Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Craig Pyes will speak about prisoner abuse by the U.S. military at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Tuesday, February 2, from 4-6 p.m. More info here:
More than 160 detainees have died in American military custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, many classified as homicides. But were these deaths properly investigated? Craig Pyes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose reporting launched an Army probe into two detainee deaths and their cover-up by a U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan, will argue that cases of homicide where abuse is suspected should be re-examined because the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) did not vigorously pursue suspected war crimes. Pyes will discuss his own multi-year investigation of a rogue Special Forces detachment in Afghanistan that adapted harsh interrogation techniques promoted by the Pentagon, that were later judged responsible for the vast majority of prisoner abuse. Ten detainees held at the base said they had been tortured, yet questions remain unanswered about the culpability of the Special Forces team six years later, despite the decision by the U.S. Army to close the criminal investigation - not once, but three times.
Craig Pyes is a human rights investigator and an award-winning investigative reporter with extensive experience in Afghanistan and other conflict zones. As a special investigator for the non-profit Crimes of War Project, Pyes looked into possible breaches of U.S. and International law in the armed conflict in Afghanistan. While working as an investigative reporter for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, he wrote about the looming threat of the al Qaeda terrorism network both before and after the September 11th attacks on America, and profiled the corrosive and national security effects of drug corruption in Mexico. During the civil war in El Salvador, he and a colleague were the only reporters to reveal the inner workings of Salvadoran death squads that had killed more than 40,000 people with impunity. Pyes has received two Pulitzer Prizes, as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Los Angeles Times, and the Latin American Studies Association. In 2002, he was a finalist for Harvard's Shorenstein Center's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Currently based in Los Angeles, he investigates human rights abuses for lawyers and non-profits, and is a court-appointed death penalty mitigation specialist.
A few weeks ago we asked you to send in your questions on climate change for our reporter Mark Schapiro while he was in Copenhagen covering the talks.
Many of you did, sending them via webcam, email and from the summit itself. Questions came in from Tibetans, Russians, Pacific Islanders, Brazilians and many Americans.
As soon as the Bella center shut up shop at the weekend, we found the festive if freezing King's Square in downtown Copenhagen to put your questions to Mark, and get his initial thoughts on what had been achieved there.
The analysis of what did or should have happened at the summit is only just beginning to surface, and we'll be following the road from Copenhagen to Bonn and Mexico Ciity where the next crucial stages of these talks will take place in the coming months.
Over the next year, FRONTLINE/World and CIR will report on key issues of climate change in a joint project—Carbon Watch—focusing on the multi-billion-dollar carbon trading market. We’ll look at which proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new industry players.
California Watch’s story on corporate farmer Stewart Resnick and Dianne Feinstein sparked a Sac Bee editorial.
Dianne Feinstein was quick to respond in September when a big corporate farmer sought her help in challenging limits on the export of water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Unfortunately, she's rarely shown that level of interest in representing the concerns of commercial salmon fishermen.
They are arguably far more vulnerable to how those flows are regulated. An article by the investigative group California Watch, which appeared in last Monday's Bee, revealed some of Feinstein's priorities.
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It would behoove Feinstein, and the state she represents, if she spent as much personal time with dry-docked salmon fishermenas corporate farmers who have a fairly limited view on the subject of water. The salmon fishermen's claim on the water flows that course though the Delta is just as compelling as agriculture's.
The world is watching Copenhagen. Here is your chance to be heard. Send your comments and questions about the climate change summit to CIR senior correspondent Mark Schapiro via FRONTLINE/World's new web-cam tool:
Whatever your concerns are about climate change and wherever you live in the world, we'd love to hear from you. For the next 10 days we have a team from FRONTLINE/World covering the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. As they report from this chaotic gathering and track down some of the major stakeholders, we wanted to invite our viewers to ask Mark Schapiro, our lead reporter there, your most pressing questions. You can do this by using a great new video record tool. It's simple and fun to use. Just click on the record button below, leave your message, and submit. We will then take a selection of your questions for an interview with Mark that we will post before the summit ends on December 18th.
California Watch, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting, is implementing a new distribution model to reach diverse California communities in multimedia formats.
On November 19, California Watch published an in-depth report, which found that class sizes in K-3 grades in California are reverting in some districts to levels not seen for over a decade, despite more than $20 billion spent on a program to reduce class size.
Since then, the story has been distributed in five languages, through a variety of media outlets – web, broadcast, and print – highlighting California Watch’s approach of focusing on important statewide issues with local appeal and collaborating with media outlets to customize the content and engage local communities. The combined daily print circulation was close to 1,000,000. Many more Californians had access to the story through television, radio and Web-based media.
Distribution outlets included the following:
The story was accompanied by a set of interactive tools produced by California Watch including a state-by-state comparison of teacher-student ratios, a Web video featuring interviews with teachers from Plummer Elementary School in Los Angeles, and an interactive map with detailed information on class sizes in the state’s 30 largest school districts. The full report, plus related multimedia material, can be viewed at www.californiawatch.org.
About The Investigation
California Watch reporters Louis Freedberg and Hugo Cabrera took an in-depth look at a class-size reduction program initiated in 1996 that provided generous subsidies to schools that limited K-3 classrooms to 20 students per teacher. Since then, the state has invested over $20 billion to keep classes at or close to that level. Today, most of California's largest school districts are increasing class sizes – some to as many as 30 students -- eroding the most expensive education reform in the state’s history. The shift has parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer. California’s K-12 teacher-student ratios already rank 48th in the nation. The overall project was coordinated and edited by editorial director Mark Katches.
About California Watch and The Center for Investigative Reporting
California Watch, the largest investigative team operating in the state, was launched in 2009 by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Priority areas of coverage include education, health and welfare, public safety, the environment and the influence of money on the political and regulatory process. The goal is to expose hidden truths, prompt debate and spark change. California Watch receives funding from The James Irvine Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Founded in 1977, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the nation's oldest nonprofit investigative news organization. CIR reports have reached the public through television, print, radio and the web, appearing in outlets such as 60 Minutes, PBS Frontline, NPR, The Los Angeles Times<, Washington Post, Politico and U.S. News & World Report. CIR stories have received numerous journalism awards including the Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Silver Baton, George Polk Award, Emmy Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and National Magazine Award for Reporting Excellence. More importantly, its reports have sparked congressional hearings and legislation, United Nations resolutions, public interest lawsuits and change in corporate policies. CIR founded California Watch to help create a new model for regional investigative and other high-impact reporting.
About twenty percent of women who attend college will become victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate, according to a new report funded by the Department of Justice. A nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that a culture of silence at many universities prevents many victims from reporting incidents.
The first and second articles in a series were published this week on CPI's website, along with audio slideshows—interviews with women who reflect on their own experiences. From CPI:
Many victims don’t report at all, because they blame themselves, or don’t identify what happened as sexual assault; one national study found that more than 95 percent of students who are sexually victimized do not report to police or campus officials. Local criminal justice authorities regularly shy away from such cases, because they are “he said, she said” disputes sometimes clouded by drugs or alcohol. That frequently leaves students to deal with campus judiciary processes so shrouded in secrecy that they can remain mysterious even to their participants.
Critics question whether faculty, staff, and students should even adjudicate what amounts to a felony crime. But these internal proceedings actually grow from two federal laws, known as Title IX and the Clery Act, which require schools to respond to allegations of sexual assault on campus and to offer key rights to victims.
Institutional barriers compound the problem of silence, and few victims in fact make it to a campus hearing. Those who do come forward can encounter secret disciplinary proceedings, closed-mouth school administrations, and off-the-record negotiations. At times, school policies and practices can lead students to drop complaints, or submit to gag orders—a practice deemed illegal. College administrators generally believe the existing processes provide a fair and effective way to deal with highly sensitive allegations, but the Center’s investigation has found that these processes have little transparency or accountability, and regularly result in little or no punishment for alleged assailants.
>> See the full project here: "Sexual Assault on Campus"
Long Island University is seeking nominees and submissions for The George Polk Awards, which are given for investigative work in print, radio, photojournalism, TV, and web. Entries must include two original clips or recordings (with two copies of printed text plus URLs for digital submissions). They should come with an explanatory letter and be postmarked no later than January 8, 2010.
The address for submissions is:
John Darnton, Curator
The George Polk Awards
Long Island University
The Brooklyn Campus
1 University Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11201-5372
Visit the website for more information.
California Watch's report on class size increasing in kindergarten through third grade—also carried in broadcast form on KQED’s The California Report—is generating wide interest across the state.
As a follow up to the report, KQED’s Forum live call-in program will devote an hour to the topic tomorrow (Friday November 20) beginning at 10 a.m. The programs are a product of a new, innovative arrangement between KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, in which the two organizations will collaborate on multiple reporting projects during the year.
California Watch director Louis Freedberg, co-author of the report, will participate as a guest on in the program. Other guests will be Norton Grubb, UC Berkeley professor Norton Grubb, Sheila Jordan, Alameda County Superintendent of Schools, and Camille Haroldsen, a third grade teacher from Watsonville. For more details, go to http://www.kqed.org/radio/programs/forum. Tune in at 88.5 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 89.3 FM in the Sacramento area.
California Watch, a division of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and KQED Public Radio today announced a new editorial collaboration that will expand the exposure of investigative and other high-impact stories produced by California Watch, for the benefit of listeners statewide. The new collaboration will result in reports airing on KQED Public Radio’s The California Report, which is distributed to 28 stations throughout the California region, reaching 620,000 listeners per week.
The collaboration will include the production of interactive multimedia tools that will be featured on the websites of both organizations; in-depth radio reports produced exclusively for KQED; radio and television appearances by California Watch journalists on KQED programs; and the pooling of editorial resources. Veteran investigative journalist Michael Montgomery will produce the California Watch reports that will air on KQED. In addition, California Watch’s Sacramento-based reporters will share office space with KQED’s Capitol Bureau.
“Public radio is a critical distribution outlet and this opportunity to reach large numbers of public radio listeners in California fits right into our strategy of maximizing the impact of our stories by using multiple media platforms,” said Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “KQED has been a long-time partner of the CIR and we are excited about expanding the relationship even further -- in a way that benefits both of our organizations and most importantly, serves Californians.”
“This collaboration is groundbreaking, and we are excited to be a part of it,” said Jo Anne Wallace, KQED vice president and general manager. “KQED is always looking for new ways to inform, educate, and engage our audiences. California Watch plans to produce exactly the kind of high quality journalism along with innovative interactive multimedia tools that our audiences want.”
The editorial collaboration between KQED and California Watch began earlier in November. Michael Montgomery, who will be based at CIR, and who has reported extensively on the criminal justice system in California, will produce original radio reports for KQED. In addition, he will work with other California Watch journalists on radio releases of their stories that will air on KQED. Montgomery comes to California Watch from American RadioWorks, where he has been a correspondent and producer since 1999.
In addition to statewide broadcasts, KQED will seek to distribute California Watch stories nationally and internationally. California Watch broadcasts will also be available for download at www.kqed.org.
For more information, contact Scott Walton at KQED, swalton@kqed.org/415-553-2145, or Lisa Cohen at California Watch, 310-395-2544.
On Democracy Now!, CIR's Mark Schapiro discusses his reporting trip into the heart of the carbon offsets market on the Atlantic coast of Brazil–where a tree owned by General Motors is given an offset value of $1.
Schapiro's report is part of a joint project between CIR and FRONTLINE/World that launched this week: "Carbon Watch: Tracking the New Currencies of Global Warming"
In a FRONTLINE/World video series, and accompanying Mother Jones article, Schapiro speaks with people who were displaced from a preserve where they've lived for generations—a forest now owned by General Motors. The forest was purchased by GM in partnership with the Nature Conservancy as part of an initiative to preserve biodiversity. What does GM get out of the deal? "The potentially lucrative rights to the carbon sequestered in the trees," Schapiro explains in his article.
And unfortunately for the Guarani Indians and subsistence farmers who live in and near the forest, the new designation of the land as nature preserve and carbon offset project means they are no longer welcome. "I heard numerous stories of people being harassed, arrested, and shot at while looking for food, wood, or reeds," Schapiro writes. He notes this has dire consequences for the community:
By excluding villagers from the forests, says Jutta Kill, a researcher with the Forests and the European Union Resource Network who has spent months interviewing locals about the project, the reserves are pulling out the communities' lifeline. "In this area," she says, "everyone is cash poor but no one goes hungry. If you take the forest away, you take away everything. The preservation projects here are designed to generate offsets for the largest polluters, and they're doing it by cutting off people from the land." Few of the people here have motors on their boats, she notes; even fewer own cars. People with some of the smallest carbon footprints on Earth are being displaced by companies with some of the biggest.