Filter:
- Show All
- After the Flood
- Body Scanners
- Brain Wars
- Buying Your Vote
- ChangeTracker
- College Debt
- Debt Inc.
- Dialysis
- Dispatches from Freedom Summer
- Disposable Army
- Dollars for Doctors
- Examining Medicare
- Eye on Health Care Reform
- Eye on Loan Modifications
- Eye on the Bailout
- Eye on the Stimulus
- Failing the Fallen
- Fed Tapes
- Finding Oscar
- Foreclosure Crisis
- Fracking
- Freddie Mac
- Free the Files
- Guns
- Injection Wells
- Internships
- Law and Disorder
- Life and Death in Assisted Living
- Lost to History
- Nuclear Safety
- Nursing Homes
- Obamacare and You
- Omniscan
- Out of Order
- Overdose
- Patient Safety
- Post Mortem
- Presidential Pardons
- ProPublica Reporting Network
- Red Cross
- Redistricting
- Restraints
- Segregation Now
- Sex and Gender
- Surveillance
- Tainted Drywall
- Temp Land
- The Drone War
- The Prescribers
- The Syria Documents
- The Wall Street Money Machine
- Tobacco Debt
- Unforgiven
- When Caregivers Harm
Selected Interactive News Applications
The Millions New York Counties Coulda Got
In 1999, New York counties had a choice to make. They had just been promised annual payments from tobacco companies as part of a national settlement to reimburse them for smoking-related health care costs. Like winning the lottery, they could either get small payments indefinitely—or take a lump sum immediately by entering into “securitization” deals. Counties knew that these deals would mean less money in the long run, but bankers said they offered protection in case the payments shrank or went away. Now the cost is clear: millions pledged to investors that counties could have kept for themselves.
Losing Ground: Southeast Louisiana is Disappearing, Quickly
Scientists say one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history—the rapid land loss occurring in the Mississippi Delta—is rushing toward a catastrophic conclusion. ProPublica and The Lens explore why it’s happening and what we’ll all lose if nothing is done to stop it.
Timeline: The Tortured History of the Senate’s Torture Report
It has been more than five years since the Senate began investigating the CIA’s detainee program, a period marked by White House indecisiveness, Republican opposition, and what we now know was CIA snooping.
Tobacco Bonds May Be Dangerous to Your State’s Financial Health
After a bruising legal fight, tobacco companies agreed in 1998 to compensate 46 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories for the health-related costs of smoking. Wall Street helped turn their annual payments into upfront cash by selling bonds to investors. Some of the deals included a form of high-risk debt, capital appreciation bonds, which obligated governments to pay out billions of their tobacco income in the future.
A Disappearing Planet
Today’s extinction rates rival those during the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The NSA Revelations All in One Chart
We plotted the NSA programs, showing which ones fall squarely into the agency’s stated mission of foreign surveillance, and which ones are more controversial.
Can Schools in Your State Pin Kids Down? Probably.
Public schoolchildren across the country were physically restrained or isolated in rooms they couldn’t leave at least 267,000 times in the 2011-2012 school year, despite a near-consensus that such practices are dangerous and have no therapeutic benefit. Many states have little regulation or oversight of such practices. This map shows where your state stands.
Restraint Techniques
A Minnesota Department of Education report shows these three common restraints. So-called prone restraints are known to restrict breathing and can be lethal to children. About half of states don’t have a law prohibiting public schools from using such restraints. Minnesota doesn’t allow prone restraints on disabled children and will ban the tactics altogether after August 2015.
Ambulances for Dialysis Patients on Rise
New Jersey leads the nation in average annual Medicare spending on ambulance services per dialysis patient, billing for unusually large numbers of non-emergency ambulance rides, according to a our analysis of Medicare payment data. Several ambulance providers said they’ve heard of providers who sign up patients who don’t need the service — a form of fraud. These charts show spending by state from 2001 to 2011, compared to national averages. Sort by the most-recent year or by state.
Where Do the Guns Traced in Your State Come From?
Nearly a third of the 155,000 guns officials recovered in 2012 were traced back to sources outside the state they were found in, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Use this tool to see firearms traces in each state that year.
Treatment Tracker
Medicare recently released, for the first time, details on 2012 payments to individual doctors and other health professionals serving the 46 million seniors and disabled in its Part B program. Part B covers services as varied as office visits, ambulance mileage, lab tests, and the doctor’s fee for open-heart surgery. Use this tool to find and compare providers.
School Segregation After Brown
Hundreds of school districts were placed under court order to desegregate following the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Many communities do not know the status of these orders. Use this tool to find out whether your district is or ever was under a desegregation order, and also to look at the levels of integration and segregation in your schools.
Desegregation Court Records
Search here for desegregation documents we collected during our reporting.
The Department of Labor’s Internships Investigations
In 2010, the Labor Department issued a new fact sheet clarifying when an intern needs to be paid under federal labor law. We collected the case files for all the internship investigations the Labor Department concluded in the three years after issuing new regulations.
A Deadly Surge in Tower Climber Accidents
Nineteen workers have died in communication tower accidents since 2013, a sharp rise from recent years. OSHA has announced new changes in how it polices the industry, including tracking what cell carrier or tower owner subcontractors had been working for when accidents occurred.
The Price of an Internship
Unpaid internships can help young workers advance their career goals. But they can also vary significantly in cost and quality. Explore college internship programs at different schools across the United States — or tell us about your experience interning for academic credit.
Doctor Payments on the Decline
Pharmaceutical company payments to health care professionals dropped between 2011 and 2012 among most of the companies and categories ProPublica tracks, driven in part by increased transparency as well as blockbuster drugs losing patent protection. Research payments, however, have increased among that group.
Bud’s Story, from the Records
Private Arthur ‘Bud’ Kelder died as a POW in the Philippines during World War II. His parents always hoped that his body would eventually be sent home. But despite clues, the military has never recovered his remains. Here are letters and others documents from his case from 1941 to 1950. The documents and photographs below are either from the National Archive or courtesy of John Eakin.
Chart: Trauma Hospitals Fail to Screen for Civilian PTSD
A growing body of research shows injured civilians, particularly those injured as a result of violence, are developing PTSD at rates comparable to veterans of war. But many hospitals are doing little to address the problem. We asked 21 top-level trauma centers in cities with the nation’s highest murder rates whether they screen injured patients for signs of PTSD.
Temp Worker Regulations Around the World
The United States has some of the weakest labor protections for temp workers in the developed world. Here, we map out how countries compare based on data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network
An obscure Arizona nonprofit disbursed millions in cash from anonymous donors. Some was spent on the 2012 elections.
Stasi Social Network Analysis
This hand-drawn graphic, which is undated, was made by the East German secret police and appears to show the social connections the Stasi gleaned about a poet they were spying on.
Tire Tracker
Use this database to look up how your tires are rated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Journalists: Send ProPublica Your Redaction Classics
The Obama administration’s take on transparency can be rather opaque. Send us your most memorable FOIA documents for our Redaction Classics collection.
ER Wait Watcher
Which emergency room will see you the fastest? We’ve got a handy guide for impatient outpatients.
How Well Did FEMA’s Maps Predict Sandy’s Flooding?
When Superstorm Sandy struck New York and New Jersey last year, the accuracy of FEMA’s flood-risk maps for the area, used to help guide development and set flood insurance rates, varied widely. In some cases, the data behind the maps dated as far back to the 1970s. Click a county below to see more about FEMA’s data for that county.
China’s Memory Hole: The Images Erased From Sina Weibo
ProPublica has been collecting images that have been deleted by censors from Sina Weibo, “China’s Twitter,” since May. We gathered a team of people proficient in Mandarin to read and interpret 527 deleted images collected during a two-week window this summer. The images provide a window into the Chinese elite’s self-image and its fears, as well as a lens through which to understand China’s vast system of censorship.
How the NSA’s Claim on Thwarted Terrorist Plots Has Spread
In the months since revelations about NSA surveillance began, intelligence officials and members of Congress have claimed that the agency’s efforts have thwarted 54 terrorist attacks. But a review of official statements shows the NSA has been inconsistent about how many plots have actually been thwarted and what the role the spying programs played. Despite a lack of evidence, Congress and the media have rushed to repeat the most extreme version of the NSA’s claims.
How Much Acetaminophen Are You Taking?
Many common over-the-counter drugs contain acetaminophen. Taking more than one at the same time increases your chance of “double-dipping”—accidentally overdosing.
Has the Gov’t Lied on Snooping? Let’s Go to the Videotape
Since Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the NSA’s surveillance programs, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that part of his congressional testimony was “erroneous.” But that’s not the only questionable comment by administration officials.
NSA Surveillance Lawsuit Tracker
The recent disclosure of sweeping surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has prompted a new wave of legal challenges to the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering programs.
Timeline: America’s Long Civil Rights March
ProPublica has created a timeline to appreciate the key moments and often differing aims of the government’s judicial and legislative branches in the ongoing clash over civil rights.
Tracking Intern Lawsuits
The complaints against Condé Nast, Warner Music and Gawker Media are the latest in a rising tide of lawsuits brought by unpaid interns, many of which are still in progress.
New Maps and a New Plan for New York
FEMA’s released new, preliminary flood insurance maps for New York City, which specify how likely areas are to flood. The new maps, which replace maps that used data from 1983, double the number of structures in flood zones.
Mass Surveillance in America: A Timeline of Loosening Laws and Practices
The evolution of the National Security Agency’s dragnet under Presidents Bush and Obama.
Your Hospital May Be Hazardous To Your Health
As part of our ongoing investigation into patient safety, ProPublica reporters Marshall Allen and Olga Pierce produced this interactive story in collaboration with PBS Frontline and Ocupop during a May 11-16 hackathon.
Prescriber Checkup
Medicare’s popular prescription-drug program now serves more than 35 million people, but the names of prescribers and the drugs they choose have never previously been public. Use this tool to find and compare doctors and other top prescribers in 2010.
Nonprofit Explorer
Use our database to find almost 616,000 tax-exempt organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as well as download their tax filings going back as far as 2001.
Play Our Experimental News Game: HeartSaver
HeartSaver is an experiment in news game design, built in two days for the April 2013 GEN Editors’ Lab Hackathon. How many lives can you save?
What Happened to the Gun Bill?
The Senate defeated several amendments to the proposed gun control bill, with only two amendments reaching the 60 votes necessary to pass. We break down how senators voted.
Where Congress Stands on Guns
Four months after the Newtown tragedy, the Senate resoundingly defeats gun control legislation. We break down how Senators voted on the bill.
Five Drugs the FDA Doesn’t Want You to Know Relied on Tainted Data
ProPublica was able to pinpoint five drugs whose approval rested, at least in part, upon data from a now defunct firm with “egregious” research violations
Interactive Map: See Where the Government is Lending after Sandy
See where the over 20,000 SBA rebuilding loans are, half of which fall in FEMA’s new advisory flood zones.
Updated: State Gas Drilling Regulatory Staff Tracker
How big is the natural gas drilling regulatory staff in your state?
How Disaster Aid Recipients Voted on Sandy Relief
Though the Sandy relief bill passed both the Senate and the House, many members of Congress voted no despite their own states receiving millions of dollars in federal disaster assistance in 2012.
Housing Segregation: The Great Migration and Beyond
Explore the great migration of African Americans from 1940 to 2000 and segregation in Northern cities.
What Kind of Body Scanner Does Your Airport Have?
Nearly 100 backscatter scanners were removed from major airports recently to speed up lines. See if they’re still in use at your airport.
Nursing Home Inspect
We’ve updated our app with new data and a new design, making it easier to find nursing home problems in your state.
Pipeline Safety Tracker
Every year the nation’s oil and natural gas pipelines suffer hundreds of ruptures and spills. We map major pipeline accidents from 1986 to the present.
How Much Did Independent Groups Spend Per Vote?
Although an unprecedented amount was spent by outside groups in an effort to influence the 2012 campaign, the candidates with the most super PAC funding were defeated Tuesday. Here’s a look at how much outside groups spent per vote in a few of the notable races.
Message Machine: Tracking Political Targeting
Political campaigns send many variations of each email to supporters. We’ve been collecting emails from political campaigns and tracking the variations. You can be a part of this project by forwarding political emails you get to emails@messagemachine.propublica.org.
Free the Files: Help ProPublica Unlock Political Ad Spending
Outside groups are spending millions of dollars hoping to influence political campaigns – but they’re hard to track down. Detailed information about spending is locked in documents filed at TV stations across the country. Help us uncover this spending by reviewing documents.
State-by-State: Underground Injection Wells
Through the Freedom of Information Act, ProPublica collected annual state regulatory summaries for the underground injection of waste that were submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency between late 2007 and late 2010.
Interactive: Stacking Up the Administration’s Drone Claims
How the government talks about a drone program it won’t acknowledge exists.
How Some Nonprofit Groups Funnel Dark Money Into Campaigns
Explore how tax-exempt groups active in the 2010 election spent millions of dollars on campaigns, sometimes reporting less political spending to the Internal Revenue Service than they did to election officials.
Graphic: Who are the Super PACs’ Biggest Donors?
An interactive chart showing the share of all contributions given by the top ten donors to each of the 12 largest super PACs.
Interactive: How Obama Drone Death Claims Stack Up
Obama administration assertions about the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes have varied widely. We charted every claim we could find.
Where Are the Foreclosure Deal Millions Going in Your State?
We contacted every state to see how they are spending the money they received from the foreclosure settlement. Here’s the most comprehensive breakdown available anywhere.
Murdoch’s Circle: The Growing News International Scandal
From phone hacking to bribery, the corruption at News International has involved many players—increasingly, ones close to Rupert Murdoch. We’ve mapped out the players involved in this growing debacle, organized by their proximity to Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and other senior staff.
Timeline: How Obama Compares to Bush on Torture, Surveillance and Detention
As the terrain and debate around national security shifts, we took a look back at some of the most controversial elements of George W. Bush’s national security policy, to see how much has changed under Obama – and how much has stayed the same.
Latest News Corp. Investigation Emails
Report your findings in over 160 News Corp. internal emails released today
Updated: Dialysis Facility Tracker
ProPublica obtained data about the performance of more than 5,000 U.S. dialysis clinics. Our Dialysis Facility Tracker allows patients to compare clinics on such measures as patient survival, infection control, hospitalization rates and transplant rates.
A Tangled Web: Who’s Making Money From All This Campaign Spending?
Many have been detailing the vast sums being raised by the presidential candidates and the super PACs supporting them. But where are all those millions being spent?
Sealing Loose Lips: Charting Obama’s Crackdown on National Security Leaks
A timeline of the Obama administration’s aggressive campaign against government leakers.
What the Frack is in That Water?
Environmentalists have repeatedly pressed regulators to compel oil and gas companies to report what chemicals they use in the drilling and fracking process. No one knows the exact makeup of the frack mixture or drilling muds, but this list breaks down the main ingredients revealed so far.
Message Machine: Reverse Engineering an Obama Email Campaign
Campaigns are increasingly tailoring their messages—and their funding requests—using massive databases of personal information about potential voters. Here are six variations of a Thursday night message from the Obama campaign, based on emails submitted by 190 recipients across the country.
Ponying Up: How Much Have Big Banks Been Docked for the Financial Crisis?
Nearly four years after the financial crisis, settlements with the big players on Wall Street keep coming out, one after the other. It can be hard to keep track of it all. So who’s been hit, with what, and for how much in total?
Taking Stock of the Stock Act: A Side-by-Side Comparison
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or Stock Act, recently passed in both chambers of Congress. We break down the main differences between the House and Senate versions, with a real-life scenarios that illustrate activities the bill targets.
Updated Recovery Tracker
Once again, we’ve taken all the data used on the government’s stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, spiffed it up and added thousands of other recovery spending records — the law doesn’t require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov.
Komen’s Contortions: a Timeline of the Charity’s Shifting Story on Planned Parenthood
The Komen foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood set off such an uproar that the charity quickly gave it back. We trace how their explanations changed along the way.
From Gung-Ho to Uh-Oh: Charting the Government’s Moves on Fracking
Fracking has only recently become a household word, but government involvement with the drilling technique goes back decades. We trace officials’ moves—and levels of caution—over time.
PAC Track: Now Includes Contributions
What and where are the super PACs spending?
SOPA Opera
Well-funded interests on either side of SOPA and PIPA are lining up support among members of Congress. This database keeps track of where members of Congress stand.
Rep. Jerry McNerney’s District
Democrats recognized that they could protect Jerry McNerney from being redistricted out of office by the Citizen’s Redistricting Commission.
Fair Districts Mass Proposals
Fair Districts Mass says it is an independent group seeking better representation for minorities, but it has proposed maps that call its motives into question.
Florida’s 3rd Congressional District
Congresswoman Corrine Brown, an African-American Democrat from Florida, represents one of the most irregularly shaped districts in the nation.
Dollars for Docs
Has Your Doctor Received Drug Company Money?
ALEC-Related Contributions
Use this database to find campaign contributions from some ALEC-affiliated groups to some ALEC-member state legislators.
The Opportunity Gap
ProPublica analyzed new data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights along with other federal education data to examine whether states provide students equal access.
How the Heart Rhythm Society Sells Access
The Heart Rhythm Society’s annual conference is a marketing bonanza for drug companies and medical device makers.
How Much Money Do Groups Receive From Industry?
In a response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, 33 professional associations and health advocacy groups listed their payments from the pharmaceutical, medical device and insurance industries. They also detailed the relationships that the groups’ executives and board members had with the same companies.
FOIA b(3) Exemptions
Information about watermelon handlers, avocado importers and caves are some of the categories of information that have been withheld from federal Freedom of Information Act requesters using sections of laws that are otherwise unrelated to disclosure. There are hundreds of such laws, according to data compiled by the Sunshine in Government Initiative. They fall under number three—known as b(3)—of the nine exemptions. Use our database to see how extensively agencies use b(3) exemptions.
Autopsies in the U.S.A.
ProPublica, in partnership with PBS “Frontline” and NPR, surveyed almost 70 of the largest coroner and medical examiner systems in the U.S.
FCIC Document Dive
When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its final report on the causes of the financial crisis, it released an extensive document archive. We’ve tried to make searching through it a bit easier. Use the form below to search for people, places, or organizations mentioned in the documents.
Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data
A series of technical and programming tutorials on how scraped, parsed, and organized data for “Dollars for Docs.”
Find Homes With Tainted Drywall
When the Consumer Products Safety Commission provided data in October, the agency said it had received fewer than 3,500 reports of tainted drywall. ProPublica and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune compiled a list of addresses from county property appraiser data and records in consolidated lawsuits filed in New Orleans federal court and found nearly twice that number: around 6,900 homes.
Interactive: Which Banks Got Emergency Loans from the Fed During the Financial Meltdown?
Wednesday the Federal Reserve released data on more than 21,000 loans and other deals it made through a dozen emergency programs created during the financial crisis. We’ve combined the Fed’s three programs that loaned directly to banks and other financial firms with the goal of getting them to start lending again.
CDOs’ Interlocking Ownership
See which CDOs exchanged pieces with other CDOs through our interactive feature that reveals the incestuous nature of Wall Street’s CDO business.
Chart: A Bank’s Best Customers
In the last two years of the boom, CDOs created by one bank commonly purchased slices of other CDOs created by the same bank.
BP Claims Tracker
Follow the damage claims from the Gulf Oil Spill paid by HP.
Bailout Scorecard
Our frequently updated database tracks every dollar and every bailout recipient. Check out our scorecard to see where the spending stands.
“What Health Care Reform Means” Stories
Using results from a questionnaire we did with American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, we examined how the proposed health care reforms will actually affect people facing common health care coverage situations.
Graphic: The Timeline of Magnetar’s Deals
How did Magnetar’s deals in subprime mortgage securities compare to the overall market’s?
Side By Side: Health Care Bill
Compare the Senate version of the 2010 Health Care overhaul bill with the final bill.
Tracking Nurses—What You Need to Know
How easy does your state make it to investigate licensed nurses online?
Loan Mods Tracker
How is the $75 billion home mortgage foreclosure prevention program performing?
Stimulus Speed Chart
Just how fast are federal agencies getting stimulus money out the door?
Unemployment Insurance Tracker
Tracking how long state unemployment insurance trust funds will hold up.
Get Our Data and Reporting Tools
We frequently publish data, and reporting tools like tipsheets and guides.