Impact Report 2023

In 2023, we continued to drive meaningful change through courageous reporting, like our extensive coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We published dozens of stories centered on Palestinian voices that drew wide audiences and held Israel and the U.S. accountable; our reporting on Meta’s suppression of Palestinian-related content was cited in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s letter to Mark Zuckerberg. We also uncovered critical safety issues at an autonomous vehicle company owned by GM that resulted in major changes at the company; exposed continued attacks on wildlife conservation; revealed crucial new information about India’s global targeting of dissidents; exposed the shoddy science that sent an innocent man to death row, which led to his release; and brought to light a secret diplomatic cable confirming U.S. involvement in Pakistan’s removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan from office.

Kelly Siegler achieved a nearly perfect conviction record during her career as a Houston prosecutor, winning 68 murder trials and 19 death sentences. She has since parlayed her talent for solving cold cases into reality TV celebrity, starring in “Cold Justice” and the recently launched “Prosecuting Evil With Kelly Siegler.”

Central to The Intercept’s investigation is Ronald Jeffrey Prible, who was incarcerated in Beaumont, Texas, for a string of bank robberies when Siegler charged him with the cold case murder of a Houston family. Today, Prible faces execution despite the fact that the case against him has unraveled. Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura tell the story of the Beaumont informants who conspired against Prible, each trying to game the system in an effort to shave time off their sentences. Details of the snitch ring only came to light after Prible and another man Siegler sent to prison realized that she had relied on the same network of informants in both their cases. Despite strict limits on communication, the two men, whose cases were otherwise unrelated, managed to connect the dots.

Siegler not only gained a reputation as a prosecutor who was willing to help informants seek sentence reductions, but she also advocated for them even when she didn’t consider their information reliable, court records show. Taken together, the records paint a damning picture of a prosecutor who cut corners and betrayed her professional obligations in order to secure convictions in weak or shaky cases. At best, Siegler was reckless in her use of informants and careless about scrutinizing the information they provided. At worst, as Prible’s lawyers argue, she actively conspired to use dubious testimony from a ring of snitches to win a conviction despite knowing the case wouldn’t otherwise hold up — framing an innocent man for murder.

The field of forensic genetic genealogy exploded in 2018 with the arrest of the Golden State Killer, who was identified after crime scene evidence was uploaded to a commercial DNA database. Hundreds of cold cases have since been solved by genealogists, working with law enforcement, who comb through the genetic information of hundreds of thousands of people in search of perpetrators. But practitioners in the fledgling field operate with little oversight.

The Intercept has long been a trusted destination for sources seeking to expose misconduct in the world of forensics. The company that owns GEDmatch increased database security as a result of The Intercept’s reporting and created new terms of service for genealogists who access its data on behalf of law enforcement. One group of genealogists whom The Intercept identified as having violated privacy rules apologized for failing to consider the ethical implications. Attorneys for a defendant cited The Intercept’s article in a filing seeking information about the genetic investigation that led to his arrest; the case is a high-profile example of how police and prosecutors have fought to keep such details from being turned over to criminal defendants. The story was also featured at the International Symposium on Human Identification, an annual conference focused on DNA forensics.

In the Northern Rockies, grizzlies and wolves are coming under threat from hunters and ranching interests. Border walls in the desert Southwest are severing jaguar and ocelot habitats. All over the American West, attacks on wildlife conservation are ramping up — with extractive interests, the livestock industry, border enforcement zealots, and trophy hunters uniting under a Trumpian, anti-government banner aimed at smashing every regulation protecting endangered species.

Ryan Devereaux uses a court case to explain the fight against a mine in Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. He draws on rich human sources to tell the story of the people affected by a government effort to use so-called cyanide bombs to target undesirable wildlife. And, partnering with reporter Jimmy Tobias, he tracks the utter failure to enforce grizzly bear protections bestowed by the conservation movement’s landmark achievement, the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act.

A day after The Intercept’s report on border lights threatening wildlife in the Southwest, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it was reviewing the environmental impact of its lights and would adhere to applicable habitat conservation laws. And four months after our story on cyanide bombs, the Bureau of Land Management — the nation’s largest land holder — ended its use of the controversial weapon.

When the United Auto Workers union went on strike against the Big Three automakers in September, Daniel Boguslaw was ready. For nearly a year, he had been reporting on developments within the union — writing about its strike fund and a shock election that saw a reformer eke out a narrow win following years of corruption investigations into the old guard.

After Shawn Fain assumed the union’s presidency, Boguslaw kept at it, writing about how President Joe Biden’s decisions risked alienating union workers. At the outset of the historic strike, he wrote about how the union’s cunning strategy left the carmakers confused as they tried to prepare for workers walking off the job. He landed several scoops as the strike wore on, including one about Fain filing a labor complaint against Sen. Tim Scott and another about how diversity groups at Stellantis were mobilizing their members to provide scab labor.

In a crowded field of coverage about the burgeoning world of self-driving cars, reporting by Sam Biddle and Ken Klippenstein has distinguished The Intercept for exposing the details that big corporate interests want to hide from the public. Biddle and Klippenstein showed how major companies kept information about the dangers of self-driving cars hidden and got a scoop showing the (literal) impact of an AI car gone haywire, respectively.

GM’s self-driving car, Cruise, had already experienced embarrassing issues in public pilot programs when Biddle’s reporting on internal company safety reports exposed huge problems with the ability of the car’s automated driving systems to detect, under certain circumstances, children and holes in the ground. Klippenstein’s reporting showed the world, for the first time, what it looks like when a self-driving Tesla malfunctions, stops in the middle of a freeway, and causes an eight-car pileup, along with nine injuries. In both cases, The Intercept’s stories showed the dangers of how AI-powered tech startups prioritize growth over safety.

After dozens of major news outlets picked up the story, Tesla’s stock plummeted. Rep. Jan Schakowsky called for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to rein in Tesla’s advanced driving systems and Rep. Chuy Garcia said, “Self-driving vehicles have been proven unsafe and present major safety risks.” The Cruise story was widely shared and picked up by major media and business press. Less than two weeks after publication, the CEO of the company stepped down, and a month after that, nine other executives at the firm were let go. The parent company, GM, is reportedly taking control of the firm.

“The Villages Vendetta” is Ryan Grim’s incredible story of a 72-year-old political prisoner in Florida: a retiree who tried to use the democratic system to fight back against a tax hike benefiting local developers but ended up in jail. After being elected to the county commission and passing legislation to roll back the tax increase, Oren Miller was removed from office following an intervention by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, put on trial for a bogus perjury charge, and given an abnormally harsh sentence. 

Miller’s story is an egregious and overlooked example of undemocratic rule in DeSantis’s Florida, and it could only have been told by a dogged reporter talented in both human sourcing and investigative work. Grim weaves tax documents, state sunshine laws, and trial transcripts into a compelling narrative that defies belief.

The court — a three-judge panel of Republican appointees — took the unusual step of not just vacating the previous conviction, but also instructing the lower court to insert a new verdict of “not guilty.” Miller can now run for office again — a dramatic comeback made possible by Grim’s investigation.

In the second year of Russia’s war on Ukraine, The Intercept has continued to carve out a unique niche in this war coverage, asking tough questions that are overlooked by mainstream outlets. One example of this is “Enemies Within,” a deeply reported narrative feature by staff reporter Alice Speri, who traveled to Ukraine in July. The piece tells the story of a Ukrainian woman who acquiesced to a Russian soldier’s threats of sexual violence to protect her 13-year-old daughter — only to find herself investigated as a collaborator, and later formally recognized as a victim of wartime sexual violence. 

The story was born out of extensive conversations with people in or close to Ukraine about harsh collaboration legislation that was passed in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Human rights advocates privately worried that the broad application of the law, combined with social stigma, meant that some victims of Russian sexual violence were not reporting their assaults out of fear of being investigated as collaborators. While some civil society groups have called on the government to amend the law and apply it more selectively, politicians have refused to budge, worried about being seen as soft on perceived traitors amid Russia’s grueling war on Ukraine.

The Intercept challenged the dominant narrative that Israel’s punishing response to the October 7 Hamas attacks has been justified and that the U.S., as Israel’s closest ally, has an obligation to support it with limitless money and weapons. Our breaking stories and incisive analyses share a foundational premise: that the violence between Israelis and Palestinians did not start on October 7, and, in fact, Israel has imposed occupation and siege upon Palestinians for the past 75 years. 

The Intercept has reported on pro-Israel lobbying and calls for ceasefire in Congress, the Biden administration’s material support for Israel, censorship of pro-Palestinian content on social media, retaliation against workers and students who express solidarity with Palestinians, and on-the-ground dispatches from Gaza and the West Bank. As a standout example of how The Intercept’s critical coverage over the years of the Israel–Palestine conflict continues to resonate with audiences, former Intercept writer Mehdi Hasan’s 2018 explainer video about how Israel helped create Hamas has recirculated widely in the weeks after October 7 and reached over 1.2 million views.

Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim uncovered crucial new information about the scope of India’s global targeting of Sikh dissidents based on intelligence documents from inside both Pakistan and India. Beyond breaking news about a brazen effort by a foreign government to assassinate its political enemies abroad, the stories also shed light on ongoing geopolitical dynamics around the U.S. relationship with India.

After Canada accused India of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil earlier this year, Hussain reported that the FBI had issued similar warnings to Sikhs in the U.S. — well before the Department of Justice revealed that the U.S. government had intervened in an attempted assassination in the U.S. Then, Hussain and Grim together reported on a Pakistani intelligence document showing the Indian government’s assassination targets inside Pakistan. Finally, The Intercept obtained a document in which India told its U.S. and Canadian consulates to work with its intelligence agencies to confront Sikh groups abroad — naming Nijjar as a “suspect” it wished to hold “accountable.” This constitutes the first independent public evidence of Canada’s claim. 

The full scope of impact is still unfolding as revelations about India’s assassination program have sparked ongoing congressional investigations. We look forward to continuing reporting on this beat throughout 2024; our newsroom is uniquely equipped to tackle such stories, especially when they might be too risky for local reporters, because we have the infrastructure to support reporting on classified documents. Our reporters are also now very trusted in the Sikh and Indian Muslim diaspora communities, where we have found a plethora of stories about the Indian government and Hindu fundamentalism waiting to be told. 

Since April 2022, Pakistan has been embroiled in a political and financial crisis sparked by the military-orchestrated removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan from office. At the center of the crisis was a secret Pakistani diplomatic cable, known internally as a cypher. Khan had alluded to it, saying the U.S. had pushed to have him removed, but the Pakistani government denied the cable’s existence. The conventional wisdom held it was the stuff of conspiracy theories — until The Intercept obtained and published the contents of the document, confirming what Khan, by then in custody, had been saying. 

Shortly thereafter, the Pakistani government confirmed The Intercept’s reporting. The U.S. push to remove Khan, according to the cable, had been made because of the prime minister’s “aggressive neutrality” on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A subsequent blockbuster Intercept report showed the upside to Pakistan following the removal: In response to Pakistan’s never-before-confirmed arms sales for Ukraine’s war effort, the U.S. helped Pakistan secure favorable terms for an IMF bailout that shored up its stumbling economy.

The story was distributed at a large scale from a partnership with Al Jazeera’s social distribution platform AJ+ and was widely picked up, though notably not by Washinton’s loyal court media. As the cypher story was rapidly circulating, readers in Pakistan reported that their access to The Intercept was spotty, suggesting some repression of the article.

Amid a cascade of tributes marking Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, The Intercept published a searing exposé of his direct role in U.S. attacks on Cambodian villages that were previously unknown to the outside world. The assaults, which killed and wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians in the 1970s, were uncovered by veteran journalist and longtime Intercept contributor Nick Turse. Following clues from exclusive U.S. government records assembled through hundreds of hours of archival research, Turse scoured rural Cambodia, sometimes searching for days for a single village. In all 13 villages he visited in 2010, Turse was the first person ever to interview victims and survivors of U.S.-initiated wartime attacks. 

The product of more than a decade of shoe-leather reporting on two continents, “Kissinger’s Killing Fields” upended the news cycle by forcing dozens of other outlets (like New York Magazine, Politico, and Foreign Policy), to acknowledge Kissinger’s lethal legacy. The New York Times also published an op-ed by Turse highlighting his reporting and linking to The Intercept. By focusing on Cambodian witnesses who never had an opportunity to tell their stories, Turse provided a measure of accountability and a forum for survivors to ask long-denied questions. When Turse put those questions to Kissinger, he responded with sarcasm, accusing Turse of trying to catch him in a lie. 

Within hours of Kissinger’s death announcement in November, The Intercept published a deeply reported and contextual obituary by Turse. There were “few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger,” veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody told Turse. As the Pentagon reconsiders its civilian casualty policies, Kissinger’s war in Cambodia provides critical context; as historian Greg Grandin noted, the “justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war.”

Many of The Intercept’s stories make an impact years after their initial publication. Here is a selection of stories published prior to 2023 that made an impact this year.

Death and Dereliction

After 29 Years on Death Row, Barry Jones Was Dumped at a Bus Station. But He Was Finally Free.

Liliana Segura
2017-2023

In June, Barry Jones was released into the arms of his family after three decades on Arizona’s death row.

Liliana Segura introduced the public to Barry Jones, publishing her first investigation in 2017. She was the only journalist to provide in-depth coverage of the whiplash legal saga that followed, which saw Jones’s death sentence overturned by a federal district judge and then reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which embraced Arizona’s argument that “innocence isn’t enough,” gutting its own precedent and destroying a lifeline for people who received poor legal representation at trial.

Segura was sought out as an expert on the ruling; she appeared as a guest on podcasts hosted by Slate and Vox, and her reporting was the basis for a podcast released by Gimlet’s “Crime Show.” Her 11-part series on Barry Jones was closely followed by the federal judge overseeing the case, who set in motion the negotiations that led to Jones’s release, telling state officials that a resolution “would be in everybody’s best interest, including society’s best interest.”

For Owners of Amazon’s Ring Security Cameras, Strangers May Have Been Watching Too

Sam Biddle
2019

The Federal Trade Commission noted in its press release that Ring employees “illegally surveilled” customers — news that The Intercept broke. 

In January 2019, Sam Biddle published an investigation revealing that Amazon’s smart doorbell company, Ring, gave its employees “virtually unfettered” access to watch live videos of its customers. Sources told Biddle that the employees watched footage from both inside and outside households, a claim that a Ring spokesperson denied at the time. But in May this year, Amazon agreed to pay nearly $6 million in a settlement for Ring privacy violations in a case filed by the Federal Trade Commission.

How Two Immigration Lawyers Created a Rapid-Response Team to Combat ICE

Alice Speri
2019

The story was made into a 2023 MSNBC documentary film, “Guerrilla Habeas,” in partnership with Trevor Noah, who served as executive producer.

Alice Speri wrote about two attorneys who created a “guerrilla habeas” team to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting people. Speri first met the attorneys when she reported on their client who was wrongfully deported and then brought back to the United States. The team was established as a response to the Trump administration’s escalation of detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants who had lived in the country for decades.

It’s crucial to connect with communities affected by issues, lawmakers and influencers, and supporters and organizers so our stories don’t just inform people but also drive change. The Intercept invests in storytelling across platforms and works with partners to reach key audiences.

We have particularly been focusing on partnering with local news outlets because it’s important to us that the communities we are reporting on have access to our stories. Not only do we provide important investigative reporting to resource-starved local news outlets, we also believe this is key strategy for ensuring our stories have impact.

Here’s a full list of the organizations The Intercept collaborated with in 2023:

+972 Magazine
AJ+
Amjambo Africa
Ard
Carolina Public Press
Die Zeit
Drilled
High Country News
Internazionale
Mediapart
Montana Free Press
Mother Pelican Journal
Sahan Journal
Scroll.in
The Assembly
The Continent
The Invisible Institute
The Lever
The Pulitzer Center
The Texas Observer
Truthdig
Zabarona

The Intercept has one of the largest membership programs in nonprofit journalism, with more than 51,000 readers and listeners donating in 2023 — a number that has grown fivefold since the membership program launched in 2017. More than 400,000 people subscribe to our email newsletter, and we reach over 2 million users across all social platforms.

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