It all began when Will Fitzgibbon received a tip in 2023.
The reporter at the nonprofit newsroom The Examination was told that the metals trading company Trafigura was buying lead in Africa and selling it overseas to make car batteries.
He knew enough about the lead trade to understand this might be the key to exposing one of the dirtiest secrets of the automobile industry: that big car companies were profiting from the dangerous practices of unregulated factories in farflung countries. Lead poisoning kills more people every year than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, but the market for recycled lead is opaque enough that buyers almost always escape accountability for the harm caused by processing it unsafely.
“It blew my mind to learn that something as toxic as lead was pouring into the United States from Nigeria with so little awareness,” Fitzgibbon said. “The companies that bought and used the lead — and the government of Nigeria itself — didn’t know who was being poisoned. We wanted to find out.”
Fitzgibbon brought the tip to New York Times reporter Peter Goodman, who has written extensively about supply chains, and the two, joined by colleagues, set about exposing a public health disaster in Ogijo, Nigeria, where lead recycling facilities belch poisonous soot into the air. Together, the journalists then traced the recycled lead to a major battery maker in the United States and revealed that automakers had for decades known that producing the lead for their car batteries had poisoned people, but had failed to act.
“In this moment of global complexity and rapid misinformation, the role of investigative journalism in uncovering truth and holding power to account is more essential than ever,” USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay said. “This year’s winners demonstrate extraordinary rigor, collaboration and moral clarity in tracing a public health crisis from a town in Nigeria to boardrooms and factories in the United States. We are honored to partner once again with the Ring Foundation to recognize reporting that not only informs the public, but drives real-world change, protects vulnerable communities and advances justice across borders.”
The reporters commissioned a nonprofit research organization in Nigeria to conduct the country's most comprehensive study of lead poisoning and lead contamination, involving 70 people and about 50 soil samples, revealing that 70% of people evaluated living near and working in Ogijo’s lead recycling facilities had lead poisoning. More than half the children tested had lead in their blood at levels associated with lifelong brain damage; soil testing showed contamination near schools, markets and homes.
“What we saw up close in Ogijo was horrifying and shocking by itself,” Goodman said. “But from the beginning, we understood that we had a greater responsibility than simply bringing that to light. We had to expose the connections to companies in the United States and Europe that were effectively tolerating the mass poisoning of entire communities as the cost of doing business.”
Exposing those connections was challenging. Fitzgibbon and Goodman took photos of shipping containers parked outside factories in Nigeria and followed them to the Port of Baltimore. And, after building sources inside trading companies and poring over transportation records, they confirmed connections between the trading company Trafigura, trucking companies and one of the world’s largest battery manufacturers, East Penn Manufacturing. That company supplies Ford, Honda and BMW, among others.
The Examination translated their work into Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin and distributed it on Whatsapp and also collaborated with local journalists to publish the findings in Nigerian media. Also contributing to the series: Taylor Turner of The Examination, Samuel Granados of The New York Times, Finbarr O’Reilly and Carmen Abd Ali, contributors to the Times, and the staff of The Examination and the Times.
The reaction was swift and decisive. The Nigerian government shut down seven factories and the Nigerian Senate declared a national emergency. East Penn, meanwhile, acknowledged that it had failed to monitor its suppliers, halted purchases from Nigeria, and instituted tighter rules.
“Data doesn’t lie and the results from blood and soil testing were shocking,” Fitzgibbon said. ““Every battery maker and every car company is now on notice to know where their lead comes from and who it might be harming.”
“The achievement of this story was to connect the poison inflicted on children and workers in a Nigerian town directly to the factories of major car makers,” the judges said. “No one else was able to piece this story together. If not for this work, the factories would have continued raining toxic pollution, endangering the future of countless communities.”
This year’s Selden Ring Award panel included returning judges Linda Villarosa (lead judge), contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine; Ken Bensinger, media reporter, The New York Times; Manny García, Knight Foundation Executive Director, Florida International University’s Lee Caplin School of Journalism; Jessica Garrison, editor, LA Material; Topher Sanders, investigative reporter, ProPublica; with first-time judges Andrea Bernstein, investigative journalist and author; and Nicole Dungca, investigative reporter, The Washington Post.
“In a media environment defined by speed, noise and constant change, it is more important than ever to pause and recognize the depth, care and persistence that investigative journalism requires,” Gordon Stables, USC Annenberg’s director of schools, said. “We are deeply grateful to our judging panel for dedicating their expertise and time to evaluating an exceptionally strong field of 77 entries. Their work ensures that reporting which uncovers hidden harms, informs the public and creates meaningful accountability receives the recognition it deserves.”
Since 1989, the Ring Foundation has partnered with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism to present the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. The $50,000 annual award was established with the support of Southern California businessman and philanthropist Selden Ring. It underscores the critical importance of investigative journalism in today’s society.
The Selden Ring Award judges also recognized the work of two finalists.
The Associated Press, Coverage of the War in Gaza
In the summer of 2025, Associated Press (AP) reporter Miriam Dagga filed a story from a morgue in Gaza, writing of an infant who had died from hunger. The child weighed two pounds less than when she’d been born, her ankle thinner than a man’s thumb. Dagga’s photo series about starving children ricocheted around the world, yet Dagga did not live to see that. She was killed in an IDF strike on a Gaza hospital shortly after the series ran. But the outcry following the series led to pressure to increase food aid, and bring the fighting to an end.
When the Israel-Hamas war broke out over two years ago after the Oct. 7 attacks, The AP was one of just a handful of news organizations with a permanent presence in Gaza. Bearing witness was just the start of the AP team’s efforts. In the months and years that followed, the AP reporting broke key stories about Gazan women who were pressured to trade sex for food and supplies, a secret U.S. plan to move Gazans to Africa, and chaos at a food distribution site. In the course of this reporting, the team used scrupulous investigative techniques, stitching together testimonies from contractors, videos, internal reports and text messages, and carefully verifying taped evidence with forensic audio analysis. The AP team was able to use their on-the-ground network to document stories of sex abuse in a society where sexual harassment and assault are considered taboo topics. “At a time when the stakes of investigative journalism couldn’t be higher,” the judges said, “the AP team’s work in Gaza shows the power and impact of relentless, on-the-ground reporting while maintaining the highest standards of investigative journalism in unimaginably difficult conditions.”
The Wall Street Journal, Toxic Fumes Are Leaking Into Airplanes
For decades, airline industry insiders have downplayed the threat of so-called “fume events” — when toxic gases from jet engines are pumped into the airplane’s cabin — calling it a rare and largely harmless phenomenon. The Wall Street Journal, in this deeply researched series, resoundingly showed otherwise. Benjamin Katz teamed up with fellow aviation reporter Andrew Tangel and data reporter John West to dive into the complexities of airline engineering, proving that the incidence of fume events had in fact soared on some of the world’s most common jetliners — and that they were far from innocuous. The reporters discovered that manufacturers had long tried to keep evidence of the problem from public view and told, in wrenching detail, the stories of pilots, flight attendants and paying passengers who inhaled poisonous gases, suffering dizziness, nausea and, in some cases, permanent neurological damage. “These revelations are sobering to anyone who boards an airplane,” the judges wrote. “Others have attempted to tell this important story, but The Wall Street Journal brought the receipts.” Since publication, multiple airlines have taken measures to retrofit their planes to reduce the risk of such events and to fast-track new technologies that can help clean up cabin air, potentially making air travel safer for countless millions every year.
Members of the 2026 Selden Ring Award judging panel recused themselves in cases when entries from their outlets were under consideration, including Ken Bensinger, who recused himself from discussion or voting for “The Poisonous Lead Trade.”