A team of ProPublica journalists was presented with the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting Monday at Wallis Annenberg Hall. The reporters for the nonprofit investigative newsroom shared their discoveries with students, faculty and staff during a panel and Q&A discussion.
The award, which honors journalists who make groundbreaking strides toward societal change, has been granted and hosted by USC Annenberg for 33 years. This year’s winner, “The Secret IRS Files,” changed the national conversation of U.S. tax policy by investigating how billionaires avoid paying taxes.
After receiving tax data records from an unidentifiable source(s), the journalists realized the information, which included thousands of documents dating back 15 years, was of public interest.
“It was an extraordinary moment,” said Jesse Eisinger, senior editor and reporter at ProPublica. “I told Paul Kiel, who worked with me on previous IRS stories, ‘this is either the greatest day of your journalism career or we are falling victim to a major hoax.’”
After months of verifying and analyzing the data, ProPublica editors assembled a team to investigate how the wealthy used federal tax laws to their advantage to pay little to no income tax.
“We wanted to be able to contextualize things for readers and show them how the tax system works for billionaires and for normal people,” said Robert Faturechi, reporter at ProPublica. “The results were shocking.”
Ellis Simani, data reporter at ProPublica, explained the purpose of investigative journalism and their findings.
“A lot of people don’t think about these topics on a day-to-day basis, so investigative reporting provides context on how to understand these issues and how it applies to people individually,” Simani said.
Throughout the investigation, the journalists took steps to ensure the confidentiality and security of their supplemental sources that helped them verify the validity of the leaked documents.
“There was a lot of personal risk in reporting on the most powerful people in the world,” said Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica senior data reporter. “It was a combination of being concerned, but also it was very thrilling to report on something so important.”
The Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting recognizes published pieces that uncover political, economic and ethical issues that lead to change in our society. The award was created by Southern California businessman and philanthropist, Selden Ring, who said he wanted to encourage investigative journalism. The $50,000 prize is the largest journalism prize in America.