During the summer of 2023 I moved with my family back to Hawaii, the islands where I was born and raised. We landed in Haiku, Maui. Twelve days later the island was swept by deadly wildfires and the town of Lahaina burned to the ground. I was pulled into reporting on the tragedy for the national media. I wrote about that experience, and my revelations about the deeper story behind the fire, in a personal essay for The Atlantic. This essay is an adaptation from my forthcoming book, a reported memoir about the legacies of colonialism in Hawaii, and the relationship between colonialism and climate change.
An animated documentary film that follows the crystal meth epidemic that began sweeping the Hawaiian Islands in the 1980s and continues to this day. It’s the story of the federal drug war gone wrong, a Native Hawaiian community battling addiction, and a brutal murder in the director’s family that shook the entire state.
This feature documentary is currently in development.
After the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, reporter Sebastian Walker arrived in Port-au-Prince to cover the aftermath. He ended up staying for more than a year. In the midst of the chaos, a mystery disease began to spread rapidly across the country. In October, 10 months after the devastating quake, the outbreak was diagnosed as cholera. Walker and his team heard rumors that a sewage spill might be the origin of the epidemic and went out to investigate. What they discovered was a global catastrophe.
I directed and produced this illustrated documentary for my VICE News series Correspondent Confidential. Reported by Sebastian Walker, illustrated by Jackie Roche.
In the wake of the war in Kosovo, investigative journalist Michael Montgomery traveled to the Balkans to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Serbs. His scrutiny brought to light evidence that suggested links between a black-market crime syndicate and the upper echelon of the Kosovo Liberation Army — indicating that the end of war doesn’t necessarily mean the end of war crimes.
I directed and produced this story for my illustrated documentary series called Correspondent Confidential on VICE News. Art by Marina Luz.
Two young black men were found dead in a river in Mississippi. The year was 1964, and many suspected the men died at the hands of the KKK. But this was the South in the 60s—the case was never solved. Decades later, filmmaker David Ridgen returned to Mississippi with the brother of one of the victims. What they discovered there cracked open a 40-year-old cold case and changed the course of history.
I directed and produced this illustrated documentary for my VICE series called Correspondent Confidential. Illustrated by Marina Luz.
Episode two of my new illustrated documentary series for VICE. Art by the talented Arthur Jones. Reporter T. Christian Miller was based in Colombia during the height of the US government’s war on drugs. As the US began to pour money into fighting the cocaine trade in Colombia, it inevitably spilled over into fighting the rebel groups that controlled—and “taxed”—the areas where coca plants were grown. When Miller went into the jungle to report on a government helicopter that was shot down during a mission to spray coca plants, he and his assistant were kidnapped by the FARC, a left-wing guerrilla army.
See more episodes of Correspondent Confidential on VICE.
In the first episode of my illustrated documentary series for VICE News, photojournalist Mimi Chakarova talks about her journey deep into the underworld of international sex trafficking. For her film, The Price of Sex, Chakarova posed as a prostitute while working undercover in brothels in Turkey and Dubai. Art by the talented Marina Luz.
About CORRESPONDENT CONFIDENTIAL on VICE News:
Journalists go deep. Sometimes they go so deep into a story they lose track of where the story ends and their private life begins. Correspondent Confidential is a series of illustrated documentary shorts narrated by award-winning journalists. Newspaper reporters, documentary filmmakers, radio producers, and journalists tell personal stories about the harrowing—and hilarious—experiences they’ve had on the job while reporting on some of the world’s most high-profile issues and events.
This video is based on a series of interviews with the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden. To protect his identity, we are not using his real voice. Phil Bronstein, executive chairman of the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, conducted the interviews. Bronstein’s story also appears in the March issue of Esquire.
“The Shooter” was named a Webby Award Honoree in the News & Politics: Individual Episode category.
Reported by Phil Bronstein
Directed and produced by Carrie Ching
Illustrated by Marina Luz
This illustrated short documentary was an experimental multimedia feature created within a year-long, multi-platform investigation from the Center of Investigative Reporting. That umbrella project, called Broken Shield, was reported primarily by Ryan Gabrielson and included print newspaper reporting, television news reports, radio stories, and multimedia. The project uncovered the abuse of developmentally disabled residents in state-run institutions in California and found the state-run Office of Protective Services displayed an alarming inability to solve crimes reported against severely disabled patients under their care and protection.
I directed, produced, and edited “In Jennifer’s Room,” working closely with Gabrielson and illustrator Marina Luz. Read the full story by Ryan Gabrielson. Two weeks after this multimedia feature and Gabrielson’s article were published, state regulators revoked the operating license of the Sonoma institution where Jennifer and other sexual abuse victims had been housed.
“In Jennifer’s Room” won a national Emmy award for New Approaches to News & Documentary. It also won a Gracie Award — a contest for the best programming by, for, and about women — for Outstanding Online Investigative Feature. Along with another multimedia feature I produced (“Manner of Death: Undetermined”) it won a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and was part of a Pulitzer-finalist package. It was selected as one of the best investigative features of 2012 by ProPublica’s Muckreads, and was highlighted by Poynter as an example of a creative way to tell a difficult story. “In Jennifer’s Room” was initially distributed online via The I Files, an investigative YouTube channel curated by CIR; from YouTube it spread to other publications, including The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Jezebel, and Cartoon Movement.
In California’s Orange County, some young prescription drug addicts are turning to heroin for a cheaper high. This growing problem appears to hit hardest in affluent communities around the state.
I produced and edited this multimedia feature for California Watch and KQED. It also appeared on KQED’s The California Report with a series of radio stories. The reporting for the multimedia feature was done by Erin Marie Daly, Michael Montgomery and Sarah Varney (see the print article here). The photography is by Daniel A. Anderson.
