The Cox Media Group (CMG) Investigative Reporting team and KFF Health News won a Barlett & Steele Gold Prize for regional/local reporting. Both news organizations will be recognized during the awards ceremony to be held in November.
CMG earned this national recognition for its investigative series “Overpayment Outrage,” a collaboration between KFF Health News, eight of CMG’s local TV stations, and its Washington D.C. news bureau. The reports provided an in-depth and compelling exposé of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) demands to be repaid for overpayment errors it made, and the hardship this placed on recipients.
“We strive every day to make a positive impact on the viewers and communities we serve. It’s an added bonus when that work is also recognized by prestigious awards like Barlett & Steele,” said Marian Pittman, CMG’s President of Content & Innovation. “This recognition is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our investigative teams, who relentlessly pursue stories that matter to our communities and help protect consumers.”
According to Barlett & Steele, CMG and KFF Health News were recognized for “outstanding collaboration on a pervasive problem with Social Security payments that resulted in quick, significant changes in the system.”
As a result of “Overpayment Outrage,” the Social Security Administration announced sweeping policy changes to stop what SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley called the “clawback cruelty” of withholding 100 percent of people’s benefits to recoup overpayments. Instead, the agency will now default to a 10 percent withholding for those who don’t respond to notices. O’Malley vowed to make overpayment notices easier to understand, to shift the burden of proof to the agency, and he’s now considering enacting limitations on how far back the SSA can look to identify overpayments and how much time the agency should have to try to recover them.
“Sometimes it takes a crisis. Sometimes it takes an organization like yours lifting up a shortcoming for us to look at our data differently,” said Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley during a March interview with CMG. “We couldn’t allow this injustice to continue.”
The agency has since restored benefits for many of the people featured in CMG’s stories, plus many others.
“It’s our privilege and responsibility to shed light on problems like these, which affect so many people in our local communities,” said Jodie Fleischer, CMG’s managing editor for investigative content and collaborations. “When our reporting encourages those in power to take action to improve the lives of millions of people, it just reaffirms our mission to protect consumers and positively impact the people and communities we serve.”
In addition to Barlett and Steele’s Gold Prize, “Overpayment Outrage” has also been honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Public Service and has been awarded with:
- The inaugural Goldsmith Awards Special Citation for Government Reporting
- National Headliner Award for Public Service (Broadcast or Cable TV)
- SABEW (Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing) Best in Business Award
- AHCJ Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism
- Three D.C. Dateline Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for Television Investigative Journalism, Online Investigative Journalism, and the Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award.
