NPR just won its third journalism award since last December for stories involving ALEC!

[highplainsdem]

This is great news -- and I hope it will help encourage other reporters to look more closely at ALEC.

Their article today about the newest award mentions that the investigation was into ALEC's influence.

And it mentions another series that the same people at NPR won two other awards for in recent months -- and although this detail isn't included, that investigation also concerned ALEC. (No wonder ALEC is so very unhappy with NPR, as their recent press release made clear. NPR is not only shining unwelcome light on an organization that has long preferred to operate under the radar, but they're winning awards for it.)

Today's news about the latest award, from WNYC:

http://www.wnyc.org/npr_articles/2011/apr/08/npr-news-wins-2010-ire-award/

NPR News Wins 2010 IRE Award
Friday, April 08, 2011
NPR
By Emerson Brown

-snip-

NPR News' deep-digging efforts were honored today with a 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for "Prison Profiting: Behind Arizona's Immigration Law."

Reported by NPR Correspondent Laura Sullivan, "Prison Profiting" detailed gatherings that bring together state legislators with representatives of powerful corporations and associations, and how one organization facilitates the shaping of state laws with little scrutiny. In two reports that aired in October 2010 on the NPR newsmagazine Morning Edition, she revealed how Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce discussed the idea for the bill with a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations – including the largest private prison company in the country – called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the secretive way ALEC allows companies to author "model bills" with the state legislators.

-snip-

The judges praised the series by saying, "While most news outlets focused on the consequences of the bill that allowed police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof of legal residency, NPR's investigation went behind the scenes. The judges thought NPR's decision to look at the law as a new business model made this entry the overwhelming winner in the category."

-snip-

The IRE Award completes a hat trick of sorts for Sullivan and Drummond. They recently received a a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award and Peabody Award for their three-part investigative series "Behind the Bail Bond System" that revealed deep and costly flaws in the U.S. justice system's bail bond process.

-snip-

The page on the IRE website about their awards

http://www.ire.org/resourcecenter/contest/

NPR's article on the Dupont-Columbia Silver Baton Award for the bail bond series, which they won last December:

http://www.npr.org/about/press/2010/122210.duPontColumbiaAward.html

And their article on the Peabody Awards they won in March:

http://www.npr.org/about/press/2011/033111.PeabodyAwards.html


These NPR investigations are referred to in the long compilation topic on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Reply 79 there is about the 10/28/2010 story on prison profiting and immigration law that just won the IRE award.

Reply 73 there is about the 10/29/2010 NPR story on ALEC "Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny."

And reply 29 there links to this DU topic about the 1/21/2010 NPR article on what the bail bond industry to doing to our society, and what ALEC has to do with that:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x594171