Miami Herald journalists among George Polk Award winners for ‘Birth & Betrayal’ series
The Miami Herald’s investigative series “Birth & Betrayal,” exposing the failures of a Florida program that purported to provide medical care for children who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at birth, has been honored with a George Polk Award for distinguished journalism.
The series, produced in conjunction with the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica, was reported and written by Carol Marbin Miller and Daniel Chang.
Visual journalist Emily Michot provided the photos and videos.
The awards, established in 1949 and bestowed by Long Island University, annually recognize special achievements in journalism, with an emphasis on investigative reporting that gets results and attention. There are 15 award categories, which include local reporting, state reporting and national reporting.
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The series, honored in the State Reporting category, showed how the Florida Legislature, responding to complaints from OB-GYNs, created a program called the Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association in 1988. NICA, as it was called, blocked the families of children who suffered catastrophic brain injuries at birth from suing the doctor who delivered the child or the hospital where the child was born — even if malpractice was to blame.
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In exchange, NICA was supposed to cover all medically necessary healthcare for the life of the child.
What the journalists found was that families had to plead for care and run a gauntlet of bureaucratic obstacles to obtain such basics as wheelchairs, modified vans, medication and in-home nursing assistance.
NICA, which has racked up $1.7 billion in assets from investing the dues paid by doctors and hospitals, sometimes spent more fighting families seeking help for their children than the care they sought would have cost, the journalists discovered.
After the Herald’s investigation was published, the program’s director and board departed, with parents and disability right advocates required as board members for the first time. The Florida Legislature rewrote the law governing NICA, making it harder to deny services and care.
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Parents of children in the program were awarded a $150,000 supplement to help families cover care costs, and up to $10,000 annually for mental health treatment. Parents whose children had died received retroactive compensation.
Tampa Bay Times journalists Corey G. Johnson. Rebecca Woolington and Eli Murray received the Local Reporting award for their work on revealing unsafe conditions and inadequate worker protections at Gopher Resource, a lead smelting factory. Their work led to federal, state and local regulators improving conditions, addressing worker health issues and sanctioning the company.
“Not only did we receive a record number of submissions but they came from far more sources of investigative reporting than ever before, and dozens in addition to the award winners represented first-class work,” said John Darnton, curator of the awards. “This speaks to the vitality and continued promise of a changing journalism landscape and is reason to feel optimistic about the future of our craft.”
Other winners included journalists from The New Yorker, The New York Times, Reuters, a collaboration of The Washington Post and the Guardian, CNN, KNXV, STAAT, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News anchor David Muir and his team, and a collaboration of ProPublica, PBS Frontline and the Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program.
This story was originally published February 21, 2022 at 10:10 AM.
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