Mark Greenblatt is the senior national investigative correspondent for Scripps News. His video, text and radio reports have earned three Peabody awards, the duPont-Columbia Award, the I.R.E. Medal, the Livingston Award, multiple national Edward R. Murrow Awards, the national Emmy for investigative reporting and he has twice been named a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize.
Mark’s reports have led to changes in laws at all levels of government, along with wholesale reforms of institutions. He is the lead reporter for the investigative podcast Verified- The Next Threat, a six episode podcast series that uncovers an international network of global extremists who are recruiting for a new transnational holy war and white power. His other investigative pieces for Scripps have prompted Congress to close the military sex offender registration loophole and led to the felony indictment of a Veterans Administration hospital chief of staff, among other reforms.
For Scripps News, his Case Cleared series of reports revealed how dozens of police departments nationally mask the truth about how many rape investigations they really solve, marking rape cases as ‘cleared’ with a little-known tool called “exceptional clearance.” The tool allows police to tell the public the case is solved, when in fact they leave the suspect on the streets with no arrest and no prosecution. Federal rules allow police to use this tool in rare cases, such as if they cannot arrest a known suspect because he is dead. Greenblatt was a co-lead on the investigation, which chronicled the widespread abuse of the tool and discovered that some of those cleared suspects go on to find new sexual assault victims. In Austin, the series prompted a state audit which confirmed Austin police were inappropriately clearing rape cases. City council agreed to publicly apologize to rape survivors, along with paying them $50,000 each to settle a lawsuit that Mark’s reporting became evidence in. The city also agreed to a long list of reforms of its sex crimes unit.
Mark regularly combines the use of databases and sources to unpack systemic flaws and issues of injustice. He serves on the Advisory Board for the D.C.- based Fund For Investigative Journalism (where he is its past president), proudly roots for the Red Sox and brews his own beer.
