IVOH Thought Leader: Roberta Baskin

Roberta Baskin joined the Office of the Inspector General for Health and Human Services as the Director of Media Communications. In her new position, Roberta proactively finds ways to make the crackdown on Medicare fraud more transparent to the public. Prior to joining the federal government, Roberta won more than 75 journalism prizes, including three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Radio-Television News Directors Edward R. Murrow Award, and numerous Emmys. But her proudest achievements are righting wrongs, changing laws and transforming the way companies do business.

During her distinguished journalism career, Roberta has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity, the senior Washington correspondent for NOW with Bill Moyers, senior investigative producer for the ABC News magazine 20/20, chief investigative correspondent for the CBS News magazine 48 Hours, and contributed special reports to the CBS Evening News. Roberta began her career as an investigative reporter in Chicago and Washington D.C.

Many of her best known investigations have focused on human rights and corporate misconduct. Roberta broke international stories on Nike's sweatshops in Vietnam and the world's soccer industry relying on child labor in Pakistan to stitch soccer balls. Both investigations led to sweeping changes. Roberta's most recent investigation of a chain of dental clinics for children doing unnecessary drilling for millions of dollars in Medicaid money led to a 24-million dollar settlement with the Department of Justice. It also won a National Emmy and the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award.

Roberta is active in journalism organizations and has served on many boards of directors, including the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Journalism and Womens Symposium, the Center for Public Integrity, Images & Voices of Hope, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Committee, and the International Communications Forum-America. After being honored with a year-long Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, she served on the Nieman Foundation's Advisory Board, Executive Committee, and selection committee. She also was named an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute. Roberta taught a graduate school course on investigative reporting at Georgetown University, and has been a popular guest lecturer internationally from Baku to Budapest to Borneo. She's an avid scuba diver and likes to baskin' the sun whenever she can!

Roberta has written the essay, The Value of Tenacity as part of the IVOH Voices & Values of Journalism Project - listen to and read the entire collection of essays here.

Roberta's recent work and related links:

• Revealing How Dentists Profit by Abusing Children

• Small Smiles Investigation,  follow-up

• Lloyd Miner Injustice,  follow-up

• Organic Food Contamination,  follow-up

• Cheerleading Injuries

• Caffeine Addiction and Young People