David Fallis

About

David S. Fallis is the Deputy Editor for the Washington Post’s Investigations Unit, supervising the long-term reporting team. He helped lead and edit a Washington Post team of journalists that in 2015 identified and analyzed nearly 1,000 fatal shootings by police nationwide. For Fatal Force, The Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, a George Polk Award for National Reporting and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. He continues to co-edit the Fatal Force database, which has logged more than 8,000 fatal police shootings and was recognized in 2022 with a Peabody Award for its ongoing work. He led and edited The Afghanistan Papers project, a six-part investigative series based on a secret trove of documents that revealed senior officials in three administrations lied about the 18-year military campaign. The 2019 project won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting, the Scripps Howard Award for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Freedom of Information Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for international reporting. He also edited “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,” published in 2021, which became a #1 New York Times bestselling book. He helped edit The Opioid Files, a 2019 investigation that analyzed a confidential government database to reveal that drug companies flooded the country with 76 billion pills as overdose deaths climbed. The project was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He edited Murder with Impunity, a multi-part examination that revealed clusters of thousands of unsolved homicides in America’s major cities. That 2018 project was named a Pulitzer finalist for Explanatory Reporting. He co-edited Broken Doors, a six-part investigative podcast in 2022 that exposed the lack of accountability for no-knock warrants. That project was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for audio reporting. He co-edited the seven-part investigative podcast Canary, which revealed the intertwining stories of two women who suffered sexual assaults decades apart. The 2020 podcast won Edward R. Murrow and Robert F. Kennedy awards. His 2010 investigation of guns used in crimes won an Investigative Reporters and Editors FOIA medal and an Emmy. In 2002, he was part of a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for an investigation of shootings and in-custody deaths involving Prince George’s County police. Before joining The Post in 1999, he worked at the Tulsa World. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma.