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 "cycle" ...
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The Shadow Money Trail
With our “Shadow Money Trail” series, OpenSecrets Blog (run by the Center for Responsive Politics) led all news outlets in revealing where some of the most active -- and most secretive -- outside spending groups in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles were getting their money, and how they were moving it around to like-minded organizations.
Tags: politics; campaign finance; money; spending; campaign spending; 501c4; nonprofit; dark money
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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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ABC News Brian Ross Investigates: Money Trail 2012
While most of the political press followed the usual rapid spin cycle of the 2012 presidential campaigns, Brian Ross and the ABC News Investigative team instead focused on the corrupting influence of the unprecedented flood of big money on politics, exposing details of Romney’s hidden wealth, ferreting out the identities of secret big money donors and exposing political pay-offs to Obama’s top donors in a series of original investigative reports on ABC World News, Nightline and a year’s worth – more than two dozen front page print stories on ABCNews.com.
Tags: politics; political press; presidential campaign; Obama; Romney; wealth
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Governor Quinn Keeping Juvenile Prisons in the Dark
The report details governor Quinn's refusal to block information concerning conditions inside juvenile detention centers. The system cycles the same offenders in and out, and the report demonstrates why information on life inside these prisons could be beneficial to voters and taxpayers.
Tags: juvenile; prisons; detention centers; governor; cycle; offenders; information; prison life; Quinn;
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Asset Forfeiture Collection
This series examines the use and abuses of criminal and civil asset forfeiture that includes articles on Southern California motor cycle gangs, St. Louis policemen and pimps.
Tags: gangs; Hell's Angels; Mongols Motorcycle Club; property; Metropolitan Police Department
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Prostitution PLagues Urban Neighborhood
In certain Memphis neighborhoods the residents have had to complain multiple times to stop the prostitution near their homes. Still though the illegal activity cycles back around as the legal system is unable to put an end to it.
Tags: prostitute
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A grim cycle: 8 dead so far
"The story was about motorcycle fatalities. We found that speed, alcohol and riding without a helmet contributed to a rise in motorcycle fatalities."
Tags: motorcycles; driving; safety; roads; traffic accidents; fatal accidents
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Major Money. Singular Sway
Campbell analyzed the Federal Elections Commission database to determine the 100 largest individual campaign donors from California. He found that the top 100 together contributed more than $150 million in the 2003-2004 election cycle, and had a huge impact on the state's politics and policies in areas like stem cell research and workers' compensation.
Tags: elections; FEC; campaign contributions; CAR; Computer-Assisted Reporting; database analysis; politics
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The Money Trail
ABC News went behind closed doors at political conventions, finding numerous lavish events where top members of Congress were honored by the industries they regulate and the lobbyists that court them. This investigative team has followed the money trail at political conventions for three election cycles, and have offered an inside look at the wheelings and dealings far from the convention floor.
Tags: political conventions; lobbyists; Congress
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Prison Zip Codes
This investigation by WSMV looks at the trend of parolees, prisoners, their respective zip codes, and the continuous cycle of violence that occurs when they're released into the same environment. The trend shows that certain zip codes with hundreds of parolees also tend to have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. Through their analysis, reporters at WSMV discovered that many of these parolees have no choice but to return to these high-crime neighborhoods with cheap housing due to their criminal past. "So when parolees return to these areas, they are exposed to crime again and get caught up in a cycle of violence."