The team at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting made headlines last month with their findings from a year-long investigation into unsafe working conditions at Amazon warehouses.

In this episode, we talk to data reporter Melissa Lewis to get a fuller picture of Amazon’s labor practices, including the effects of robots in the fulfillment centers, worker surveillance, injury reporting to OSHA, and more, along with a frank discussion of what it means to boycott Amazon. At the end of the conversation, Melissa makes a powerful case for the importance of contextualized data in a world of anecdotes.

You can read more from Reveal’s Behind the Smiles series or listen to their podcast here.

Melissa Lewis is a data reporter for Reveal. Prior to joining Reveal, she was a data editor at The Oregonian, a data engineer at Simple, and a data analyst at Periscopic. She is an organizer for PyLadies Portland and the Portland chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Cover image by aixklusiv from Pixabay