Deterring Democracy: series of investigative reports for Channel 4 News

I spent a year attached to the investigations desk at Channel 4 News and spent a large portion of my time on this series about the Trump campaign’s use of big data to dissuade Black voters from participating in the electoral process.

The team won the Royal Television Society News Technology award for our investigation into ‘The Trump Data Leak’. RTS judges called it “data reporting at its best”. The work was also nominated for a BAFTA.

The investigation was based on a massive leak of campaign data. Two of us spent months learning SQL and recreating the campaign database. This allowed us to reveal that 3.5 million Black voters - a disproportionate number - were marked for ‘deterrence’ meaning they would be targeted with messaging not to vote at all.

A follow up story focused on the campaign’s use of fear-based messaging to target white voters, and we collaborated with the Miami Herald for this follow up on deterrence and the targeting of Hispanic voters in Florida.