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 "breaking news" ...
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Voter Patrol
The NEWS4 I-Team dug through more than 600 phone and email tips to break three major election stories before, during and immediately after the presidential election. About two weeks before the election, we asked viewers to tell us when they saw problems when they voted. The response was immediate. Our two-man team went through every tip and beat out the AP, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other local stations on the biggest election stories in our area. Our first story revealed absentee ballots sent out in Maryland were missing their second page, which contained the most contested ballot initiatives including legalized gambling, same-sex marriage and the DREAM Act. This story was picked up across the nation and led to statements made by the Maryland Governor and the various interest groups involved in the ballot issues.
Tags: Elections; presidential elections; votes; presidential reporting; ballot issues
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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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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Tucson Tragedy
Within a few hours of the horrific shooting of 19 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, at a Tucson-area grocery, The Republic focused on two paramount questions in the investigative part of its coverage: What motive and circumstance drove the alleged shooter to act, and what enabled him to succeed? In the short amount of time they had, The Republic staff reached the community college where the alleged shooter had studied, contacted friends and found video and Internet postings of his.
Tags: Gabrielle Giffords; Tucson shooting; breaking news; mentally ill
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Cars for Congress
At the height of the debt ceiling debate, the investigative team at WTTG pulled video from floor debates, news conferences and other sources to show how the very people demanding the nation make sacrifices by cutting the budget were the ones taking advantage of a Congressional loophole--allowing Congress to use government money to buy luxury cars.
Tags: congress; loopholes; debt ceiling debate; breaking news; broadcast
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Wayne County Confidential: Government Run Amok
This investigation exposed a secret $200,000 severance paid out to a government employee while others endured a 20% pay cut. WXYZ found that the severance was never disclosed to county commissioners, who are supposed to approve all payments of $50,000. The reporting caused the county to cancel 16 other severance payments for voluntary resignations, including one for up to $350,000.
Tags: severance payments; voluntary resignation; breaking news; broadcast
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Carlos Boles Investigation
This KMOV investigation shows how a man with a violent history was set free to shoot and kill a deputy U.S. Marshal and wound a second deputy. With on-camera interviews with the judge that oversaw the criminal docket, and the St. Louis Police Chief, it is no wonder why the prosecution system is broken
Tags: breaking news; broadcast
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Violent Felon Went Unnoticed
In this breaking news report, LaForgia, Roldan and Playford deployed great investigative skills to report on the murder of two young children who died at the hands of a felon that went unnoticed by the Department of Children and Family.
Tags: breaking news; felon; social services
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Air Scare
This series includes the breaking news of a terrorist bomber and the advancement of the story by CBS News. The terrorist bomber failed to “fully detonate the deadly ingredients of a powerful bomb on board a flight headed to Detroit from Amsterdam”. The deadly ingredients of the bomb were undetected by security screening in Amsterdam and he had an active visa through June 2010.
Tags: Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab; US government; federal; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); The Nigerian; Al Qaida; law enforcement; officials
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Breaking News - Massacre at Fort Hood
CNN mobilized its wide web of coverage sources to unravel the tragedy at Fort Hood. Variety of coverage included exclusive acquisition of the convenience store footage of Major Hassan the morning of the shooting where Hassan can be seen dressed in traditional Arabic clothing.
Tags: Hassan; fort hood; massacre; military; tragedy; shooting; convenience store;