The Dayton Daily News' October 2003 investigative report on violence against Peace Corps volunteers, "Casualties of Peace," has won the 2004 ICIJ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting
Peace Corps series wins award for 'News'
By the Dayton Daily News
The Dayton Daily News' October 2003 investigative report on violence against Peace Corps volunteers, "Casualties of Peace," has won the 2004 ICIJ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting.
The series by Daily News investigative reporter Russell Carollo and former Washington correspondent Mei-Ling Hopgood beat out five other finalists for the award, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.
The five-judge panel said the award "proves that world-class investigative journalism isn't the purview of just the national dailies or magazines with deep pockets. Carollo and Hopgood have demonstrated that size need not determine ambition.
"By taking on an institution as important, wide-ranging and influential as the Peace Corps, the team was able to have an immediate impact — and, most likely, save lives in the years ahead."
The award carries a $20,000 cash prize.
For the series, Carollo and Hopgood interviewed more than 500 people in 11 countries and filed more than 75 Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals, obtaining thousands of documents and computer records made public for the first time. Some of the records were released only after the newspaper sued the Peace Corps in U.S. District Court in Dayton.
The examination revealed that volunteers are put in danger by fundamental practices of the Peace Corps that have remained unchanged for decades. Reported assault cases involving Peace Corps volunteers increased 125 percent from 1991-2002, the examination revealed, while the number of volunteers increased by 29 percent.
A statement announcing the award says: "Following the publication of the series, the Peace Corps redesigned its Web site to include extensive information on safety and security. Hearings were also held in both houses of the U.S. Congress; legislation was introduced to establish a Peace Corps ombudsman to investigate health and safety complaints and asking the agency to detail its safety procedures."
The ICIJ, or International Center for Investigative Journalism, was created in 1997 by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative research organization in Washington, D.C.
The other finalists included:
• Steve Bradshaw of the British Broadcasting Corp., for his documentary Sex and the Holy City, a six-month investigation into the Pope's record on reproductive and sexual health.
• Jean-Philippe Ceppi and Michel Heiniger of Television Suisse Romande for Warriors for Hire, on the increasing role private military companies play in war zones around the globe, including Iraq.
• Bob Drogin, Jeffrey Fleishman and Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times for The Weapons Files, which documented how Saddam Hussein had given up his weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s, how a Syrian company tied to the ruling regime had secretly helped funnel arms to Iraq before the war and how a key claim of U.S. intelligence came from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named Curveball.
• Alessandra Galloni and David Reilly of The Wall Street Journal for The Fall of Parmalat, an investigation into collapse of the giant Italian dairy company, Parmalat SpA.
• Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for his reporting on Iraq's Arsenal was Only on Paper, which revealed that Iraq's government had lied about its aims and concealed early steps of potential use for illegal arms.
