Indianapolis - WTHR has received a 2011 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for its year-long investigation of Indiana jobs. The award is the electronic news media's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize and considered one of the highest honors in broadcast journalism.
The honor recognizes 13 Investigates' ongoing series of investigations exposing how state leaders inflated Indiana job statistics through a quasi-state agency shrouded in secrecy.
"Reality check: Where are the jobs?" revealed empty cornfields and abandoned factories where the Indiana Economic Development Corporation claimed there were thousands of new jobs. Despite elaborate ribbon cutting ceremonies and hundreds of press releases from the state touting new jobs for Hoosiers, WTHR's investigation showed Indiana's job numbers did not add up and tens of thousands of promised jobs never materialized.
The investigation prompted IEDC to acknowledge inaccurate job totals, to revise its reporting process, to provide more job data on its public website and to publish an annual report reflecting adjusted job numbers. The issues raised by WTHR fueled headlines and editorials across the state and, for the first time, began to lift the shroud of secrecy surrounding Indiana's real job numbers.
As part of today's announcement, Columbia University cites WTHR's investigation as "dogged reporting that exposed government fraud and prompted reform" and calls the series "an example of outstanding reporting in the public service."
Investigative reporter Bob Segall, producer Cyndee Hebert and photojournalist Bill Ditton began working on the project in May 2009. The first part of the investigation aired in March 2010, so far resulting in nine separate reports.
This is WTHR's second DuPont-Columbia Award. The award was created in 1942 as a tribute to the journalistic integrity and public-mindedness of Alfred I. DuPont. Winners receive gold or silver batons inscribed with the famous observation about the power of television by the late Edward R. Murrow:
"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box." (Address to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, October 15, 1958.)
WTHR and twelve other recipients of the 2011 duPont-Columbia Award will receive their batons next month at a ceremony in New York City, hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien.
See the full list of winners and today's announcement by Brian Williams.
See WTHR's "Reality Check: Where are the jobs?"
