Posts tagged 'campaign finance'
Learning how to make the most of our data at NICAR
Posted: March 1, 2014 | Tags: campaign finance, Federal Election Commission, Investigative Reporters and Editors, journalism, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, NICAR, reporting, Workshop news
Reporters are increasingly using data to find stories. At NICAR's annual conference, where 1,000 journalists are gathering in Baltimore this year, reporters, editors, programmers and datavisualization experts are sharing best practices for acquiring databases or building their own.
A session on Federal Election Campaign (FEC) data, led by Aaron Bycoffe, Jack Gillum, and Chris Schnaars, focused on how to gain access to the publicly available but highly obfuscated records that show who donated what to political campaigns. The speakers said just 150 people accounted for $810 billion worth of donations to Super PACs in the 2012 presidential race ...
Mayer showcases Workshop’s Koch report
Posted: July 2, 2013 | Tags: campaign finance, Koch
Calling Congress “a hopeless bastion of obstruction," Jane Mayer writes in her blog post for The New Yorker on Monday about the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s two-year study of the Koch political and philanthropic giving, saying the Koch brothers' political influence is one of the reasons the president had to bypass the legislative branch when confronting climate change.
Mayer is an expert on the Koch brothers and their extensive economic empire. She has previously published several articles on the billionaires, including an extensive investigation of the history of the Koch’s family business and Charles and David Koch’s ideological ...
'Big Sky, Big Money' wins national journalism award
Posted: April 10, 2013 | Tags: campaign finance
"Big Sky, Big Money," the PBS FRONTLINE documentary that followed a trail of "dark money" in Montana politics last year, has won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. The program tied for first place in the multiplatform/large category; the prestigious awards recognize the best in watchdog journalism.
The program was co-produced with American Public Media's Marketplace and ProPublica and produced in association with the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
Money, power and influence: all part of the election process
Posted: Oct. 29, 2012 | Tags: campaign finance
The influence of money in politics, particularly by donors who want to remain anonymous, has played a pivotal role in the 2012 campaign across the country. Now FRONTLINE has collaborated with Marketplace to produce "Big Sky, Big Money," a new documentary that airs Tuesday, Oct. 30, on PBS. (Check local listings for the time in your area.)
The program focuses on Montana's tight Senate race, one of the most-watched in the country. Montana lost its effort to maintain a state ban on corporate election spending in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling. FRONTLINE looks ...
Campaign finance disclosures need improvement
Posted: April 15, 2010 | Tags: campaign finance, Federal Election Commission
For those who follow campaign finance, this is one of the big days of the year: First quarter contribution and spending reports are due at the Federal Election Commission, from congressional candidates and most political action committees.
Opponents, political analysts and the press will watch these numbers closely as an indicator of how this fall's mid-term elections might go.
The reports are a celebration of government openness and a comment on the absurdity of the nation's patchwork of campaign disclosure laws and rules. The disclosure system was mostly constructed in the early 1970's shadow of Watergate, before ...
