ProPublica journalists Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski spoke to a crowd of MTSU students on Tuesday about their work uncovering Supreme Court justices’ undisclosed ties to billionaires.
In ProPublica’s “Friends of the Court” series, Elliott, Kaplan and Mierjeski wrote about Justice Clarence Thomas’ various gifts from real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Justice Samuel Alito’s 2008 luxury fishing trip with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer– both undisclosed. They won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their work.
The group pored over thousands of pages of FOIA records, combed through aviation enthusiast Facebook groups and called hundreds of service workers to uncover the details of these extravagant gifts.
“This work, as Josh [Kaplan] mentioned, was the three of us having a Google spreadsheet where we were just putting in names of people that we found,” said Elliott. “If you get lucky, even if you get a few people, that can really break things open.”
The Supreme Court is an insular, closed-off institution, making information hard to come by. Mierjeski emphasized the number of work service workers under non-disclosure agreements who contributed to their stories.
“The key to this reporting was really the service workers, the people that were serving the food and mopping the floor in these extremely high-end, luxurious contexts,” Mierjeski said.
The group also discussed an unusual op-ed that Alito published after receiving a list of questions from them. Because Supreme Court justices rarely make this kind of statement, it immediately drew attention to their work.
“We were frankly happy just that he was giving us this level of engagement, period,” said Elliott. “It ended up really generating a lot of interest about the story.”
These stories resulted in more than just an op-ed. In 2023, the Supreme Court introduced its first code of ethics after criticism stemming from Elliott, Kaplan and Mierjeski’s work.
Although their stories were of national importance, the three journalists also consistently emphasized the importance of local and student journalism.
“There’s very little competition in the local environment,” said Kaplan. “There’s not as much scrutiny on local governments as there should be. And so, you can find stories that need to be written that have a lot of consequence for your community.”
Local court actions are just as important as what happens on the national level, but they often go without investigation.
To provide an example of locally relevant reporting, Mierjeski pointed to an issue close to home for MTSU students. ProPublica was involved with reporting on Rutherford County juvenile court judge Donna Scott Davenport’s decisions to put children in jail for crimes they didn’t commit.
“There’s this sort of thought that with the lack of coverage, there’s sort of more abuses of power that could be happening and going unnoticed,” said Mierjeski.
When asked what students can do to make the world better, the group agreed that journalism would always be important.
“Sometimes you write a story, and the next day, there’s a law passed that makes it better,” said Kaplan. “It’s, like, the most amazing thing in the world.”
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