From AJR: Capital Flight
Posted on | June 9, 2010 | No Comments
Watchdog reporting is at an alarming low at many federal agencies and departments whose actions have a huge impact on the lives of American citizens. This article appears in the June/July issue of American Journalism Review. It was funded by the Open Society Institute.
By Jodi Enda
After an explosion killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia in early April, the Washington Post and the New York Times quickly produced lengthy exposés detailing a plethora of safety breaches that preceded the nation’s worst coal mining disaster in a quarter century. The Times reported that mining companies thwarted tough federal regulations enacted after a spate of deaths four years earlier simply by appealing citations. The Post wrote that federal regulators had cited the Upper Big Branch mine for a whopping 1,342 safety violations in the past five years, 50 times in the previous month alone.
These are the kind of powerful stories that can goad public officials to make changes–sometimes life-saving changes–by shedding light on dangerous conditions. They also are the kind of stories that more and more often come too late, or not at all.
Just ask the families of the 29 miners.
As daily newspapers continue to shed Washington bureaus and severely slash their staffs, fewer reporters than ever are serving as watchdogs of the federal government. Read more at AJR.
Jodi Enda (jaenda@gmail.com) is a Washington writer and former White House correspondent for Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau.
Sidebar: Abandoned Agencies
Also Read Jodi Enda’s piece on Abandoned Agencies, complete with an interactive chart and spreadsheet showing which news organizations are covering which government agencies.
Tags: Commentary > Displaced Journalists > Investigative Reporting > journalism > layoffs
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