Cox Media Group’s (CMG) investigative teams and KFF Health News received a 2024 Goldsmith Award yesterday from The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School during the annual Goldsmith Awards ceremony.
Cox Media Group’s investigative teams and KFF Health News received a 2024 Goldsmith Award from The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School during the annual Goldsmith Awards ceremony.
CMG and KFF Health News were honored for their joint reporting titled Overpayment Outrage.
The series exposed how the Social Security Administration (SSA) routinely sent overpayments to recipients that the SSA then clawed back by reducing or suspending monthly checks.
“We’re honored to receive this prestigious award because it reflects CMG’s commitment to local news and investigative journalism,” says Marian Pittman, CMG’s president of content. “The team’s relentless efforts to uncover the truth behind complex government policies and their implementation has resulted in tangible changes within the SSA and will directly benefit millions of people impacted by overpayments.”
The Goldsmith special citation for reporting on government, awarded for the first time this year, recognizes reporting that examines how government and public policy implementation works, including how and why it can fail and how it can most effectively and efficiently solve problems.
Investigative teams from CMG’s local television markets and its Washington News Bureau each contributed significantly to the reporting, collectively airing more than 100 news stories in 2023.
The reporting partnership with KFF Health News, a nonprofit online platform that distributes content through media partners nationwide, helped elevate the impact of the investigation and reached millions of TV viewers and online readers.
“This series exposed the significant impact of these mistakes on millions of people, including those who had little to no ability to pay back the government, leaving some people to lose their homes, cars, and savings,” says Drew Altman, KTT’s president. “This is why KFF reports on systemic issues like this through its news service — to expose how people are affected by policy and challenges.”
The award came just two weeks after the new SSA chief testified before Congress about major policy changes to reduce overpayments and limit clawbacks that left so many people in dire financial straits. At two Senate hearings on March 20, Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said he is taking several steps to address the problem.
O’Malley said the agency will stop “that claw back cruelty” of intercepting 100% of a beneficiary’s monthly Social Security check if they fail to respond to a demand for repayment. Instead, the agency will withhold 10% of the recipient’s monthly benefits to recoup the debt. Additionally, on the question of who caused an overpayment — the beneficiary or someone at the agency — the burden of proof will shift from the beneficiary to the agency, O’Malley said.
Here’s what The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School had to say about Overpayment Outrage:
Each year the Social Security Administration issues billions of dollars in overpayments to recipients whose income or other qualifying criteria have changed, or as the result of agency miscalculations. Under federal law, the Social Security Administration is required to demand repayment of this money, treating it as debts to the federal government. These “clawbacks” can happen even decades after the initial overpayments occurred and even when they resulted from an agency mistake. In Overpayment Outrage, a collaboration that spanned a national nonprofit newsroom (KFF Health News) and Cox Media Group, a network of local TV news stations and their investigative and Washington, D.C. bureaus, the team dug into the overpayment issue and the impacts of clawbacks on vulnerable people. They found that overpayments happen due to chronic understaffing at SSA, systemic delays in data tracking, and a process that made income changes and eligibility criteria invisible to those who were determining whether to issue a clawback demand. The reporting lays out potential solutions to address the legislative, funding, and process failures that cause this systemic problem. It reveals how Congress has demanded action to reduce excessive Social Security spending without adequately funding the agency that administers it, and examines the layers of complex policy, regulation, and procedural rules that employees and recipients of social security have to navigate to make the system work. The collaborative nature of the project and its publication in both print and TV outlets helped elevate the reach and impacts of the project.
“For this impressive untangling of the root causes of problems in the functioning of government and the implementation of public policy, and explaining how this problem both impacted individuals and was not directly caused by them, Overpayment Outrage is the winner of the Goldsmith Awards’ inaugural Special Citation for Reporting on Government.”
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