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 "affair" ...
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Los Angeles VA Has Made Millions on Rental Deals
This story is about one of the most fought-over pieces of property in Los Angeles, the 400 acre Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus in West Los Angeles. It’s in an affluent neighborhood and has been a target of developers. But with many unused buildings, it’s also been coveted as a place to house some of L.A.’s 8,000 homeless veterans. That was the original use of the land, which was donated for an Old Soldiers’ Home in the late 19th century. The VA has not acted on plans announced in 2007 to begin rehabbing unused buildings there for housing for homeless vets. Meanwhile, it’s rented out land and buildings to commercial enterprises. There is no public accounting for this income. Through FOIA and other documents, we found that the VA is renting out the property using a law intended for sharing health care resources, though the renters are non-health related commercial enterprises. We were also able to estimate that the VA has taken in at least 28 million and possibly more than 40 million dollars over the past dozen years, far more than the cost of re-habbing a building to house homeless vets.
Tags: Property; neighborhood; land uses; veterans
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Uncounted Casualties
A three-day series that analyzed causes of death for 266 Texas veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The six-month investigation uncovered previously unknown information, pulling data from a variety of federal, state and local sources. The series, which also depended on extensive interviews with family members and fellow service members, revealed the startling number of Texas veterans dying of prescription drug overdoses, suicides and motor vehicle crashes. The newspaper's analysis was hailed by epidemiologists and former Department of Veterans Affairs researchers as an important step in understanding veteran mortality, and led to calls for better government tracking of how veterans are dying.
Tags: Veterans; Iraq; Afghanistan; prescription drug overdoses; suicides; vehicle crashes
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Social network analysis of high-ranking officials in S. Korean government
It is a social network analysis-based investigative reporting on high ranking public officials in the Lee Myung-bak administration and his presidential office. Since its launch in 2008, the Lee administration has been criticized for the dark side of spoils system or cronyism in personnel affairs. The JoongAng Ilbo investigated on the "chain of relationships" among 944 high-ranking officials and President Lee for the last four years. We also used text-mining methodology on social media, such as Internet blogs and twitter, which showed the public's sentiments toward the cronyism of the Lee government.
Tags: Social network; public officials; presidential office; cronyism
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Grandma can’t accept your call: Inmates disconnected by phone costs
This series of stories started with a simple question. Why does it cost so much for inmates to make calls from the Cook County Jail? In the course of my reporting on criminal and legal affairs for WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago, I had heard numerous people complain about the high cost of phone calls. Some digging confirmed that the price could be as high as $15.00 for 15 minute calls. Three or four calls a week at that price gets expensive even for financially stable middle class folks, but the people paying these fees were mostly the poorest residents in Chicago. That’s because most of the people in the Cook County Jail are there because they and their families couldn’t afford to post bond of a couple thousand, or sometimes even just hundreds of dollars to secure their freedom while awaiting trial. They are the people who are least able to afford such expensive phone calls. A few FOIA requests revealed the scheme (and scheme is the right word… I just looked it up: a crafty or secret plan of action). Cook County gave an exclusive phone contract to a company called Securus Technologies. Securus charged inflated phone rates and their exclusive deal in the jail meant inmates wanting to talk to their families or arrange their defense had no choice but to pay the rates. Securus then paid back to the county 57½ percent of the revenue from the calls. It netted the county about $4 million a year. Securus wouldn’t tell us their take but I imagine they did alright too. All of the money was coming out of the pockets of the poorest residents in Cook County, people who couldn’t even afford to post bond for their freedom. (As an aside, this isn’t just an issue in Cook County. According to its website Securus provides the phone systems for 850,000 inmates in 2,200 jails and prisons across the country.) Our reporting shed public light on a hugely profitable contract that no one was paying attention to. We documented the lives of the impoverished people getting hammered by the policy and then turned the hammer on the local elected officials to ask them to explain how this was a good policy. The public officials responded in a way that once again proved the genius of democracy. Our efforts and the results are detailed in subsequent answers below.
Tags: prison inmates; phone calls; fees
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Returning Home to Battle
While the Obama administration declared care for returning U.S. military personnel to be a top priority, reporter Aaron Glantz found something entirely different when he drilled down in the San Francisco Bay Area – home to more than a quarter-million veterans. In a series of stories for The Bay Citizen, which is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Glantz exposed an alarming failure inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, where mistakes and massive delays in processing disability claims for ailing veterans were the norm, sometimes leading to tragic consequences. Glantz was the first to detail this trend, finding that tens of thousands of Northern California veterans had been waiting an average of 313 days for a decision from the Oakland office on compensation claims for conditions as serious as traumatic brain injury. The Oakland regional office ranks fifth in the nation for number of veterans served – nearly 1 million veterans from the Oregon border to Bakersfield. The story was so shocking it prompted 16 members of Congress to demand immediate help for veterans filing through Oakland. More action quickly followed. Glantz had found through his reporting that the problem was not limited to the Bay Area. Next he set out to show it. The decision to dig deeper – to go beyond the local story – helped bring greater context to such a critically important issue. Through rich storytelling and clear writing, Glantz ably captured the plight of our veterans in his series, Returning Home to Battle.
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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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Misleading Milk Marketing
"This investigative series was the first to report on the misleading health claims made by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, which spends millions of dollars annually to promote dairy products throughout Wisconsin and nationwide."
Tags: milk marketing board; health; dairy; consumer affairs
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"Fresno Cops Involved in Repeat Shootings Still on Duty"
This investigative report by Ali Winston found that "27 Fresno police officers were involved in repeat shootings of civilians" from 2003 to 2009. Winston compared the data to the Oakland Police Department, a city that has a higher crime rate, during the same period of time and found that "only five officers were involved in repeat shootings." The Fresno Police Department's chief of internal affairs was "unaware of the number of officers involved in repeat shootings until contacted by Winston."
Tags: Fresno Police Department; Oakland Police Department; Internal Affairs; California; Anaheim Police; LAPD; Robert Nevarez; Central Valley
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Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
This book reveals how the U.S. government consciously looked away as miners, and then the neighbors, were exposed to uranium's dangers as it was mined on a Navajo reservation, in a slow-motion environmental catastrophe that last for decades and continues today.
Tags: uranium; radiation; mining; Navajo; Indian reservation; yellow cake; yellow dirt; EPA; Environmental Protection Agency; Indian Health Service; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Atomic Energy Commission; National Cancer Institute; environmental pollution; environmental disaster; nuclear power; atomic bomb
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"The Lonely Soldier"
In her book, author Helen Benedict reveals what it is like to be a female in the military and serving overseas. She shares stories of sexual abuse and "discrimination against women and people of color." Female soldiers also suffer from health problems caused by the "lack of adequate medical care for women." Benedict also looks at the lives of women after they return home who suffer from isolation and "multiples traumas of combat and sexual assault."
Tags: Iraq war; female soldiers; National Guard; Afghanistan; Dept. of Veterans Affairs; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Military Sexual Trauma; Air Force; Marines