Jason Dearen is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist who currently serves on the national investigative team of The Associated Press. His reporting brings accountability journalism and narrative storytelling to diverse topics, including public health and the environment, domestic extremism, the U.S. military and law enforcement, and the legal and criminal justice systems.

Dearen authored the critically acclaimed book Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, A Deadly Disease (2021) (Avery Books/Penguin Random House)—a project he developed as a 2018-2019 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. The book exposed weaknesses in the compounding pharmacy industry through the true crime story of America's deadliest drug contamination outbreak.

Dearen served as a producer for the Hulu documentary “Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan” (2023) (George Stephanopoulos Productions/ABC News and The Associated Press)—a film based on his AP investigative series The Badge and The Cross. The series chronicled a Ku Klux Klan murder plot in Florida that exposed ties between the white supremacist group and law enforcement in the state. The documentary won the 2024 Emmy for Outstanding Crime and Justice reporting.

In 2024, Dearen and his reporting partners also received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award for Radio for “Hidden Confessions of the Mormon Church.” The podcast, which aired nationally on NPR’s Reveal, was based on their investigation into a legal loophole that allowed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to keep child sex abuse cases secret.

Beyond garnering numerous national journalism awards, Dearen’s work has sparked legal and policy change across the country. A native of Los Angeles, Dearen received a B.A. from San Francisco State University and an M.S. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.