The Association of Health Care Journalists announced this week that ProPublica won three first-place honors in its Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.
“Inside the Fall of the CDC” won in the investigative category. Reported by James Bandler, Patricia Callahan, Sebastian Rotella and Kirsten Berg, the story provided a comprehensive look at meddling inside the CDC by a White House determined to prioritize the president’s message over public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. From botched COVID-19 tests to line-by-line edits that President Donald Trump’s advisers made to official health guidance, the reporting shed new light on the missteps and repeated capitulations made by some of the government’s top scientists. Judges called the project “an exercise in extensive and detailed reporting on the biggest public policy issue of the year. ProPublica documented with emails, public records, and dogged interviewing a story that many thought they knew but couldn’t nail down.”