Ziva Branstetter

Senior Editor

Photo of Ziva Branstetter

Ziva Branstetter has been a senior editor at ProPublica since March 2022, supervising a team of national investigative reporters.

She previously served as corporate accountability editor at The Washington Post. She led projects there including the Post’s award-winning Pandora Papers collaboration with ICIJ and journalists around the world.

Branstetter also worked as an editor at Reveal and co-founded The Frontier, an investigative newsroom in Oklahoma. Before that, she spent more than 20 years as a reporter and editor at the Tulsa World.

She has reported and edited investigations that resulted in the indictment of a seven-term sheriff, the dismissal of an entire state board, criminal charges against a state lawmaker, exonerations of wrongfully convicted people and new laws to prevent labor abuses and offshore tax evasion.

Her investigation into Oklahoma’s flawed death penalty process was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. Work she has edited has also received awards from IRE, the Overseas Press Club, Scripps Howard and the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Branstetter served three terms on the board of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. She and her husband, who live in Oklahoma, have two adult sons and one grandson.

Georgia Judge Lifts Six-Week Abortion Ban After Deaths of Two Women Who Couldn’t Access Care

Abortion clinics rushed to provide care after a judge rejected the state’s ban, an order that could soon be paused by a higher court. It’s only the latest development since ProPublica reported the deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.

Did a Georgia Hospital Break Federal Law When It Failed to Save Amber Thurman? A Senate Committee Chair Wants Answers.

Thurman died after waiting 20 hours for emergency care under the state’s abortion ban. Sen. Ron Wyden demanded records his committee could review to determine whether the hospital violated the law. “It’s not even a question,” one expert said.

How Do Abortion Pills Work? Answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

The FDA says abortion pills are safe if taken as directed. Here’s what patients should expect.

How Abortion Bans Are Impacting Pregnant Patients Across the Country

Leading legal scholar Mary Ziegler and Tennessee OB-GYN Dr. Nikki Zite talk to ProPublica about ominous trends and threats to patients’ lives posed by increasingly strict abortion bans.

Richard Glossip Has Eaten Three Last Meals on Death Row. Years Later, the State Is Still Trying to Execute Him.

An upcoming execution in Oklahoma draws surprising critics in the deeply red state: pro-death-penalty lawmakers who believe the state may execute an innocent man.

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