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 "Obstacles" ...
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A Damaged District
For more than a year, Zahira Torres overcame obstacle after obstacle to document one of the worst school cheating scandals in the nation's history. Where other cheating scandals involved altering accountability tests, the El Paso Independent School District gamed the state and federal accountability systems by targeting Mexican immigrant students. In a number of cases, district officials refused to enroll students or pushed out students already enrolled -- denying countless students their constitutional right to an education. In other cases, they arbitrarily reclassified grade levels or altered transcripts, all in an attempt to keep students out of the testing pool. Torres' reporting sparked numerous results. The superintendent who masterminded the scheme went to federal prison. The state education agency removed the school board. And when Torres' reporting documented that the state was aware of details of the cheating in 2010 and cleared the district anyway, the new education commissioner ordered an independent investigation of how the agency missed the cheating.
Tags: schools; scandals; education; school board
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U.S. Fails to Proect Workers in Anarctica
Anartica is a land that conjures images of brave explorers and dedicated scientists striving amid stark beauty. But an in-depth investigation reveals that is also a place where workplace safety severely lags, and injured workers face unforeseen obstacles to get compensation.
Tags: Worker's Compensation; Anartica; Obstacles; Workplace Safety
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Backyard Bombs
In 1983, two boys were killed in San Diego as a result of old munitions explosion in a nearby canyon. San Diego County has a long military history of training camps and defense sites which have been turned into residential neighborhoods, but traces of that past are still seen today as some explosives were never removed.
Tags: weapons; shell; shell shock; debris; Department of Defense; obstacle course; practice field;
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Fixing D.C.'s Schools
The Post looked at the high spending and low performance of the D.C. schools and "examined the obstacles to reform."
Tags: education; school district; budget; academics;
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Last Chance
"The series explains that there's a 10-year opportunity to restore Louisiana's eroding coastal wetlands and shoreline, including barrier islands. If major restoration projects costing billions of dollars are not begun by then, it may be too late to save much of the ecosystem. The series explains the myriad of proposals for restoring the coast, and the bureaucratic, social, economic and scientific obstacles in their way."
Tags: coastal wetlands; erosion; shoreline; ecosystem; fisheries; environmental protection
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Guantanamo Detainees
The series shows who is in the detention center, why they're in there and how they were captured. "The stories, based on interviews and testimony in the transcripts, describe the difficulty in distinguishing the enemy from noncombatants and the obstacles detainees face in confronting often murky evidence against them."
Tags: terrorism; Guantanamo Bay; transcript; suicides; military; prison
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Limbo
A Times investigation into the military's system of justice for foreign terror suspects reveals "new information about the physical and legal treatment of the detainees." Among the major stories the Times broke were: "the use of harsh methods to break a series of hunger strikes at Guantanamo; the largely secret evolution of the military detention facility at Bagram, Afghanistan into another Guantanamo-type facility; the reasons for the collapse of an ambitious two-year effort to prosecute military personnel for abuses at Bagram; the obstacles to American government efforts to repatriate many of the Guantanamo prisoners and the story of attempts by senior Bush Administration officials to press for sweeping changes in the detention system." The Times also reported on the power struggle between military officials and detainees for control of Guantanamo, a situation the military denied.
Tags: Guantanamo; terror suspects; terror detainees; prisoners; Bagram, Afghanistan
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Overcoming Injustice: Safeguarding the right to vote
The two-day series looked at black participation at the polls 40 years after the Voting Rights Act safeguarded their right to vote. In a county-by-county analysis of black voter turnout in the 2004 election, it found that blacks still participate at a much lower level than the voting population in general. Officials and advocates were divided on whether this difference in black participation reflects a squandering of the legacy their parents and grandparents died to create, or whether obstacles to voting remain for black voters.
Tags: voting; census; Florida; FOIA; voting age; race; black voters; voter turnout
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A Shot in the Arm
Police arrested Darryl Burton on June 28, 1984, for the shooting death of Donald Ball, a notorious neighborhood gangster. Burton's trial in 1985 lasted two days, and a St. Louis jury found him guilty of capital murder and armed criminal action. Circuit Judge Jack L. Koehr sentenced the 23 year old Burton to life in prison. This story explores the murder conviction and the obstacles Burton has encountered in trying to get the conviction reversed. He was convicted on the strength of two eyewitness accounts. Gay finds that one of the eyewitnesses admitted perjury, and the other has had his character and testimony impugned by the arrival of new testimony.
Tags: Darryl Burton; reversed conviction; Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals; habeas corpus; FOI
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High-Tech Shell Game: Stock Fraud on a Global Scale
This investigative story by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looks at the power of the "boiler room" brokers who sell "stock in obsure U.S. companies" to foreign investors at a markup price. These companies, which sometimes operate with just a phone number and a Web site, eventually pack up and leave the investors holding on to useless and unattractive stock. According to the questionnaire, the investigation "explained how scarce resources, juisdictional questions and other obstacles have prevented American and foreign regulators and law-enforcement officials from shutting down the rings, or even putting a serious dent in their business."
Tags: boiler rooms; Securities and Exchange Commission; National Association of Securities Dealers