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 "problems" ...
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Lost to History: When War Records Go Missing
"Lost to History: When War Records Go Missing" revealed that military field records from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were never kept, destroyed or simply could not be found, leaving veterans with combat injuries or disability claims unable to prove they saw action. The widespread failure by the military to keep and preserve these records - records that have been kept since America's Revolutionary War - leaves war historians in the dark about the granular details that, when woven together, tell larger stories hidden from participants in the day-to-day confusion of combat. “Lost to History" showed that dozens of Army units and U.S. Central Command lacked adequate war records, how Pentagon leaders had years of warnings but never sufficiently addressed the problem, and how commanders failed to take record keeping orders seriously. The stories vividly narrate the personal costs of this failure. The lack of field records forced Spc. Christopher Delara to struggle for years before receiving treatment he was entitled to for post-traumatic stress syndrome. And the missing material deepened the grief of Jim Butler, who searched for years to find the truth about his son’s death in combat.
Tags: War; war records; Iraq; Afghanistan; veterans
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Cracking the Codes
Cracking the Codes documented how thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed Medicare for more complex and costly health care over the past decade – adding $11 billion or more to their fees – despite little evidence elderly patients required more treatment. The series also uncovered a broad range of costly billing errors and abuses that have plagued Medicare for years – from confusion over how to pick proper payment codes to apparent overcharges in medical offices and hospital emergency rooms. The findings strongly suggest these problems, known as “upcoding,” are worsening amid lax federal oversight and the government-sponsored switch from paper to electronic medical records.
Tags: Medicare; health care; billing; medical offices; hospitals; government; medical records
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Crime Data Investigation
The initial story in the crime data investigation found that from 2009 to early 2012 the Milwaukee Police Department misreported more than 500 aggravated assaults as lesser offenses not counted in the city’s violent crime tally. More than 800 additional cases followed the same pattern but couldn’t be verified with available records. Subsequent stories found police underreported aggravated assaults even when their own officers were severely injured; police clerks routinely changed dangerous weapon codes to generic ones in a way that allowed violent assaults to be underreported — and escape FBI scrutiny; the FBI’s crime auditing process is a fig leaf — metro police departments are rarely audited, and even then the sample sizes are too small to draw meaningful conclusions; Milwaukee police knew they misreported rapes and robberies, but didn’t mention this to city leaders or the public; high-ranking department officials raised red flags internally for years that there were problems but the public only heard a drumbeat that crime was down. In addition to these major installments, Poston and Diedrich wrote nearly two dozen follow-up stories that documented the fallout.
Tags: Crime data; police; assaults; city government
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For-Profit-College Business Model Breeds Exploitative Marketing Tactics
In the first radio piece: Interviews with former recruiters, faculty, administrators and students of a small group of for-profit colleges in Minnesota paint a picture of schools that are exploiting unsophisticated students for their financial-aid money. Analysis points to a high-enrollment, high-dropout business model that earns the company millions but provides questionable return on taxpayer investment. In the second radio piece: Political differences at the federal level make it unclear how much the government will regulate for-profit colleges. At the Minnesota state level, the leading official for higher-ed says his agency doesn’t have the resources to go after problem colleges – and isn’t sure whether beefing up enforcement would be the best use of higher-education funding.
Tags: Non-profit colleges; financial aid; business models; for-profit colleges
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StarTribune: Discipline Deferred
A six-month investigation by the Star Tribune found that the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, once considered a national leader in the regulation of licensed physicians, often doesn’t punish doctors whose mistakes harm patients or who demonstrate a pattern of substandard care. After analyzing information compiled by a national databank and reviewing thousands of pages of court and medical board records, the reporters found that the board, which regulates 20,000 physicians in the state, has been reluctant to punish some doctors who have harmed patients, including more than 100 doctors who were disciplined by other states and even doctors who lost privileges to practice at Minnesota hospitals. The investigation also showed that the board lags behind boards in other states in disclosing information to the public, including data on malpractice judgments or settlements. It also doesn’t disclose whether doctors have been disciplined by regulators in other states or lost their privileges to work in hospitals and other facilities for surgical mistakes and other problems.
Tags: Board of Medical Practice; physicians; doctors; punishment; patients
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NBC News: Under Fire
An investigation into an alleged defect involving 20 million rifles and shotguns, causing many to fire without the trigger being pulled. Despite dozens of injuries and at least seven deaths—and evidence the manufacturer has been aware of a problem for decades—Remington has publicly insisted its guns are safe and the incidents are a result of user error. Using internal company documents including customer complaints dating back to the 1950s, our investigation found Remington chose not to implement changes designed to make its products safer, and may have withheld vital information from its customers.
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Startribune:The Day Care Threat
Children had been dying in Minnesota child care at an alarming rate and state regulators and industry leaders had overlooked the problem until our reporting laid bare a series of safety failures that led to the spike in deaths. The reporters made dozens of public record requests and analyzed hundreds of cases to uncover wide problems in the state’s in-home daycare system. They almost all the deaths occurred at in-home daycares, which have more lax regulations than centers. The series also uncovered dozens of cases of sexual abuse, gun violence and negligence that harmed children in the state’s in-home daycare system. It revealed how Minnesota has some of the weakest training and supervision rules in the country for these in-home daycares. The reporters also discovered that critical safety records that would help parents identify problem providers were not accessible to the public. The response to the series was swift and sustained. State regulators implemented changes to improve infant safe sleep practices and they are planning legislation this session to shore up some of the safety problems. The series also highlighted how the lack of information about child care deaths is a national problem.
Tags: Child care; safety; daycare system; sexual abuse; gun violence; negligence
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Wage Theft In the Fields
American farmworkers have often experienced egregious abuses, but nothing is more pervasive, nor harder to ferret out, than the wage theft that results from a practice called farm-labor contracting. Found in the fields of every handpicked crop in the country, farm-labor contractors not only provide growers with crews, but also handle wages and manage everything from verifying immigration status to providing workers' compensation. The problem is, the contractors systematically underpay the workers. “Farm labor contractors,” says writer Tracie McMillan, “give American produce growers what companies like China's Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business, often saving money in the process and creating a firewall between the brand and the working conditions under which its products are made.” And yet McMillan — a fellow with both the Knight-Wallace program at University of Michigan, and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University — found that enforcement is rare: In 2008, inspectors visited only 1,499 of the more than 2 million farms nationwide; in 2011, California inspectors found just seven minimum wage violations on the state’s 86,000 farms. Fines are minimal: “It's cheaper to violate the law than to follow the law,” says one farmworker advocate. And wage theft is tedious to prove, requiring inspectors to interview workers, analyze time cards, and collect payroll records. That's why workers and their advocates in California are counting on a lawsuit brought earlier this year on behalf of two farmworkers against the contractors who hired them—as well as the growers who outsourced the work. The suit alleges that the contractors routinely undercounted the hours worked, failed to pay minimum wage or overtime, failed to provide safe or sanitary working conditions, and housed the workers in unsafe and unsanitary living quarters. The “collective action” suit—open to anyone who can prove he or she experienced the same treatment—may cover thousands of workers and deliver awards substantial enough to deter other employers from the same practices.
Tags: Labor; farms; working conditions; wage
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Led by an innocent into a web of evil
The investigation chronicles the tireless efforts of Boston federal agents who followed the trail of a single photo of a distraught toddler erroneously sent to them by a Boston-area man obsessed with child pornography. It ended with the arrests of more than 42 men from California to Mexico and the discovery of more than 140 exploited children, one of them only days old. In the telling, staff writer Jenifer B. McKim deftly details the exploding worldwide problem of child pornography, the new and innovative efforts made by investigators to rescue children and track down criminals, and the devastating toll that child porn takes on victims and families.
Tags: child porn; pornography; sex abuse; children
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Voter Patrol
The NEWS4 I-Team dug through more than 600 phone and email tips to break three major election stories before, during and immediately after the presidential election. About two weeks before the election, we asked viewers to tell us when they saw problems when they voted. The response was immediate. Our two-man team went through every tip and beat out the AP, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other local stations on the biggest election stories in our area. Our first story revealed absentee ballots sent out in Maryland were missing their second page, which contained the most contested ballot initiatives including legalized gambling, same-sex marriage and the DREAM Act. This story was picked up across the nation and led to statements made by the Maryland Governor and the various interest groups involved in the ballot issues.
Tags: Elections; presidential elections; votes; presidential reporting; ballot issues