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 "third world" ...
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Secret Service Strip Club: El Salvador
Seattle-based investigative reporter Chris Halsne tracks down a reluctant source in El Salvador to expose allegations that getting drunk, partying with strippers, and paying for sex with third-world prostitutes is part of the U.S. Secret Service culture. This investigative series is aired just weeks after agents were caught in Columbia with hookers – and just days after Homeland Security Director announced to Congress that Columbia was an isolated incident.
Tags: corruption; U.S. Secret Service; El Salvador; Seattle
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HBO Real Sports: Hockey's Darkest Day
In 2011 a plane carrying a Russian hockey team crashed shortly after takeoff--the deadliest accident in the history of professional sports. A five-month Real Sports investigation uncovered massive safety problems in the Russian hockey league. The league spent millions on player salaries but "a few bucks" on everything else--including travel. The plane that crashed was operated by a cheap, third-rate company that had been banned from flying to Europe because they had been cited so many times for major safety violations. The crew of the plane hadn't even completed their training. Our investigation showed that the lack of safety in the world’s second best hockey league—called the KHL—often extends to the ice where KHL team doctors use IV’s and drugs to get their players to perform better on the ice. One young star died after receiving an injection of banned drugs from team doctors. When it came to travel, the lack of safe conditions was nearly universal. Practically every team flew on a Soviet-era jet—jets that make up 3% of the world’s fleet but account for 42% of the world’s accidents. These jets are in such poor condition that most Russian airlines wont use them. Yet even after the crash the KHL continued to use these planes, a fact they initially denied. Shortly after we interviewed the KHL Vice President, the league changed its rules. Now teams fly strictly on modern equipment.
Tags: Russia; Russian hockey team; plane crash; the KHL;
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"The Lost Chalice"
Author Vernon Silver dives deep into the Italian world of art smuggling. Through court documents and "interviews with modern tomb robbers, smugglers and art dealers," Silver is able to locate a valuable missing vase. The book provides an in-depth look at the world's third largest "underground economy," and how a "network of powerful people and institutions" has been at the center of the "illicit art and cultural property trade."
Tags: Euphronios; Oxford University; Metropolitan Museum of Art; chalice; Zeus; art smugglers; tomb raiders
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Captive Care
“The story is about third-world conditions in the prisoner care facilities operated by the Tarrant County public hospital, John Peter Smith, and the efforts of the hospital’s new CEO and COO to fix the problems”.
Tags: health care; medicine; medical services; patients; poor; equipment
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Distracted
Distracted explores the steep societal and individual costs to our split-focus, hyper-mobile, cyber-centric lives. In our "knowledge" economy, the average worker switches tasks every three minutes on average, and a third of workers say they are so interrupted and busy that they don't have time to reflect on the work they do. We eat on the run, keep one eye on a gadget, and process the world in snippets. It's rare to pay attention to anyone or anything in full or for long. In this climate of diffused and splintered attention, workers, parents and children alike have less time to reflect, create and connect."
Tags: distracted; multitask; society; switch; busy; technology, tasking;
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A Crime So Monstrous
"Skinner digs deep to find slaves, slave traders and slave masters in the frontlines of the third world war zones, in rotting urban ghettos, even in suburban America."
Tags: third world; modern slavery; human trafficking; sex trade; debt-bondage;
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The Wasteland
CBS News found that when well-meaning American consumers give their electronics to so-called recyclers, the waste is often smuggled to China and other parts of the Third World, where it is broken down or melted for the precious metals inside. They investigated a major electronic waste recycler in the Denver area, Executive Recycling, and tracked a container that had been filled with cathode ray tubes at the company's loading docks. They followed this container from Denver, to the port of Tacoma, to Hong Kong, which is the main entryway to the part of southern China where electronic waste is broken down in the worst conditions. There, seven out of ten kids have dangerous levels of lead in their blood. Pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage. The reporters also went to China and found that wasteland, where workers were cooking circuit boards over open flames and separating the gold from other metals in acid baths on the edge of a river. While filming, the crew was attacked by a gang that protects this gray market enterprise. Back in Denver, CBS News confronted the CEO of Executive Recycling. He denied that his company had sent the CRTs overseas, but the evidence was all but irrefutable.
Tags: recycling; gray market; electronics; China; worker safety; pollution;
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Plagued By Fear
Dr. Thomas Butler, a plague researcher who "had treated the Black Death's bloated victims in the Third World," was accused of stealing vials of the plague that disappeared from laboratories where he was doing research in the United States, setting off a federal investigation and a trial. Mangels tells Butler's story in seven parts, detailing lax lab security, the trial and Butler's attempt to rebuild his life.
Tags: Yersinia pestis; Black Plague; Thomas Butler; polygraph; lie detector; Texas tech University; research lab security
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After Further Review: The public - private deal with Paul Allen to build Seahawks Stadium was a lose - win situation. Guess who won?
This story tells the real cost and true backstory of how the world's third richest man, billionaire pro sports mogul and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, "partnered" with taxpayers to build himself a stadium the public ended up paying for.
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The Black Belt: Alabama's Third World
Twelve counties in Alabama make up "The Black Belt," a portion of the state with low life expectancy, high poverty and populated mostly by blacks. In this exhaustive investigation, the Birmingham News examines the plight of the Black Belt, the roots and the reality. Also, reporters found that the majority of land inside the area is owned by people who live in other counties, or, in some cases, other states altogether.
Tags: Race; poverty; illness; minorities