“As soon as family separations came onto my radar, and I had evidence that even just a handful of families had been separated from one another, I started to do what investigative reporters do. I started to file FOIA requests. I started to organize my notes, keep lists of important names of sources and figures who were involved, because I think I knew, very early on, that I was going to be spending a long time on this story.”
Caitlin Dickerson won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, but her 30,000 word piece for The Atlantic on family separations at the border also is a masterclass in investigative reporting. Dickerson’s dogged efforts to push back against the denials from government officials that family separations were happening was challenging on many levels. In this episode of the podcast, Dickerson describes how, despite proof from her and other journalists, officials’ rhetoric that the press was not to be trusted added another layer of complexity to the reporting and undermined the public’s trust.
A full transcript of the episode is available here.
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The Pulitzer on the Road Podcast is a production of the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and produced by Central Sound at Arizona PBS. The producers are Anna Williams and Alex Kosiorek from Arizona PBS and Nicole Carroll. Pulitzer Administrator Marjorie Miller is the executive producer.