NPR Rural Correspondent Howard Berkes Wins November Sidney for Series on Mining Industry
December 15, 2010
NEW YORK: The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced today that NPR Rural Correspondent Howard Berkes has won the November Sidney Award for a seven-month-long investigation into the activities of Massey Energy. The coal production company owns the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 mine workers died in April in an explosion, and the Freedom Mine in Pike County, Kentucky, for which the U.S. Department of Labor recently sought its first ever federal injunction to shut down a highly hazardous coal mine.
Berkes findings include:
· The Freedom Mine received two hundred federal citations this year classified as “serious and substantial,” according to Mining Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) records. Fifty are listed as an “unwarrantable failure” to comply with mine safety law, meaning they knew there was a violation and didn’t fix it or should have known.
· Massey has admitted under-reporting injuries by more than 30 percent according to Labor Department Solicitor Patricia Smith.
· Court documents and state and federal records obtained by NPR cite persistent safety violations involving accumulations of flammable and explosive coal and coal dust, the threat of rock falls, problems with ventilation or air flow in the mine, hazardous electrical equipment, and inadequate emergency evacuation procedures.
· Mining companies routinely appeal MSHA fines and it can take years for those appeals to be resolved. Right now, more than 18,000 citations and fines are waiting for administrative court action.
Sidney Award Judge Charles Kaiser said, “The fine detail of Berkes’ work and his determination in staying on this story was critical in keeping the issues fresh in the minds of all those involved in the process of mine safety reform.”
On December 1st, Massey announced it would close Freedom Mine number one, before a Federal Court had given the Labor Department the authority to seize it. Two days later, embattled Massey CEO Don Blankenship announced his retirement which came with, as Berkes reported, a $12 million-plus golden parachute which was in addition to the $18 million Blankenship earned in 2009. This is despite the fact that, as Berkes explains, “Blankenship presided over Massey while it amassed thousands of safety citations, violations and orders, close to $13 million in fines, and the scrutiny of civil and criminal investigators after the explosion in April that killed 29 mine workers at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine.”
Berkes spearheaded a team of NPR journalists which included deputy managing editor of investigations Susanne Reber, producer Robert Benincasa, and reporter Frank Langfitt. Langfitt and Berkes were partners on the story for several months, until Langfitt became NPR’s East Africa correspondent. Berkes did a dozen on-air stories for NPR about Massey, and wrote or co-wrote another fifteen pieces for the radio network’s website. Besides his NPR colleagues, Berkes also acknowledged his journalistic debt to Ken Ward Jr., the dean of American mining reporters, who runs Coal Tattoo, the definitive mining website of the Charleston Gazette of West Virginia.
Berkes, 56, has been NPR’s rural correspondent since 2003. Based in Salt Lake City, he focuses on the politics, economics and culture of rural America. In 2005 he was part of the NPR team which covered Hurricane Katrina. He has reported on seven different Olympic Games, and he was part of the NPR team which won a 2009 Edward R. Murrow Award for Sports Reporting for coverage of the Beijing Olympics.
A 1998 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Berkes also trains reporters, consults with radio news departments and serves as a guest faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Berkes has been a member of AFTRA since 1982.
For an interview with Berkes about his story, click here.
photo credit: Stephen Voss
The Sidney Award is given once a month to an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which also awards the annual Hillman Prizes every spring. For more information please click here.
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For more information about the Sidney award and the Hillman Foundation contact Elissa Strauss at elissa.strauss@gmail.com.