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 "institutional review" ...
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Need to Know: Crossing the Line at the Border Parts 1 & 2
Few, if any, pieces published or broadcast in 2012 had as much impact as “Crossing the Line at the Border,” a joint project of the weekly PBS newsmagazine, “Need to Know,” and the Nation Institute that was in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Within days of its broadcast, 16 members of Congress demanded that the U.S. Justice Department investigate the killing of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, a 42-year-old Mexican whose death at the hands of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents was detailed in our report. A few months later, a U.S. attorney in convened a federal grand jury. It is currently considering criminal charges in the case. And months after that, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the incident had prompted it to launch a full-scale review of its use of force. Hernandez Rojas had a fatal heart attack shortly after being subdued by agents, beaten, and shot with a Taser gun at the San Ysidro border crossing on May 28th, 2010. His death was largely ignored until the "Need to Know” team, in partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, unearthed never-before-seen eyewitness video of the incident.
Tags: U.S. Justice Department; border; killing; U.S. Customs and Border Protection; U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Taser
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Head Games
Alan Pendergast, staffwriter for Denver's Westword reports that in 2004, 20% of Colorado's jail population was diagnosed with severe mental illness, and "the true number may be much higher, since some inmates' illnesses are never properly diagnosed." The story compares cost of psychiatric lock-up versus community mental health care. Pendergast advises other journalists doing similar stories should "insist that someone in the accontable chain of command review and comment on the records, even if the actual treatment providers are refusing to be interviewed."
Tags: prison mental illness; correctional systems; lockdown; supermax prison; ADHD; Department of Corrections; forensic psychiatry; head cases; administrative segregation; HIPPA; San Carlos Correctional Facility; Offenders WIth Serious Mental Illness; OSMI; National Institute on Drug Abuse; Mental Health Occupations Grievance Board
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The death of state inmate Ifeanyi A. Iko
"Ifeanyi A. Iko, a 51-year-old Nigerian immigrant, was found dead in his cell on April 30 at Western Correctional Institution near Cumberland, Maryland. The authorities have refused to disclose nearly any information about his death, citing an internal investigation and an ongoing review by the FBI. But two Sun reporters followed up on his death, interviewed inmate witnesses by phone and by correspondence, obtained copes of policies and procedures through information requests, and developed a comparison of how Iko should've been treated vs. how he was really treated by correctional officers."
Tags: prison; asphyxiation; jail; inmate abuse
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Changing All the Rules: The Bush Administration, the Big Power Companies, and the Undoing of 30 years of Clean-Air Policy
This investigation looks at how the Bush administration, with the help of the power industry, has changed all of the clean-air rules and regulations. Bush rewrote the old laws, citing that the old New-source review (N.S.R.) laws "undermined our goals for protecting the environment and growing the economy" and kept plants from operating to the best of their abilities.
Tags: Clean Air Trust; Environmental Protection Agency; NRDC; Heritage Foundation; Edison Electric Institute; New-source Review
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Hepatitis C: Silent Alarm
This series documented the government's numerous failures to warn the American public about hepatitis C, a disease that has infected more than 4 million people in the United States. The series found that the federal government promised repeatedly to raise a public alarm about the disease but reneged almost every time. As a result, most people with hepatitis C don't even know they have it and may be spreading it. The series also found that Congress and CDC give hepatitis C a fraction of the funding and attention they give other disease such as West Nile, that has killed several hundreds. The government promised a search to find nearly two hundred thousand patients who received infected blood transfusions before 1992, when a test was available to screen out infected blood, but four years later, the campaign had stalled. The blood industry in the 1980's delayed a screening test six years that could have prevented hepatitis C in more than 300,000 patients who received blood transfusions. the government never ordered the test even though it was aware of the seriousness of the disease.
Tags: hepatitis c; virus; AIDS; public alarm; Congress; Center for Disease Control and Prevention; HCV; funding; West Nile; infected blood transfusions; infected blood; blood industry; screening test; donated blood; CDC; CDC spending; HCV money; National Institute of Health; Health and Human Services; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; FDA's Office of Blood Research and Review; Blood Products Advisory Committee; Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability; blood banks; Community Blood Center of Kansas City; Oklahoma Blood Institute
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Anti-Terror Funds Buy Wide Array of Pet Projects
The Washington Post traced the path of the region's first wave of homeland security aid from its distribution through its final use, a trail that has been largely unexamined by federal regulators. The reporters found that much of the $324 million directed to the Washington region after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks remained unspent or was funding projects with questionable connections to homeland security. The analysis included a review of contracts, grant proposals, and purchasing databases. Results showed millions were spent on items such as leather jackets for police officers.
Tags: anti-terrorism; anti-terrorism funds; terrorism; homeland security; Prince George's County prosecutors; Congress; The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; World Trade Center; Pentagon; Department of Homeland Security; Bethesda-Chevy Chase Fire Squad; Tom Ridge; District of Columbia Hospital Association; Psychiatric Institute of Washington; Kroll Government Services; bioterrorism; Prince William County; D.C. Department of Mental Health; D.C. Emergency Management Agency; anthrax; Montgomery County; Fairfax County; Federal Communications Commission
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An inside look at how a university tries to protect human subjects. Federal scrutiny has led Duke to ease the huge workloads burdening its review boards.
This article talks about how universities' Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are overworked, and often times unable to properly evaluate and supervise experiments involving human test subjects. The Chronicle observed and document how Duke university evaluates it's IRB experiment proposals.
Tags: IRB; institutional review board; education; colleges; universities; human test subjects; Duke; professors; school; higher education
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Hungry for Answers
Kids Care, INC. is a charity institution in Houston. Proclaimed as the nation's first meals-on-wheels program for kids, the charity has been honored by two presidents and the United Nations. The charity takes more than a million dollars a year in donations. KTRK-TV began a review of these finances. The investigation revealed a disturbing portrait of how donations were spent -- including thousands of dollars spent at a Houston topless bar, expensive restaurants, trips to lavish day spas and hair bills that exceeded $800 a month. Using the companies own ledger, the station documented false tax returns, exposed the practice of giving gifts to employees and relatives of the charities' founders by disguising the payments as crisis intervention for the needy.
Tags: Transcript; Tape
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Yucca Mountain Conflict of Interest
A Las Vegas Sun investigation reveals that the law firm hired by the Energy Department to do legal work on the Yucca Mountain repository has been lobbying to get the project built. The Energy Department manages the proposed Yucca Mountain project, a federal proposal to bury tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste at the site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The plan is controversial, environmentalists say its a bad idea, the nuclear energy industry says its needed. The Energy Department hired Chicago-based Winston & Straw to "independently review Yucca documents and impartially advise the DOE about possible flaws." But the Las Vegas Sun learned that Winston & Straw also does lobbying work for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the energy industry's top trade group and the "most vocal Yucca proponent in Washington." Nevada lawmakers contend that Winston & Straw involvement with the NEI and DOE presents a dangerous conflict of interest.
Tags: conflict of interest; ethics; Winston & Shaw; lawyers; federal government; Energy Department; Department of Energy; Yucca Mountain; nuclear waste; nuclear energy; Nuclear Energy Institute; lobbying; big money; politics; environment
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A Scholar's Quixotic Crusade Against Harvard and Its Secrets
The Chronicle of Higher Education follows the story of Peter Berkowitz, a writer of book reviews, who in 2000 "filed a lawsuit against Harvard for denying him tenure in its government department four years ago, becoming the first professor ever to take the institution to court for such a denial." The article reveals that "unlike most universities, Harvard routinely denies the tenure bids of junior scholars," and points out that Berkowitz has already won two legal rounds.
Tags: higher education; universities; litigation; academic affairs; political philosophy; George Mason