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 "cellular phones" ...
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Updated Version of Well Connected Media Tracker
In October 2006, Well Connected, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, updated its Media Tracker. The Tracker is a tool to "identify the source of news and information filtered to their community through newspapers, broadcast, cable, satellite, phone lines and broadband." The Tracker also features political information. This set of stories tells about the new version of Media Tracker, with background stories which profile many of the "top companies in broadcast television, radio, telephone, cellular, cable, broadband and satellite TV and radio."
Tags: Internet; Media Tracker; media ownership; Well Connected; information filters; Center for Public Integrity
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Bad Reception
Cities around the country are learning the best way to stop cellular companies from erecting numerous tall cell towers in their city is to mire the company in meetings and red tape. The article discusses how the cities, local residents, and cell phone companies see the issue and how it came about in the first place.
Tags: cell phones; cell towers; cell phone towers; reception; city planning; cellular; wireless; antennas; electromagnetic fields
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Wireless firms try to cope with success; Cell-phone users haunted by 'dead zones'
The Philadelphia Inquirer examines the cause of cell phone "dead spots" -- places where a cell phone user can't get service. Gelles writes that cell phone networks "are strongest in city centers, transportation hubs and major traffic corridors." But customers want to use them at their homes, where the networks are weak.
Tags: cell phones; Philadelphia; dead zones; wireless; mobile; Sprint PCS; Verizon Wireless; Cellular One; AT&T Wireless
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KC Government gabfest runs up taxpayers' bill. Oversight of cell phones is lax
The Kansas City Star found that employee abuse of city cellular phones and inadequate monitoring by City Hall is costing Kansas City taxpayers thousands of dollars. Municipal employees and council members used city cell phones to make personal calls. Using the state's Sunshine Law, the newspaper obtained a summary of city cell phone expenses.
Tags: cell phones; taxpayers
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Guns, Money and Cell Phones
The Industry Standard reports that the demand for an ore called columbite-tantalite -- or coltan -- is helping to fuel the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When refined, coltan becomes tantalum, a highly heat-resistant metal powder that is a key component in everything from mobile phones to computer chips and VCR's. As the demand for these products has increased, "a new, more sinister market began flourishing in the ...Congo. There, warring groups - many funded and supplied by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda - are exploiting coltan mining to help finance a bloody civil war now in its third year." Although selling coltan is not illegal, a United Nations report in April suggested that thousands of tons of coltan had been smuggled from the Congo into Rwanda and Uganda, and may have eventually made it to the U.S. companies that use the material. For their part, these companies have no way of knowing whether the tantalum they use is helping to finance the civil war. Another side effect of the coltan trade: mining activity is especially big in the mountainous northeastern region of the Congo, where endangered gorillas live.
Tags: Democratic Republic of Congo; cellular phones; Nokia; Sony; Intel; AVX; Cabot; H.C. Starck; Kemet; Columbite-tantalite; coltan; civil war; Uganda; Rwanda; tantalum capacitors; Sogem; mountain gorillas
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Supervisors keep in touch -- at a cost to taxpayers
A Des Moines Register investigation revealed that Polk County Supervisors took their taxpayer-provided cell phones on vacations and used them "to make personal calls, often at the cost of $1 per minute."
Tags: CAR county board cellular phones expenses reimburse perks
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Worry About Your Wireless?
ABC News 20/20 reports that "For years, executives of the $200 billion cellular phone industry have assured the millions who use their products that cell phones - and the microwave energy they emit - are completely safe and pose no health risk whatsoever. But a four-month ABC News 20/20 investigation uncovered startling new scientific evidence that directly challenged this presumption and revealed that some of the nation's most commonly used cell phones actually exceed the maximum radiation safety levels established by the federal government."
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You Pay, They Play: Computer-Assisted Reporting
WKMG-TV shows how computer-assisted reporting can uncover misdeeds of government employees. The investigation finds some state employees used cellular phones for personal calls, abused e-mail and online privileges and sold pornography.
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This Calls on You
This investigation examines government cellular phone bills in Atlanta. Over the past three years, the reporters found skyrocketing costs and a tremendous increase in the number of phones. The reporters found that city officials were destroying itemized cell phone bills making any analysis difficult. The investigation uncovered city politicians and employees using telephones for personal business and failing to reimburse the city.
Tags: TAPE
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The Ticketmaster
The story detailed how thousands of dollars worth of free sports and concert tickets given to Atlanta's elected officials landed on the black market. Articles described how a city councilwoman helped a close friend and business partner get hundreds of tickets which he later sold and traded for profit. He also sold access to luxury stadium boxes controlled by the government authority overseeing the Atlanta Braves stadium. The friend provided the councilwoman, Sheila Martin Brown, with trips to casinos, hundreds of dollars worth of cellular phone use passed on from a ticket client, and $3,500 provided by another ticket client to help pay for a trip to Africa. The articles also highlighted a lack of controls on the flow of free tickets to government officials (the mayor got $24,000 worth of tickets annually; the chairman of the Fulton County Commission $12,100).
Tags: None