T. Christian Miller

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T. Christian Miller
T. Christian Miller Mug.jpg
T. Christian Miller
Born1970 (age 49–50)
NationalityUnited States
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley
OccupationJournalist, author
EmployerProPublica
Known forInvestigative journalism
Spouse(s)Leslie L. Miller

T. Christian Miller is an investigative reporter, editor, author, and war correspondent for ProPublica.[1] He has focused on how multinational corporations operate in foreign countries, documenting human rights and environmental abuses. Miller has covered four wars — Kosovo, Colombia, Israel and the West Bank, and Iraq. He also covered the 2000 presidential campaign.[2] He is also known for his work in the field of computer-assisted reporting and was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2012 to study innovation in journalism.[3] In 2016, Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism with Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project.[4] In 2019, he served as a producer of the Netflix limited series Unbelievable, which was based on the prize-winning article.[5]

Career and biography[edit]

Miller grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. His mother, Linda Miller, was a member of the local school board who focused on integration issues.[6] His father, Donald H. Miller, was a research biochemist at the Medical University of South Carolina.[7] Miller graduated from Bishop England High School.

Miller began his career in journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He majored in English and minored in French while becoming the University Editor of the Daily Californian, an independent campus newspaper.[8] After college, he worked for the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times.[9]

In 1997, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times. While at that paper, he covered local, national and international news, opening the newspaper's first bureau in Bogota, Colombia. Miller was briefly held prisoner by the leftist Colombian guerrilla group known as the FARC, or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia,[10] an episode later documented in a short animated news feature.[11] Two of his reporters were later held captive by a second Colombian leftist group, the ELN, or Ejército de Liberación Nacional.[12]

Miller's investigative reporting in Colombia uncovered that a contractor for an American oil company, Occidental Petroleum, had helped to coordinate the bombing of civilians by the Colombian Air Force of a small town in northeastern Colombia which left 17 dead.[13] His coverage of the Santo Domingo bombing led to the U.S. suspending military aid to the Colombian Air Force[14] and to a judgement by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemning the Colombian government.[15]

Miller became a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times based in Washington, D.C. While there, Miller served as the only journalist in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to covering the Iraqi reconstruction.[16] Miller published a book on the subject, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq.[17]

In 2008, Miller was one of the founding employees of ProPublica, an independent, non-profit start-up dedicated to investigative reporting. While at ProPublica, Miller has published investigative projects with various news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times,[18] The New York Times,[19] The Washington Post,[20] Newsweek,[21] Salon,[22] National Public Radio,[23] This American Life,[24] ABC News 20/20[25] and PBS' Frontline.[26]

Miller is a leading figure in innovation in journalism, especially in transparency, trust and data-driven journalism.[27] He delivered the U.S. Army Creekmore Lecture in 2007, and has taught at the University of Southern California, Columbia University, Stanford University,[28] the University of California at Berkeley and the College of Charleston. He spent a year at Stanford University as a Knight Fellow, studying transparency and new models of journalism.[29] Miller has served as treasurer and board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, or the IRE, the nation's largest organization of investigative journalists.

Honors and awards[edit]

Miller has won numerous local, national and international awards. In 1999, he won the John B. Oakes Award for Environmental Journalism for his coverage of runaway growth in the Santa Monica Mountains. In 2004, he was awarded the Livingston Award for international reporting, one of the most competitive and prestigious reporting prizes in American journalism, for his coverage of children and war. In 2005, he won an Overseas Press Club award. In 2009, he won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award. In 2010, he won a George Polk award with Daniel Zwerdling of National Public radio for his work covering traumatic brain injuries in the U.S. military. In that same year, he was also given the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting on private contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.[30] In 2015, Miller, Marcela Gaviria, and colleagues from ProPublica and Frontline were awarded two News & Documentary Emmy Awards,[31] the Robert F. Kennedy Center For Justice and Human Rights award for their work documenting the support given by the Firestone Company to Charles Taylor, Liberia's former president and a convicted war criminal, during that country's civil war.[32] In 2016, Miller, along with Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project, won the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for an article on the Washington and Colorado serial rape cases.[33][34]

Selected works[edit]

  • (with Ken Armstrong) A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. New York: Crown. 2018. ISBN 978-1-52-475993-3.
  • Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2007. ISBN 9780316030816.


References[edit]

  1. ^ "ProPublica". Retrieved 26 October 2013.
  2. ^ Miller, T. Christian (28 February 2000). "Los Angeles Times".
  3. ^ "Stanford University". Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  4. ^ "The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting". Pulitzer Prize Board. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  5. ^ "IMDB Unbelievable (2019) Full Cast & Crew". Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  6. ^ "The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)". Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  7. ^ Janech, Michael. "American Journal of Physiology". American Physiological Society. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  8. ^ "Daily Californian". Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  9. ^ "John S. Knight Fellowship".
  10. ^ Miller, T. Christian (2 March 2002). "A Captive at Mercy of Colombian Rebels". Los Angeles Times.
  11. ^ Ching, Carrie. "I was Kidnapped by a Colombian Guerrilla Army". Vice Magazine.
  12. ^ Miller, T. Christian (24 January 2003). "San Francisco Chronicle". San Francisco Chronicle.
  13. ^ Miller, T. Christian (17 March 2002). "Los Angeles Times".
  14. ^ "Common Dreams". Archived from the original on 2006-03-21.
  15. ^ "Colombia Reports".
  16. ^ "Amazon Authors".
  17. ^ Miller, Thomas (2006). Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq. Little, Brown. ISBN 0316166286.
  18. ^ "Injured War Zone Contractors Fight to Get Care From AIG and Other Insurers". Los Angeles Times. 16 April 2009.
  19. ^ Schubert, Siri; Miller, T. Christian (20 December 2008). "At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item". The New York Times.
  20. ^ Miller, T. Christian (16 August 2009). "Sometimes It's Not Your War, But You Sacrifice Anyway". The Washington Post.
  21. ^ "$6 Billion Later, Afghan Cops Aren't Ready to Serve". Newsweek. 20 March 2010.
  22. ^ "Injured abroad, neglected at home". Salon. 17 December 2009.
  23. ^ "With Traumatic Brain Injuries, Soldiers Face Battle For Care". National Public Radio. 9 June 2010.
  24. ^ "Use Only As Directed". This American Life. 20 September 2013.
  25. ^ "Bailed-Out AIG Pampers Execs While Denying, Delaying Claims of Contractors Injured in Iraq". ABC 20/20. 17 April 2008.
  26. ^ "Black Money". PBS Frontline.
  27. ^ "Re-Engineering Journalism". Stanford University.
  28. ^ "Stanford University". Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  29. ^ "Re-Engineering Journalism". Stanford University.
  30. ^ "USC Annenberg". Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  31. ^ "36th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards". Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  32. ^ "RFK Center".t
  33. ^ Bazelon, Emily (6 March 2018). "The Lesson Here Is Listen to the Victim". The New York Times.
  34. ^ "The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting". The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University. Retrieved 19 July 2019.