’s Documenting official record keeping is so inadequate.

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 3 Alec MacGillis, co-published with New York magazine, showed how HUD Secretary Ben Carson is gutting the agency with a staggering $7 billion in budget cuts and spiraling mismanagement. (Cameron Cottrill, special to ProPublica)

Covering the Trump across the federal government, curtailing the use of Administration consent decrees and court oversight for addressing civil rights abuses. Our inquiries about new government personnel ProPublica has also actively covered the new Trump revealed that Trump’s lead bank regulator previously administration. A collaboration between ProPublica worked to help banks avoid laws that protect consum- reporter Robert Faturechi and ’ ers, White House advisor served as an Danielle Ivory, for example, unmasked secretive abusive landlord to hundreds of tenants in low-in- teams that President Trump assembled to aggres- come housing units in the Baltimore suburbs, and the sively scale back government regulations — an effort president’s pick for chief scientist of the USDA is not often conducted by political appointees with deep a scientist at all. industry ties and potential conflicts. An investigation by Alec MacGillis, co-published with New York mag- These are just some examples of our recent work to azine, showed how HUD Secretary Ben Carson is gut- ferret out hidden facts and expose wrongdoing. And ting the agency with a staggering $7 billion in budget as our entire newsroom has always done, ProPubli- cuts and spiraling mismanagement. Jessica Huseman ca will continue to tell the stories that aren’t being and Annie Waldman reported how the Trump ad- told elsewhere. ministration is quietly rolling back civil rights efforts

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 4 Impact

The most important test of ProPublica is whether our work is having impact. By this, we mean not audience size or honors, but real-world change. Examples of what we mean can be found at http://www.propublica.org/impact/, as can a white paper on how ProPublica thinks about impact and related questions. In the middle period of 2017, ProPublica stories produced such change in a number of important areas:

▪▪ Online safety strengthened. provision that would have barred tremist sites monetize and stay in After we reported that Cloudflare, unauthorized immigrants from business. PayPal facilitated dona- a major content delivery network, getting workers’ comp benefits. tions to the anti-immigration site provides services to neo-Nazi sites VDARE, for example, while the like — includ- ▪▪ Business partnership with online news network Newsmax ing giving them names and email extremist site severed. In Au- pays anti-Muslim site Jihad Watch addresses of people who complain gust, we reported how leading in exchange for users clicking on about their content — the compa- tech companies are helping ex- its headlines, despite policies that ny altered its policies. In response to our report, Cloudflare now allows people in certain instances to complain anonymously, and is more selective about sharing with its clients the personal in- formation of people who report objections. The service provider later ended its relationship with the Daily Stormer, taking the site off the mainstream US internet.

▪▪ Workers’ rights protected. In May, ProPublica documented how Case Farms, a chicken plant in Ohio, has for decades relied on undocumented immigrant work- ers to staff its dangerous factories. When workers fought for better conditions or were seriously in- jured on the job, the company used their immigration status to quash dissent and evade worker’s After Yuliana Rocha Zamarripa hurt her knee at work, an investigator working compensation. Citing our report- for her employer’s insurance carrier reported her for using a false Social Security ing, the Ohio House of Represen- number. (Scott McIntyre for ProPublica) tatives amended a bill to remove a

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 5 tors prescribe massive quantities of inappropriate and needlessly expensive drugs — were especially noted, suggesting that ProPubli- ca’s pioneering work is critical to discussion of these issues.

▪▪ Inconsistent hate speech rules amended. In our report- ing on and the secret guidelines the company’s censors use to distinguish between hate speech and legitimate political expression, we published a trove of internal Facebook documents that explain the rationale behind seemingly inconsistent decisions on which types of user posts get deleted. Using their hate speech algorithm, we found, white men fall under protected categories of people — based on gender, After a 2016 ProPublica investigation, the Houston police department ended its race or religious affiliation — but longstanding practice of using faulty chemical field tests. (David Sleight for ProPublica) black children, for instance, do not. Following the story, Facebook changed its rules to add age as a say they don’t do business with ▪▪ Predatory practices inves- protected category, an adjustment hate groups. After the story, pay- tigated. We reported in January that will now lead to the deletion ment processors PayPal and Plas- that Wells Fargo inappropriately of some slurs. so discontinued services to at least charged customers fees to extend five sites identified by ProPublica. promised interest rates when ▪▪ Health crisis detected. Our re- their paperwork was delayed. The porting with NPR about maternal ▪▪ Harmful police practice aban- Consumer Financial Protection mortality in the U.S. spotlighted doned. A 2016 ProPublica investi- Bureau followed up on our reports preeclampsia, a dangerous type gation published with the New York with an investigation into the of hypertension that can emerge Times Magazine spotlighted how bank’s mortgage fee practices; the after a baby is delivered, when it is the Houston Police Department investigation remains underway. often overlooked. Having recently uses roadside drug tests to secure read the story and four days after guilty pleas, sending hundreds ▪▪ Ground-breaking data doc- delivering her first child, Marie of people to jail in recent years — umented. The May issue of the McCausland, a 27-year-old scien- despite widespread evidence that Journal of the American Medical tist in Ohio, recognized that her the tests routinely produce false Association focused on conflicts painful symptoms might be pre- positives. This July, the police of interest in medicine, repeatedly eclampsia and raced to the nearest department ended its longstand- citing ProPublica’s work across emergency room. Although the ing practice of using the faulty seven articles. Our key health care ER doctor claimed nothing was tests, following an order from the investigations from 2013 and 2014 wrong, she stayed until another then-Harris County District Attor- — showing that doctors who re- doctor was consulted — and her ney to require that any positive field ceive payments from the medical severe preeclampsia was treated, tests be confirmed in a crime lab industry tend to prescribe more likely saving her life. before a guilty plea could be won. brand-name drugs, and that doc-

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 6 What People Are Saying

We ask donors why they gave to ProPublica. Here’s a sampling of recent answers.

“Thank you for continuously providing the public with “It's extremely important for journalists to be non-par- quality investigative journalism. A friend of mine had tisan truth seekers, protecting and defending or posted one of your articles on his Facebook page, and country and democracy from those who would do it it caught my attention. I was impressed; it was obvi- harm. Real journalists deserve to be supported — like ous that the journalist spent a great deal of time and our troops, they protect citizens. After reading your effort on the article. The first thought that popped into ethics, goals, and focus I stand behind what you are my mind was ‘Now that's what I call true journalism!’ trying to achieve. The openness with which you provide Needless to say, I have been following your publication information (your financials being easily accessible is ever since.” — Erin a plus) earns my support and trust. Though I may not agree with some of the focus, I have high regard for the “I lament the current state of journalism in this coun- process and am trusting that seeking the facts for the try and the general negative attitude many of our citi- betterment of the country, rather than an agenda, will zens have regarding the vital role of a free press in our always be your focus.” — Katherine republic. Much of the journalistic tradition has been replaced by corporate-owned media, more concerned “Happy to make my small donation to the cause of open with sensationalism and ratings than holding our soci- inquiry. If we haven't learned anything else over the ety's leaders to account. Use my donation well and keep past twelve months, we should have learned that inde- up the good work.” — Bill pendent, hard-driving journalism is worth paying for. I have no illusion that my small donation will stem the “Keep doing what you do, and keep seeking/speaking tide of partisan spin-doctoring, but I do know that with the truth. ‘Real news’ isn’t just what we want to hear. many other small donations, democracy will be served. It’s the truth whether we agree with it or not, whether Keep up the good work, ProPublica. The nation needs it devastates us or lifts us up, and I will always applaud you now more than ever.” — David and support it.” — Patricia

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 7 Honors

Most journalism awards are bestowed in the first months of the year, when ProPublica was honored with its fourth , but honors received in the middle period of 2017 included the following:

Our prescient project with Texas 2016 election in real time, won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for online Tribune, “Hell and High Water,” Data Journalism Award for News non-deadline reporting, and is a on how a major hurricane could Data App of the Year and the So- finalist for the Online Journalism devastate the Houston region, ciety of Professional Journalists’ Award for planned news/events. won the Edward R. Murrow Na- tional Award in the category of investigative reporting, and is a finalist for the Online Journalism Awards for excellence and innova- tion in visual digital storytelling, and University of Award for Investigative Data Journalism. The series was also a finalist for the Knight-Risser Prize for West- ern Environmental Journalism, and the National Academies Com- munications Award in the online category. “Fire Fight,” our investigation into the state-by-state lobbying efforts of U.S. homebuilders to block life-saving fire sprinklers from new homes won the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume Memo- rial Award for Excellence in Politi- cal Journalism. Electionland, a national re- Electionland, a national reporting initiative that covered voters’ experiences porting initiative that covered during the 2016 election in real time, won several awards. (John Brecher voters’ experiences during the for ProPublica)

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 8 “Lost Mothers,” our series with NPR exploring the maternal mortality crisis in the U.S., is also a finalist for the Online News Association’s Al Neuharth Inno- vation in Investigative Journal- ism Award. Our series exploring the hid- den power of computer-gener- ated algorithms, “Breaking the Black Box,” is a finalist for the Online Journalism Award for topi- cal reporting. Represent, a news application that tracks how elected officials vote, is a finalist for the Online News Association’s Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digi- tal Journalism. The ProPublica Data Store was a finalist for the Data Jour- Illustrations for our “A Gunfight in Guatemala” investigation were selected for nalism Award for open data, and American Illustration’s annual showcase. (Christopher Park for ProPublica) two ProPublica reporters — Lena Groeger and Derek Willis — were named finalists for the Data Jour- “Busted,” which exposed how nalism Award in the local category nalism Award for Best Individual police use error-prone drug kits and the Deadline Club Award for Portfolio. to convict thousands of people digital local news reporting, and Six ProPublica reporters were every year, won the Sigma Delta is a finalist for the Online News named finalists for the Livingston Chi Award for public service in Association’s Al Neuharth Inno- Awards, which honor outstanding online journalism, and was a fi- vation in Investigative Journal- achievement by journalists under nalist for the Gerald Loeb Award ism Award. the age of 35: Al Shaw and Jeff Lar- for Distinguished Business and An investigation about Jared son for “Hell and High Water;” Financial Journalism in the inves- Kushner’s role as a real estate and Sisi Wei, Lena Groeger, Cezary tigative category. developer and shoddy landlord Podkul and Ken Schwencke for A ProPublica series on anti- to hundreds of tenants in low-in- their news application that tracks trust enforcement — explain- come housing units in the Bal- evictions and rent stabilization ing why the Justice Department timore suburbs won the Sidney in . backed down from fighting corpo- Award for June. Several of our illustrations were rate concentration in the airline ProPublica is a finalist for honored by American Illustration, industry, and exposing the hidden the Online Journalism Award selected for the organization’s world of economic consultants for general excellence in on- annual showcase. Their hardcov- working for merging corporations line journalism. book will feature two original — won the Excellence in Econom- Our series with Consumer Re- illustrations from ProPublica in- ic Reporting Award. ports on racial disparities in car vestigations: “A Gunfight in Gua- “Rent Racket,” our series on insurance premiums is a finalist temala” and “Dr. Orange: The how New York City landlords for the Online News Association’s Secret Nemesis of Sick Vets.” sidestep tenant protections, won Al Neuharth Innovation in Inves- the Excellence in Financial Jour- tigative Journalism Award.

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 9 By the Numbers

4,300,000 Average ProPublica.org pageviews per month UP 83% YEAR-OVER-YEAR

2,500,000 Average unique ProPublica.org visitors per month UP 148% YEAR-OVER-YEAR

690,000+ Twitter followers UP 6% SINCE MAY 1

346,000+ Facebook fans UP 8% SINCE MAY 1 125,000+ Email subscribers 4,000+ Additional donors

Publishing Partners, May–August, 2017

New partners marked in bold:

▪▪ Atlantic ▪▪ IRE Journal ▪▪ Stars and Stripes ▪▪ BBC ▪▪ Kaiser Health News ▪▪ Stat ▪▪ Bloomberg View ▪▪ National Geographic ▪▪ Texas Monthly ▪▪ Chicago Tribune ▪▪ New York Magazine ▪▪ Texas Tribune ▪▪ Consumer Reports ▪▪ New Yorker ▪▪ Washington Post ▪▪ Des Moines Register ▪▪ New York Times ▪▪ Vanity Fair ▪▪ Forbes ▪▪ NPR News ▪▪ Virginian-Pilot ▪▪ Houston Chronicle ▪▪ Politico ▪▪ Huffington Post ▪▪ Real Deal

PROPUBLICA REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS, MAY–AUGUST, 2017 10