Marisa Peñaloza
Marisa Peñaloza is a senior producer on NPR's National Desk. Peñaloza's productions are among the signature pieces heard on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as weekend shows. Her work has covered a wide array of topics — from breaking news to feature stories, as well as investigative reports.
Although Peñaloza is a staff member on the National Desk, she occasionally travels overseas on assignment. In 2020, she traveled to Iraq and embedded with U.S. forces in Syria to report on the work the troops were doing on the ground after President Trump decided to withdraw a large portion of the forces in the fall of 2019. She's traveled to Guatemala to report on parents separated from their children at the U.S. border and to Honduras to cover the genesis of the migrant caravans. She traveled to Brussels right after the terrorist attack in March of 2016 and to Haiti soon after the 2010 earthquake hit, and she went back several times to follow the humanitarian organizations working on the island nation. She's covered education in Peru and in Ecuador, a dengue outbreak in El Salvador, the Madrid train bombings in Spain, as well as the South East Asia Tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Her contributions to NPR's digital coverage of the current Coronavirus pandemic has been significant and ongoing. She reported the events of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Her past productions include coverage of the 2020 election; the 2018-2019 government shutdown; the opioid epidemic in communities of color; Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Hurricane Harvey in Houston; the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 2014; the devastating tornado in Moore, Oklahoma in 2013; and the Boston Marathon bombings also in 2013. In 2012 she produced a series on infertility, "Making Babies: 21st Century Families" — the stories explored the options parents have to create families. Peñaloza was one of the first NPR staff members to arrive on the Virginia Tech campus to cover the shootings in 2007. She was on assignment in Houston waiting for Hurricane Ike to make landfall in September 2008, and she produced coverage of New Orleans recovery after Hurricane Katrina. Peñaloza covered the Elian Gonzalez custody battle from Miami, protests outside the Navy site on the Island of Viequez in Puerto Rico, and the aftermath of the crash of the American Airlines flight 587 in New York. She also contributed to NPR's Sept. 11 coverage.
For two consecutive years, Peñaloza was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, which celebrates "excellence in investigative journalism on a wide spectrum of social justice issues." In 2015 she was honored with the Distinguished Journalism Award for radio for her series on clemency and sentencing reform, "Boxed In: When The Punishment No Longer Fits The Crime." Peñaloza was honored with the Robert F. Kennedy 2014 Award for a series on the increasing number of veterans who are getting out of the service with an "other than honorable" discharge. She was also honored with a Gracie Award in 2014 for a series on female veterans, "Women Combat Veterans: Life After War." She won the 2011 National Headliner Award in investigative reporting and the Grand Award for a series of stories looking at the role of confidential informants — people who pose as criminals so they can provide information to federal law enforcement, except sometimes these informants are criminals themselves.
In 2009, Peñaloza was honored with several awards for "Dirty Money," an enterprising four-part series of stories that examined law enforcement's pursuit of suspected drug money, which they can confiscate without filing charges against the person carrying it. Local police and sheriffs get to keep a portion of the cash. The awards for "Dirty Money" include the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award in the investigative reporting category; the Scripps Howard Foundation's National Journalism Foundation Award; and the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award in the "best website" category.
In 2008, Peñaloza was honored by the Education Writers Association with its "National Award for Education Reporting" for a year-long NPR on-air and online series following a Baltimore-area high school's efforts to improve student achievement. She won the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for Excellence in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems in 2007 for "The Forgotten Drug Wars," a five-part series of stories that examined the U.S.'s gains and losses since the war on drugs was launched more than 30 years ago.
Peñaloza made the leap from television to radio in 1997, when she joined NPR's National Desk. Before joining NPR, she was a freelance writer for the Fox affiliate and an editorial assistant at the local NBC station in Washington, DC. She graduated from George Washington University.
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Community and charity groups are scrambling to provide care where the VA is failing veterans who left the military with less-than-honorable discharges. Many of these groups have extensive experience with the problem; they say tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans faced the same problem.
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Veterans with "other than honorable" discharges lose benefits like the GI Bill for school or a VA home loan. But they also can't get VA health care and disability compensation, even for the PTSD that may have caused the bad discharge. Such veterans have a few avenues of appeal, but none is simple. -
Reed Holway served in Iraq, where he developed PTSD. His symptoms worsened back in the U.S. He got in trouble and ultimately received a bad-conduct discharge. Now Holway is stuck: He can't get medical care from the VA for the disorder that he says caused him to get kicked out of the Army in the first place.
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Since 2001, more than 100,000 troops have left the military with an other-than-honorable discharge. The "bad paper" puts benefits and medical care out of reach, even for those who served in combat. Which raises a simple question: What does America owe those who serve? -
The U.S. poverty rate has remained at about 15 percent for the third year in a row. Despite signs of an improving economy, getting out of poverty continues to be a challenge for many Americans. -
In the '60s, Bob Moses organized African-American sharecroppers in Mississippi for the Civil Rights movement. Since the 1980s, he's led the Algebra Project, teaching math to low-achieving students in underfunded public schools and advocating for quality public education as a constitutional right. -
According to Pentagon research, a quarter of all women who join the military are sexually assaulted during their careers. Many cases go unreported, and some victims say the perpetrator is a superior to whom they would have to report the assault. -
For years, the Army has effectively ignored the ban against women in combat, though it's still hard for them to receive full recognition for what they've achieved. "Battle-fatigued female soldiers" is a new and uneasy concept for American society. -
For many female veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, new battles await when they return home. They need help, just like men — with jobs, PTSD and reconnecting with family. But these issues can be harder for women. And the darkest side of women's military service persists: sexual assault. -
While lawmakers debate proposals, the demand for immigration attorneys is increasing as people seek information and assistance. Jose Pertierra and his staff field nearly 50 calls a day from immigrants wondering how potential changes will affect them.
