David Cay Johnston - Reporting

Reporting

In 1968, at age 19, Johnston began his career at the San Jose Mercury News. In 1973, he left the Mercury News to study at the University of Chicago under a five-month fellowship. He then took a position as an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press in its Lansing bureau from 1973 to 1976 and later worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 1976 to 1988. Johnston then worked as a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1988 to 1995. He joined The New York Times in February 1995.

As a reporter Johnston investigated Los Angeles Police Department political spying and other abuses, the hotelier Barron Hilton, misuse of charitable funds at United Way, news manipulation at WJIM-TV in Lansing, Michigan, and Donald Trump's net worth. He once hunted down a killer whom the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department failed to catch, resulting in an innocent man winning acquittal at his fifth trial.

From February 1995 to April 2008, he was the tax reporter with The New York Times. For the next three years, until joining Reuters, he wrote "Johnston's Take," a column on tax policy for the nonprofit journal Tax Notes and its sister website tax.com, published by Tax Analysts. In 2009 he briefly wrote, "By The Numbers," a column for The Nation.

Johnston received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting "for his penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms. "Johnston described how corporations were paying less in taxes, even as individuals were paying more, with even well-known companies like Colgate-Palmolive, Compaq Computer and United Parcel Service engaging in "what the courts called shams." A court found that Merrill Lynch saved AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) $180 million in "sham" money transfers among foreign companies. However, the I.R.S. is more likely to audit the poor than the rich, Johnston reported.

In 2001, Johnston investigated the claim that estate taxes, which Republicans call "death taxes," were so high that farm families were being forced to sell their family farms in order to pay the taxes. This claim was presented to prove the need to eliminate the inheritance tax. Johnston challenged those who made that claim, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, to cite an example of a farm that was lost because of estate taxes, and they were unable to do so. Economists told Johnston that it was a myth. An Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns found that almost no working farmers owe estate taxes. Estate taxes are not assessed on the first $1.35 million net worth, and then rise from 43% to 55% after $3 million. But most wealthy people use legal ways to reduce their estate taxes to 25% for the largest estates.

He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 "for his stories that displayed exquisite command of complicated U.S. tax laws and of how corporations and individuals twist them to their advantage." He was also a finalist in 2000 "for his lucid coverage of problems resulting from the reorganization of the Internal Revenue Service." Like columnist Steven Pearlstein, Johnston has won praise for his writings even though he has no degree in economics. Johnston studied economics at the University of Chicago graduate school and six other colleges, earning the equivalent of six years of college credits but no awarded degree, because he took upper level and graduate level courses almost exclusively, and did not stay at any one school long enough.

Johnston has been critical of news media coverage of the 2008 $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. In a letter to American journalist and blogger Jim Romenesko, Johnston wrote, "In covering the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street don't repeat the failed lapdog practices that so damaged our reputations in the rush to war in Iraq and the adoption of the Patriot Act. Don't assume that Congress must act instantly, as so many news stories state as if it was an immutable fact. Don't assume there is a case just because officials say there is." Johnston has been cited favorably by Glenn Greenwald as well as other bailout critics. On September 26, 2008, Johnston said: "If you look around, you'll notice that banks are still making ordinary loans to ordinary businesses. Your mailbox is still full of proposals to sell you credit cards and extend you debt. The Internet still has ads for these very toxic mortgages that are at the heart of this. They're being advertised all over the Internet."..."And my point is not to argue that there is or is not a crisis, but that journalists need to begin not by questioning around the edges but by going to the core question. Is this the least expensive way to do this? Are there market solutions that might be applied?"