The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "FOI request" ...
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Connecticut Superintendents
Viktoria Sundqvist, investigations editor at The Middletown Press, submitted FOI requests for all school superintendent contracts in Connecticut and gathered these contracts into a searchable database. The contracts were analyzed and salaries, mileage, vacation days and other perks were analyzed and made available to the public, in addition to links to the contracts.
Tags: Schools; school superintendents; salaries; public records
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The Brunswick Stew
“The Brunswick Stew” is a series of investigative reports that began with plea from a citizens group in Brunswick, Virginia. They asked for help shining some light on what was going on in their county. The effort would take several months. Filing FOI requests and pouring over a seemingly endless pile of paperwork, a number of serious issues came to light. Illegal bonuses and contracts, back room politics, political favoritism in the awarding of bids, and a blatant case of public safety being put at risk are what “The Brunswick Stew” unveils.
Tags: broadcast; illegal contacts; backroom politics; political favoritism; public safety
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Rápido y Furioso (Fast & Furious)
In this special edition of the newsmagazine program “Aqui y Ahora” (“Here and Now”), Univision news reports on the drug trade’s violent impact in Mexico, an aspect of the story that is often lost. We are submitting this report for your consideration in the FOI category. Although the hundreds of classified us and Mexican government documents weren’t obtained through a FOI request, we believe our process of gathering and comparing comprehensive information from two different governments, resulted in a story that did “open records and open government” in a unique and revealing way that could not be achieved by simply filing a FOI request.
Tags: gun; border; Mexico; U.S. border patrol
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Spanish-language FOIA requests
We undertook the project to explore the issue of language access and freedom of information. Our goals were threefold. First, we wanted to break new ground in open government with regards to language access by submitting FOI requests in Spanish. Second, we wanted to receive data from officials at city, country, state and federal levels to use as the basis for stories and articles that fulfilled our watchdog and public service mission. Third, we wanted to educated our colleagues and readers about their information rights so that they could have additional tools for their news production and consumption, respectively.
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"Political misuse of a public database, a collection of stories by Harford Courant staff writer Jon Lender"
Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz exploited an extensive yet recondite database of "36,000 Connecticut citizens" by submitting a FOI request within her office. By using her own staff and a "taxpayer-funded budget," she tracked and documented citizen's "political and personal information" and created the database to boost her aspiration of reaching higher office.
Tags: Susan Bysiewicz; FOI; Richard Blumenthal; campaign; taxpayers; Democrat; state attorney general; governor
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Your Right to Know
As Members of Parliament (MPs), they are to use their power to best serve the people. In this article, we see that this is not the case and taxpayers' money is being used for their own personal use. Furthermore, they try to keep this information hidden by ways of denying requests of expenses, delaying publication of information, and exempting themselves from their own laws.
Tags: Members of Parliament (MPs); Freedom of Information Act; FOI; House of Commons; Taxpayers; House flipping; Scandal; London; United Kingdom
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Executive Decisions
The story identified a pattern of involvement by Executive Council - the wing of the bureaucracy serving the premier - in vetting and withholding information from FOI requests, contrary to the letter of open-records legislation and sworn testimony by civil servants.
Tags: Canada; open records; FOIA; executive council; premier; Newfoundland; Danny Williams; purple files
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Taking the Cuffs off at Carswell
Fort Worth Weekly reporter Betty Brink has been covering medical and sexual abuse of female inmates at Carswell Federal Medical Center, in Texas, since 1999. As a result of her coverage, and his own investigation, a retired judge, Ross Sears is asking for a Congressional investihgation into the deadly conditions at "the only prison hospital in the country for mentally or chronicallly ill or dying women who have been convicted of a federal crime."
Tags: medical negligence; sexual abuse; Carswell Federal Mediacal Center; medical records; Bureau of Prisons; FOI requests; U.S. Office of Special Counsel; Dr. Roger Guthrie; Ross Sears; retaliation; compassionate release; John Peter Smith Hospital; Tarrant County Medical Examiner; autopsies; prison deaths; women inmates; femaile prisoners; Baylor Regional Transplant Institute; Huguley Memorial Medical Center; brain damage; whistleblower complaints; medical malpractice; sentinel event; rape;
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A Stunning Toll
Fort Worth Weekly partnered with University of North Texas students who made open records requests of all Texas law enforcement agencies to obtain data on deaths and injuries in Texas resulting form law enforcement agency individual's Taser use.
Tags: Distributed Reporting Project; FOI; Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas; University of North Texas; UNT; Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism; Tasers; law enforcement; Texas Public Information Act; police; sheriffs; Taser International; American Civil Liberties Union; Live Music Capitol of the World; Austin; use-of-force policy; bean hole; stun gun; product safety; wrongful death; Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas; Those Disgruntled Motherfuckers That Have Been Tased; TDMTHBT; Light of Day Project; IRE Student Entry
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Seeking Justice for Jill: The Behrman Murder Investigation
WXIN-TV reporter Kimberly King spent most of 2006 looking into the police investigation of the death of Jill Behrman, an Indiana University-Bloomington sophomore who disappeared in May 2000. Her body was found in 2003, "miles from where detectives thought (she) had been killed." For the intervening three years, "investigators built their case around a convicted woman's false confession." But after the body was discovered, a lead detective sealed the public records regarding the case and did little to pursue it further. Spurred by a request from a relative of Behrman, WXIN worked on the story for three years, finally spending 2006 blowing it open. As a result, police moved further on the case.
Tags: Murder; Indiana University; police; homicide; closed cases; homicide investigations; missing persons; false confession