NC newsrooms join forces, team up to take on COVID coverage and keep the powerful accountable

That’s been a central tenet of the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network, a coalition of dozens of reporters and editors at newsrooms across the state who have collaborated for the past year to tell more than 45 critical, complex stories with statewide reach.

The network’s work has expanded from its initial focus on coronavirus testing to cover everything from the vaccine rollout to policing practices and the 2020 general election. And it now consists of journalists from seven newsrooms: Carolina Public Press, The Charlotte Observer, The News & Observer, WBTV-Charlotte, WECT-Wilmington, WRAL-Raleigh and North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC.

One year after the network published its first collaborative story, here’s a roundup of some of the group’s best work – and the impact it’s had on the state.

In early March, as the far-reaching implications of the COVID-19 pandemic were becoming increasingly clear, WBTV Chief Investigative Reporter Nick Ochsner had a few basic questions about testing for the disease in North Carolina.

But that early in the outbreak, when confirmed cases numbered in the dozens and test kits were in short supply, the answers varied county by county.

With the state supplying only a handful of test kits to each county, local health workers resorted to putting their own sampling kits together to send to the few labs conducting testing.

The reporting also showed the public lacked, up until that point, a key metric for tracking the virus: How many tests were conducted statewide.

Nursing homes and other congregate care facilities quickly became among the worst casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic in North Carolina, much like in other states.

And even some nursing homes weren’t happy about the decision, reporters found after contacting managers and administrators of facilities across the state.

“Not sharing anything does not help anyone,” Arnie Thompson, executive director of Friends Homes in Guilford County, said at the time.

But reporters and advocates pushed back.

The AARP’s North Carolina chapter wrote a letter to Gov. Roy Cooper pleading for transparency.

And a coalition of media organizations threatened to sue over access to the information, challenging state health officials’ claims that refusing to release the locations of outbreaks was necessary to protect patient privacy.

The pressure campaigns worked.

In addition to nursing homes, state prisons also proved a problematic vector of coronavirus spread – especially early on with testing still in short supply. And for many inmates and corrections workers, lives were literally on the line.

Shortly after her death, the facility started testing off-site, and the prison system later rolled out larger scale testing at partner urgent care facilities.

But state employee advocates criticized the plan for placing too high a burden on prison workers, who in some cases had to travel far away from their places of employment to get a test.

Without adequate testing, experts said, staffers not only faced risk themselves, but brought those same risks home to their families and communities.

North Carolina’s capitol press corps is no stranger to late-night hijinks at the N.C. General Assembly, which occasionally pushes through controversial measures in marathon sessions that sometimes stretch into the early morning.

She noticed language in a little-discussed, quickly approved and seemingly uncontroversial proposal – House Bill 168 – that would shield death investigation files that law enforcement investigators share with the medical examiner’s office.

Explicitly requested, she was told, by DHHS, the bill passed both chambers amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. And as Sherman pointed out in her reporting for the network, the measure would keep confidential, among other things, details gathered by law enforcement about deaths in custody.

The reporting struck a nerve.

In recent weeks, The News & Observer has obtained some documents that would’ve been shielded had the legislation been signed into law.

Such information was vitally important to the people who worked there, overwhelmingly members of the Latino community who have consistently experienced disproportionate impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reporting from the network found that state health officials were hobbled by fears that, due to a lack of regulatory authority, the meatpacking industry would stop disclosing outbreaks if DHHS opted to identify them.

There was a plan early in the pandemic within the state agency, in fact, to do just that.

But some county health directors challenged the move, afraid it would prompt plants to shut down contact tracing and other work that helped epidemiologists respond to community spread.

The resulting secrecy rankled workers and advocates alike.

“They’re risking their lives to cut up chicken and it’s not fair that somebody should withhold that information,” Ilana Dubester, director of El Vinculo Hispano/The Hispanic Liaison, said at the time.

With the 2020 general election on the horizon, and more and more voters looking to cast ballots by mail amid the pandemic, concerns mounted over the increasingly sluggish delivery times of the U.S. Postal Service.

The new Trump-appointed postmaster general, North Carolina Republican megadonor Louis DeJoy, cracked down on overtime and deep-sixed massive mail-sorting machines across the country after the start of his tenure.

But there were a few issues, including a handful that arrived without a postmark.

Those would be problematic during voting, the group’s reporting revealed, because postmarks serve as an indicator to county election officials that a last-minute mail-in ballot arrived on time.

It wasn’t just ballots at stake. Delivery delays mean impacts to businesses and to residents like Robert Brunson, a diabetic who relied on the postal service for medication refills.

"Gets to be real serious, when the mail is being used," he said. "For whatever reason, political, whatever, it's always the people on the side, the fringes, that suffer the consequences."

Records from the U.S. Postal Service indicate the on-time delivery rates continued to drop since the network’s story published in October, which can delay prescriptions, bills and even rent money.

In early 2021, the Governor’s Crime Commission hit a significant milestone.

After continued mass protests nationwide over accountability and transparency in the criminal justice system, the North Carolina agency and others like it across the country had collected a full year of data under the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act, a measure to track just how many people die during interactions with law enforcement.

Citing a federal confidentiality law, the Governor’s Crime Commission said it was forbidden from releasing the information – whether it wanted to or not – in response to a public records request from the reporting network.

That position puts the commission at odds with law enforcement agencies across the state, more than a dozen of which quickly provided the records upon request. And even the Tar Heel State’s neighbors – namely Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia – readily handed over data and documents after receiving nearly identical requests.

Legal opinions, the network’s reporting showed, were mixed about whether the Governor’s Crime Commission was in the right. But the bill’s author didn’t mince words.

“As a sponsor of the bill, I’m unaware of anything in federal law that prohibits the release of this information,” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, the Democrat representing Virginia’s 3rd District, said.

The Biden administration pledged to release an “interim report” on the data soon.

In the meantime, the network continues to follow the government’s handling of the data – on the state and local level.