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 "FOIA" ...
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Green Energy: Contracts, Connections and the Collapse of Solyndra
Beginning in March, the Center's Ronnie Greene and ABC's Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross exposed flaws in the Department of Energy's billion-dollar spending spree, revealed deep links between Obama campaign bundlers and energy contracts and foreshadowed the financial and political storm that later engulfed Solyndra. Our reporting for "Green Energy: Contracts, Connections and the Collapse of Solyndra" broke ground before Solyndra's meltdown, and went well beyond the company in revealing a web of connections entangling a department lauded for its innovation. Working as full-reporting partners, our stories tied major Obama donors to lucrative green energy contracts for everything from electric cars to diesel substitutes. After over a year of reporting, we produced 50,000 words for the Center's website, thousands more on ABC's site and broadcasts on World News Tonight, Good Morning America and Nightline. Our stories, built from FOIA requests that yielded thousands of contract, financial and ethics documents, served as a template for national media reports that followed.
Tags: contracts; green energy; Obama; green energy; spending
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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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Criminalizing Cartoons
The investigation exposes a police chief's desperate attempt to acquire the name of an anonymous cartoonist, mocking his department on the Internet. A person going by the moniker MrFiddlesticks (and other names) was airing internal affairs dirty laundry in the form of parody. To find out who, the city prosecutor, police chief and a local judge teamed up to craft a criminal search warrant. KIRO-TV's investigative unit not only uncovered questionable legal tactics (like prosecutor shopping), but later caught police shredding hundreds of records related the case. First Amendment and FOIA issues are central to this ongoing investigation.
Tags: cartoonist; search warrant; shredding
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Judge Sylvia James: Access Denied, Chief Judge Under fire
This series examines a chief judge who appears to be using her power and position to do as she pleases. WXYZ used FOIA extensively in their investigation which lead the city to put her on administrative leave as well as leading to inquiries and audits from the State Court Administrator, the Judicial Tenure Commission and a formal complaint containing 192 specific allegations.
Tags: judges; corruption; broadcast
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Salt Lake Tribune, editorial stance, Lobbying keeps Utah's open record laws intact
"After a significant change in Utah's open records laws passed legislation without typical due process. The paper's editorial and government relations staff aggressively reported on the claims from both supporters and opponents of the bill."
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The Fed's Trillion-Dollar Secret
"Bloomberg News sued the Federal Reserve under the FOI Act, seeking disclosure of its loans to banks during the financial crisis. The central bank fought the release of the data for more than two years, during which time congress and the courts both weighed in on Bloomberg's side."
Tags: FOIA; Federal Reserve; foreign banking; central bank
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Revolving Regulators
The Project on Government Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all post-employment statements filed by former SEC employees and analyzed the statements and other documents.
Tags: SEC; employment; FOIA
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Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture
The narrative history of the bitter struggle between Richard Nixon and journalist Jack Anderson exposes corruption by both men and illustrates a larger story about the price of power in politics and journalism alike.
Tags: Richard Nixon; Jack Anderson; Somoza; White House tapes; Watergate; assassinate
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Murder Mysteries
Using state and local Freedom of Information laws, Scripps Howard News Service conducted the most complete accounting ever of homicide victims in the United States. This includes 15,322 kilings never reported to the FBI.
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Sex Offenders
State and federal authorities have lost track of 100,000 of the nation's 700,000 convicted sex offenders. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, the reporter found that only four states have complied with a law requiring states to keep uniform records on sex offenders.
Tags: sex offender; records; FOIA; sex