News & Observer reporting revealed hidden truths, held the powerful to account in 2024
The News & Observer stayed true to its investigative journalism traditions in 2024, uncovering hidden truths and holding people in power to account throughout the year.
Several themes dominated the reporting this year, including the many ways that state legislative leaders use the state budget to devote taxpayer dollars to causes that helped themselves or their allies — with little public disclosure.
The investigative series Power & Secrecy, led by Dan Kane, revealed unusual money awards to nonprofits, businesses and elsewhere. In one case, outgoing state House Speaker Tim Moore committed some $45 million from an expanded state slush fund to help fix a traffic bottleneck in the newly formed congressional district where he was on the ballot. Moore announced the funding hours before his campaign confirmed his successful run for Congress.
Some appropriations, identified with help from David Raynor, have drawn the attention of a federal grand jury, which has issued subpoenas to at least one state agency, a UNC campus, Dare County, and six county commissioners.
Virginia Bridges reported evidence of police misconduct in two projects. Her Police Payouts project detailed costly settlements with people accusing Raleigh officers of mistreatment, many of them not previously disclosed to the public. Bridges also revealed how some North Carolina police have misused Tasers in ways that exceed limits imposed by a federal court.
After remnants of Hurricane Helene brought jaw-dropping destruction and a historic death toll to Western North Carolina, misinformation about recovery efforts bloomed across social media. As part of joint coverage with The Charlotte Observer, N&O reporters fact-checked extreme claims, exposing falsehoods regarding the government’s ability to create destructive storms, exaggerated estimates of the number of people missing after the storm and moves by government officials to evict people from temporary housing.
Below are more examples of The N&O’s most memorable accountability reporting from 2024.
Police surveillance in NC
In his Private Eyes investigation, Tyler Dukes revealed that North Carolina police have installed a growing number of privately owned cameras along public roads. They collect data on every vehicle that drives by, frequently allowing law enforcement from out of state access that data with no warrant required. These cameras have helped solve crimes. They have also helped misidentify citizens as criminal suspects.
Election watchdogs
Kyle Ingram and Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan detailed why GOP governor candidate Mark Robinson’s wife was ordered to pay $132,000 to the state as part of an investigation into her nonprofit.
Ingram reported on the state GOP chairman’s silence about a party primary candidate with a history of white supremacist and antisemitic statements and ties to a neo-Nazi organization.
Data analysis by Ingram revealed that North Carolina Black voters were twice as likely to have their ballots challenged in a dispute over a state Supreme Court race.
State government missteps
It’s no secret to North Carolina residents who have endured long and sometimes fruitless waits outside Division of Motor Vehicles offices that the agency lacks capacity to provide required services. Richard Stradling’s investigation into persistent staffing shortages revealed why.
In the home insurance realm, state residents are dealing with rising costs, claim denials and policy nonrenewals. Chantal Allam’s reporting showed why residents feel they are being left out of decisions about the industry’s push for higher rates.
Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi revealed that nearly 2,000 North Carolinians were still waiting on repairs to their homes following flooding and damage from hurricanes Matthew and Florence more than five years ago.
More state secrecy
Avi Bajpai documented effects from a hurriedly passed provision that essentially exempted state legislators from public records laws. After requesting copies of state legislators’ emails for just one day, Bajpai received nothing from the majority of the elected officials.
Bridges and Dukes documented how another last-minute budget provision from state lawmakers eliminated the public’s ability to see documents detailing why the state settles lawsuits alleging misconduct. Included is a memo on a settled lawsuit accusing campus and state system officials of turning “a willful blind eye” to teachers abusing and exploiting students over decades at UNC School of the Arts.
Perez Uribe and Ingram detailed ways that a proposed state bill would cut state oversight of political committees and corporate campaign contributions.
Kane documented the secrecy cloaking who pays for trips attended by state legislators and lobbyists. And negative impacts from reduced public access to information about state Board of Elections investigations into complaints alleging violations of laws governing state political campaign donations.
Inside the UNC System
Korie Dean detailed how some of UNC Chapel Hill’s 15 trustees routinely messaged university officials over the 2023-24 admissions cycle, seeking updates on prospective students’ application and admission status — including whether applicants might be admitted off a waitlist.
Dean and Bridges revealed that UNC-Chapel Hill police obtained a warrant to review private Instagram account information for a student group that organized a May commencement day protest on campus. The application explicitly asked that the student group be kept in the dark.
Dean also showed discrepancies in how the UNC System’s repeal of diversity, equity and inclusion requirements was implemented at the state’s 16 public universities. East Carolina University, for instance, was the only campus to require its Faculty Senate to scrub a committee’s ties to DEI — despite faculty activities being “pretty much exempt” from the system’s new policy.
People with power
Danielle Battaglia reported how devastation from Helene and a locked gate escalated a feud between U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx and her Western North Carolina neighbors.
Kane, Ingram and Raynor documented questionable behavior by North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, including his agency paying his friend and donor a high wage to drive him on state business. Some of 12 out-of-state road trips funded by DOI, they reported, took Causey to a small city in New Mexico, near where the commissioner has had family ties.
Ingram reported how a flag with connections to the Jan. 6 insurrection that was at the center of a controversy involving a U.S. Supreme Court justice was flown outside a beach home owned by N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby’s wife.
Taking care of business
Brian Gordon reported on how businesses follow the letter of the law when advertising jobs they can fill with foreign workers but in a way that makes it unlikely anyone will apply.
Gordon also held North Carolina officials accountable for optimistic claims about the value of business incentive programs, including his reporting that India-based Infosys Ltd. failed to achieve its target of hiring 2,000 people in Raleigh.
Missteps in Durham
Mary Helen Moore documented multiple stumbles by Durham government officials during 2024, including paying $37,000 to bring the artist Monica to a festival she said she was never contacted or booked for, evidence that Board of Education members broke state law by closing meetings to the public while coping with a crisis following errors calculating the cost of employee raises and lack of public disclosure about a county’s manager’s long paid leave.
Children at risk
When Tammy Grubb and Colleen Hammond dug into why the parents were charged in the deaths of three young children in Wake County, they discovered that the official count of children dying from abuse or neglect had increased since 2018 in North Carolina. This occurred at a time when the child protective offices across the state faced staffing shortages.
Bridges was first to reveal that the state was isolating incarcerated youth in locked rooms sometimes for 23 hours a day. It wasn’t behavior that prompted the confinements, it was largely due to staffing shortages.
More police accountability
Josh Shaffer reported how a pastor settled his lawsuit with a North Carolina town after he served eight years in prison for a robbery he did not commit. The settlement amount: $4.4 million.
Bridges broke the news that a Raleigh officer investigated after a post on his social media account called Juneteenth “a made-up holiday” was quietly suspended and then quietly retired, after collecting two raises.
Bridges was also first to report that North Carolina sheriffs may abandon a new rule requiring their deputies to complete training before getting to work. The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Education and Training and Standards Commission delayed an expected vote after the story was published.
School matters
When T. Keung Hui fact-checked an influential state lawmaker’s comments on North Carolina expanding funding for a private-school voucher program, he documented mistakes. In one, state Rep. Tricia Cotham said school choice is needed because a “predominance of our public schools that are rated with Ds and Fs.” North Carolina public schools do get A through F performance grades each. But only 33.5% of schools had D or F grades at that time.
After receiving an anonymous tip, Grubb confirmed that an Orange County Schools Board of Education member did not hold a doctorate degree despite a former superintendent’s announcement that she did years prior. Board member Jennifer Moore, who resigned, was referred to as “Dr. Moore” on the board’s website and at meetings.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you have investigative story tips or ideas for The News & Observer, please email them to investigations@newsobserver.com.
This story was originally published December 31, 2024 at 2:49 PM.
