ProPublica

By Jeff Larson and Al Shaw, ProPublica.

Political campaigns are using increasingly sophisticated methods to target messages to voters, methods that are not at all transparent. We need your help to uncover and understand them.

Back in March, we noticed that the Obama campaign was sending out

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica.

Instead of picketing outside company headquarters, an advocacy group is using Facebook ads to try to influence people whose profiles identify them as employees of Freddie Mac or JPMorgan Chase.

The anti-foreclosure ad campaign, which launches today, asks Freddie and Chase employees...

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

An investigative series [1] by the New York Times and a performance piece by Mike Daisey [2] featured on This American Life [3] have put the spotlight on Foxconn [4], the Taiwanese company whose massive Chinese factories manufacture some of...

By Richard Tofel, ProPublica

Holiday time is the season for giving of all sorts -- including supporting organizations and causes that make a difference. We hope that, as the end of the year approaches, you'll consider a tax-deductible donation to ProPublica.

There are lots of ways we...

By Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica

Politico's story on possible sexual harassment [2] by Herman Cain may be the biggest investigative scoop of the campaign season. But it would be hard to deduce that from the facts as published.

The story lacks the key details needed to judge whether the...

By Tracy Weber, and Charles Ornstein, ProPublica

Your doctor gives you an expensive new drug to control your cholesterol, or recommends a certain brand of artificial hip, or says you need a stent to open a clogged artery.

He's the expert. But how do you know his...

By Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica

Natural gas - often touted as an abundant, comparatively clean source of domestic energy - has come under intensifying public scrutiny in recent months, with federal regulators and reporters challenging some of the industry's rosy business projections.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing...

By Sharona Coutts, and Al Shaw, ProPublica

The U.S. Department of Education recently released the largest and most comprehensive snapshot of the educational opportunities afforded to millions of students across the country. The new data include information on which students are taking advanced courses often tied to...

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

Outgoing Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairwoman Sheila C. Bair's revealing exit interview by the New York Times' Joe Nocera [1] has generated plenty of buzz. But while the interview provided a comprehensive look at Bair's role from 2006 to 2011, what caught our...

By Paul Kiel, ProPublica

Four years into the foreclosure crisis, banks say they've made major improvements in how they handle struggling homeowners. They've promised, for example, not to foreclose on homeowners who are being considered for mortgage modifications. But that's still happening.

Consider the cases of Laurie Pinkerton and...

By Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica

HBO's Too Big To Fail -- I just caught up with it last night, thanks to HBO On Demand -- is extraordinarily revealing about the financial crisis. Only its revelations are almost entirely inadvertent.

The movie is set up in the Hollywood conventional way: A...

By Tracy Weber, ProPublica

The week's news about the sexual conduct of politically powerful men gives me a queasy feeling of déjà vu.

As the French agonize over whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn's star power quashed past allegations, I can respond cynically: Yes, that probably happened. But we should not...

By Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica

Today's publication of our story on the threat posed by fire to nuclear power plants offers readers a rare opportunity. Two excellent journalists, working independently of each other, have produced a detailed investigative story on the same subject.

Susan Q. Stranahan, a former...

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

One of the main advantages of natural gas is that it is supposed to be far cleaner than oil or coal. Right now Congress is even considering a T. Boone Pickens-inspired bill aimed at converting the nation's truck fleet to run on natural gas....

It's been a busy couple of weeks in the fracking and natural gas drilling debate, with the documentary film Gasland nominated for an Academy Award and a front-page story in Sunday's New York Times on the dangers posed by the technology.

The Times story underscored the...

By Dafna Linzer, ProPublica.

Last August, President Obama's national security advisers, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met in the White House situation room to decide whether and how to go forward with trials for some Guantanamo prisoners.

Congress,...

By Karen Weise, ProPublica. (Originally published Nov. 16, 2010)

In prepared Congressional testimony coming today, Bank of America's top mortgage official, Barbara Desoer, says it's Wall Street investors, not the bank, that are making it hard to help homeowners. "Bank of America is constrained by our duties to...

By Karen Weise, ProPublica.

The U.S. government's effort to help struggling homeowners is approaching a standstill, and the number of homeowners in ongoing mortgage modifications could start shrinking in several months if current trends continue, according to a ProPublica analysis of Treasury Department data.

A year and a...

In a speech today, BP CEO Robert Dudley warned London's business leaders that an upcoming report and documentary from ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE would paint an unflattering picture of the company's safety record. He defended BP's record on safety but said the company would continue to work to improve....

By Marian Wang, ProPublica.

The Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency responsible for worker safety, isn't adequately protecting whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers, according to a report (PDF) released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.

OSHA's whistleblower protection program, which is responsible for...