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 "America Online" ...
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The Foundation
This series focused on a little-known network of privately run government contractors called "quality improvement organizations," or QIOs, that collectively spend about 300 million tax dollars annually. This story focused on an Iowa QIO, but included an on-line report that detailed the spending and complain investigations at every other QIO in America. That report was based on a review of more than 200 public documents.
Tags: tax dollars; state government; oversight; Medicare
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Made in China
The author travelled to China undercover to expose how steroids make their way from China to US athletes. The author also developed a faux steroid website in order to sting the largest supplement wholesaler in America, who was also selling illegal designer steroids.
Tags: sports; drugs; steroids; black market; international relations; drug trade; online commerce; undercover; sting operation
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Silent Partners: How political non-profits work the system
This online story from the Center for Public Integrity looks at the working of the Section 527 Committees. These tax-exempt associations raised and spent almost half-billion dollars in 2003-04. The increase in the fundraising was driven by 53 committees that focus largely on presidential elections.
Tags: Section 527; nonprofits; presidential campaign; campaign finance; presidential elections; America Coming Together; Media Fund; political non-profits
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Fools rush in: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the unmaking of AOL Time Warner
This book examines the aftermath of the AOL Time Warner merger, once hailed as "the deal of the century": $200 billion lost in shareholder value, investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, shareholder lawsuits against the company, and the "civil war" that broke out inside the company, "complete with backstabbing and personal betrayals."
Tags: BOOK; AOL; America Online; Time Warner; corporate mergers; Steve Case; Jerry Levin; Bob Pittman; Ted Turner
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Machine Politics
Wired News produced this series of online reports on the rush to purchase electronic voting machines after the Florida election debacle of 2000. Zetter found that the new machines are not very secure. It turns out that source codes for the machines were easy to obtain, voting machines were left unattended for days before elections and could easily be tampered with, Diebold Election Systems' (one of the main voting machine manufacturers) company server was easy to hack into, and there were numerous incidents of inaccuracies in voting results. Zetter also found hidden financial ties between Diebold and a group of disabled activists pushing for the adoption of the machines.
Tags: Electronic voting machines; elections; interest groups; computer voting; Help America Vote Act
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Chinese women seek American husbands online
A number of Chinese women are using Internet services to find husbands in America. This is partly fuelled by a desire for a better life and also by the rise in Internet usage in Chinese urban areas. These marriages have a low success rate which is often ignored by the marriage seekers themselves.
Tags: TRANSCRIPT; AUDIO TAPE; international reporting; marriage; relationships; online; internet; china; Radio Free Asia; immigration; INS; domestic abuse
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The Deal Makers
An investigation by the Washington Post revealed that America Online "was using a series of unconventional transactions to sustain the appearance of breakneck growth in ad revenue" -- even after the Internet boom subsided and it merged with Time Warner. " Time Warner executives were "mesmerized by the hundreds of millions of dollars in online advertising pouring into AOL ... (and) even when the bubble popped and dot-coms collapsed, AOL continued to report record-breaking growth in ad revenue, reinforcing its image as the medium of the future and overwhelming any second thoughts from Time Warner shareholders and employees." What Time Warner didn't know was that, "among other things, AOL turned legal disputes into ad deals, converted long-term contracts into one-time balloon payments, shifted revenue from one division to another, bartered ads for computer equipment and sold ads on behalf of eBay while booking all the sales as its own... (The) stories immediately prompted two federal investigations of AOL Time Warner."
Tags: America Online; AOL; Time Warner; AOL Time Warner; Enron; advertising revenue; merger; balloon payments; contracts; Internet boom; dot-coms
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Death of a Salesman
McLean reports how Allstate, "America's insurance icon is battling to save its decades-old turf. To win, the company is taking on the risk of its life."
Tags: insurance; web; online; Wall Street; Merrill Lynch; Allstate; State Farm
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Debt to Society: The Real Price of Prisons
A Mother Jones interactive project chronicles and quantifies "the explosive growth of America's inmate population." The online series depicts the economic and social costs of prisons, and includes a database on states' prison population and prison spending. The first part explains why America became the world's leading jailer, and looks at the paradoxical growth of the incarceration rate over the past decades when the crime rate was declining. The reporters find that "the soaring number of nonviolent drug offenders" and increases in sentencing are behind the expansion of prisons. The second part discovers that "prisons are rife with infectious illnesses - and threaten to spread them to the public." The third story examines the influence of jail sentences on inmates' inclination to violence after being released. The fourth part looks at the social costs for children who have a parent behind bars. The fifth article explains various alternatives for society to respond to lawbreakers without locking them up. The sixth part reveals that spending on a domestic anti-drug war is ineffective. The seventh article finds that "mass incarceration comes at a moral cost to every American."
Tags: corrections; law enforcement; crime; racial disparity; arrests; the Twin Towers Correctional Facility; rape; HIV; mental health; AIDS; families; drugs; courts; judges; CAR; database mapping project
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Battle Acroos
New Jersey Monthly sheds light on the never ending competition between New Jersey and New York in attracting each other's businesses and commercial control over Hudson River. "It seems that whenever a major company threatens to pack its bags, politicians in either state will trip over themselves to find the resources to persuade it to stay," the magazine reports. The story exemplifies the battle for attracting and holding corporate players with a $1.1 billion bond issue, approved by New York governor George Pataki, designed to keep the News York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan. The article finds that "this economic tug-of-war diminishes both states."
Tags: politicians; Port Authority of New Jersey and New York; Jersey City; public subsidies; corporations; tax abatements; industrial development bonds; Time Warner; Mail.com; America Online; Lockheed Martin; Goldman Sachs; Chase Manhattan