THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• The story of a local prosecutor who tried to fix something that didn’t seem right.
   
• Our best presidential investigations for Presidents’ Day.
   
• Our five-year fight with the Department of Labor continues after a North Carolina Republican intervenes.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

How a 7-Year Prison Sentence Turns Into Over 100

This week on Reveal, we team up with WBEZ Chicago and its podcast Motive to tell the story of a local prosecutor in Illinois who tried to fix something that didn’t seem right: Anthony Gay’s seven-year sentence had 97 years added to it after he was repeatedly charged with battery – often for throwing liquids at staff. 

Gay acknowledges he did some of those things but says the prison put him in circumstances that made his mental illness worse – then punished him for the way he acted.

The prosecutor, Seth Uphoff, had a choice to make: Correct and cut down Gay’s prison sentence or bow to the politics of the prison town where he served.

What happened next?

FROM OUR ARCHIVE

Pardons, Leaks and Secret Tapes for Presidents’ Day

President Richard Nixon takes a call in the Oval Office in 1972. Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

We’re the country’s first weekly investigative public radio show and podcast. That has its perks: It means our archives are full of deeply relevant investigations. So with Presidents’ Day coming up Monday, let’s take a look back at two shows that cover a unique presidential power and one of journalism’s most important moments, as well as a historian’s pick of some of his favorite recordings from President Richard Nixon’s secret tapes.

All the President’s Pardons
When he was president, Donald Trump used the pardon power to help friends and political allies. We learned from the Jan. 6 committee hearings that members of his inner circle asked for pardons to shield themselves from prosecution, before they were even charged with a crime. But what about the people who applied for pardons through the official process and are still waiting for answers? In this show, we go beyond the headlines and tell the story of a pardons system that’s completely broken down. (And if you’re wondering, yes, we also go through the parallels between Trump and Nixon, the first and only U.S. president to receive a pardon.)

The Pentagon Papers: Secrets, Lies and Leaks
Former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg worried that the Vietnam War would spiral into a nuclear apocalypse. So he secretly copied a 7,000-page report, later known as the Pentagon Papers, that exposed the reality of the U.S.’ role in Vietnam and leaked it to the press. Our CEO, Robert Rosenthal, was part of The New York Times team in 1971 that was called in to publish the papers.

In this show, Ellsberg and Rosenthal give us a deep look into how the leak and publication all went down.

Caught on Tape: The Presidential Edition
Ken Hughes is considered an expert on presidential recordings. And no recordings are more notorious than those of Nixon. In this piece, Hughes points us in the direction of some of his favorite selections from the Nixon tapes.

INSIDE THE NEWSROOM

The Labor Department Keeps Delaying the Release of Corporate Diversity Data. We’ll Keep Fighting for It.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, urged the Department of Labor to delay its release of diversity data for federal contractors. And she also threw a little shade at us. 

We’ve been locked in a battle with the Department of Labor for five years now to try to get it to release the data. A judge has ruled we’re right.

The Labor Department was finally about to turn it over when Foxx, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, intervened, saying the department hadn’t given contractors enough time to object. She accused the government of “surrendering employee privacy to the left.” And she called us a “left-of-center journalism organization.”

To be clear, we are nonpartisan and independent. We believe in government and corporate transparency and in the importance of diversity. We also don’t like bad excuses for keeping important public information secret.

• We don’t believe the records would include information that would violate individual privacy. Even if they did, we wouldn’t publish them. But this week, the Labor Department decided to delay further, giving companies more time to object to the release. 
   
• It’s the latest turn in what’s been a five-year battle for transparency. In January 2018, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Labor for records known as EEO-1s. These are documents that federal contractors must file with the government. 
   
• We had to sue to get the department to comply. We won. Yet the department has continued to put up roadblocks – inviting thousands of companies to fight the public release of their diversity numbers. 
  
  The Labor Department had already given them six months and multiple extensions. 
   
• Here’s why it matters: As recipients of taxpayer money, these companies are supposed to be held to a higher standard to guarantee equal opportunity and eliminate discrimination in their employment practices.
  
  The release of the reports can force change. PayPal once fought the disclosure, but CEO Dan Schulman has now become an advocate for disclosure, telling USA Today in 2021: “The more transparent we can be as a company, the more we can fix issues and the more we can inspire others to do the same.”

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