The teen reporter, the evictions and the church

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Three stories from local reporters who uncovered injustice and inequality in their hometowns, from an eviction crisis in Ohio to a Hitler-quoting state police training in Kentucky.

Louisville high schooler Satchel Walton knew something was off about the PowerPoint presentation used by the Kentucky State Police to train new recruits. The slides urged officers to be “ruthless killers” and quoted both Robert E. Lee and Adolf Hitler. Walton reached out to Reveal to ask about our past reporting on police officers in White supremacist Facebook groups, then co-wrote a story with his brother about the training presentation for his high school newspaper, the Manual RedEye. After Walton broke the story, the state police commissioner resigned. Guest host Ike Sriskandarajah talks with Walton about how he reported the story and the change it’s brought to the state.

Then, Reveal reporting fellow Noor Hindi documents an overlooked part of the housing crisis. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government issued a ban on evictions. But as Hindi reports, in Akron, Ohio, evictions kept happening despite the ban. She watched 132 housing hearings this past fall – and found that many renters at those hearings were evicted. Hindi follows the story of mother and nursing-home worker Amber Moreland, who lost her rental home during the pandemic, despite being an essential worker who tried to apply for federal aid.

Next, CapRadio reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan looks into the racial disparities around the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. Earlier this year, Reveal found that in major cities across the country, the rate of PPP lending was higher in majority-White neighborhoods than in neighborhoods of color. We shared our data with local reporters around the country, and Mizes-Tan found something else: In Sacramento, California, the disparity was even more pronounced for places of worship. There, three times as much money went to places of worship in White neighborhoods compared with those in neighborhoods where people of color are the majority.

Reporters featured on this episode worked with Reveal’s local reporting networks. If you’re a journalist, learn more about Reveal’s Reporting Networks.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Alan. I hope 2022 has been a good year for you. But to be honest, it's been a tough one for us.
0:08.0	This year, Reveal was struck by a financial crisis that jeopardized our very existence.
0:14.0	But we've rallied, and all the while that was happening, our staff forged ahead to produce ambitious investigations
0:22.0	that exposed corruption and abuses that the powerful interests did not want revealed.
0:27.0	Because that's what we do. If we're going to keep telling these kind of stories though, we're going to need support from you.
0:34.0	To support fearless investigative nonprofit journalism, please donate by December 31st.
0:41.0	Just visit revealnews.org slash 2023. Again, to donate to the show and to support our work into the future.
0:48.0	Please visit revealnews.org slash 2023. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
1:02.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Ike Sriskandaraja in for Al-Letson.
1:11.0	Every week you tune into this show, we bring you some of the best investigative reporting.
1:16.0	The stories we tell take months, sometimes years to nail down. And when we finally publish those investigations,
1:23.0	we couldn't possibly fit in everything. I think that's why Al ends the show with, there's always more to the story.
1:31.0	So when we have more data and records, then we could possibly fit into a story.
1:37.0	We share those leads with local reporters who can. And that's what this week's show is all about.
1:44.0	The small publications and local reporters who are making big waves.
1:50.0	And I wanted to start with one of my favorites. It builds on something my colleagues worked on a few years ago.
1:57.0	In 2019, reveal found hundreds of current and former law enforcement members who joined online hate groups.
2:05.0	In 2020, a rookie reporter from Louisville reached out to us and asked, how many Kentucky cops were in these groups?
2:12.0	We knew of four. But he had a scoop that bigotry on the forest was not just being expressed online.
2:20.0	It was being taught. And his story sparked a scandal so big that the governor had to respond.
2:27.0	So let's start there.
2:30.0	Hello, I hope everybody is having a safe election day. But we are still fighting this worldwide pandemic.
	...

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