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Placing second in the Phil Meyer Award, “40 Acres and a Lie” was a collaborative investigation by The Center for Public Integrity, Reveal, PRX and Mother Jones that dove into unfulfilled promises by the United States government.
“40 acres and a mule” was a government program that gave formerly enslaved people land during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War to help provide them with land to foster economic independence. But the government took nearly all of its promised reparations back later. This unkept promise left many African American families without the means to build generational wealth for the decades to come.
“I do think the part of what made this investigation so fascinating to me, and to a lot of people, is that people have heard of ‘40 acres and a mule.’ [It] has kind of lived somewhere in the ether, and I think within the Black community, [it's] something that is more well-known," said Nadia Hamdan, the Reveal audio producer who worked on this piece. "But what we found so interesting is that even for people that kind of knew a little bit about ‘40 acres,’ this was still new to them."
Hamdan shared that when the pitch from CPI came into Reveal, she jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the project.
The CPI team utilized artificial intelligence to unearth hidden documents from the Freedmen's Bureau by using visual recognition technology and to track down the people, places and stories, shedding light on the systemic failures and deliberate actions that prevented land redistribution to Black Americans.
“I am so fascinated by historical investigations and what they can teach us now, and so to see that this CPI team had dug up all of these documents that had never been seen before that could really shed a new light on a history that we think, or thought, we knew, I was so excited for it,” Hamdan said. “And then, of course, the challenge of, 'how do you then bring that into a radio show?' was something that I was very eager to figure out– and it was definitely something that needed to be figured out and took a lot of time.”
Hamdan and the journalists on the project traveled to multiple locations to interview sources and find color for the audio and written components. During the investigation and in the audio series, there were several occasions where the sources would ask for the recording to be turned off.
“As a radio producer, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to turn off the mic as many times as I have on these trips that we’ve taken for this story, and that was notable for me,” she recalled. “We realized this is because this is still so hard to talk about.”
Regarding the production of the three-part audio series, Hamdan said she was most saddened by how much had to be cut. The audio piece was originally slated for one hour. Despite trimming so much, the team settled on three installments, each an hour long.
“I love that I got to spend hours and hours of time in these places. But you know, with that comes hours and hours of tape. So much tape,” she said. “I think the hurdle for me was still enjoying the process of getting everything I could – and I will always do that, as any producer would – but then the slug is, okay, now I have so much, what do I do with it?”
Hamdan said it was probably one of the most difficult and most wonderful experiences she has had as a reporter and producer. “It was really a lot of fun, as difficult as it was,” she said, “to kind of sit with a story as long as I got to and get to work with everybody to be like ‘Okay, I’m bringing you the best pieces to help me make this sing.”
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