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 "scandal" ...
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Congressional Campaign Marred by Scandal
When federal authorities charged the finance director for Connecticut House Speaker Chris Donovan's congressional campaign with trying to hide campaign contributions, the Courant sought to uncover details of the probe and provide its readers stories that explained the significance of the arrest, peeling back the layers of a conspiracy that reached the highest levels of state government.
Tags: Federal authorities; campaign finance; state government
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The Secret Service Scandal
As President Obama was dressing to attend a formal gala of 430 world leaders in Cartagena, Colombia, last April, a story broke over a U.S. Secret Service agent not paying an agreed upon $800 fee for sex with a prostitute, leading to the dismissal of 11 secret service agents for their debauchery at Colombia’s Hotel Caribe. It was the largest scandal in the 147-year-old history of the Secret Service, exposing a pervasive macho culture of hard-working, hard-partying agents in an agency whose common image is one of stoned-faced, buttoned-down agents focused solely on protecting the President.
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No Small Thing
The Poughkeepsie Journal series “No Small Thing” goes where no other newspaper or media outlet has – it challenges the mainstream medical dogma on Lyme disease. In rigorously documented articles, Projects Writer Mary Beth Pfeiffer concludes that the major actors in this public health scandal -- chiefly the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Infectious Disease Society of America – have minimized and mismanaged a burgeoning epidemic of tick-borne disease at great harm to thousands of infected people. These two powerful institutions have held – in policy and pronouncement -- that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose and easy to cure. It is neither.
Tags: Media coverage; public health; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; CDC
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The Cash Machine
An investigation reveals that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office seizes millions every year in small amounts of cash seized from individuals stopped by police— but not necessarily arrested, and often never convicted of a crime. Through the use of "civil asset forfeiture," the Philadelphia D.A. has created a kind of forfeiture assembly line, pursuing cases for small amounts of cash by the thousands via a system which proceeds without regard to guilt or innocence and which places a tremendous burden of proof on the property owner. This investigation is one of the first quantitative looks into a big-city forfeiture operation and includes statistics compiled from reviews of thousands of court records as well as data compiled by hand.
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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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D.C. Tax Office Scandal
The District of Columbia struck an unprecedented number of deals behind closed doors this year with prominent commercial property owners who had appealed their tax assessments, reducing the city's tax base by $2.6 billion. The settlements were kept from the public for months until The Washington Post started mining public records and filing FOIAs, which the city routinely denied until the newspaper's lawyers got involved. The Post also learned that city leaders had kept critical internal audits about the tax office in "draft" format to prevent their release under FOIA. Through sources, The Post obtained the undisclosed reports -- along with a dozen other audits that had been kept from public view -- and published the findings for the first time. The series prompted the City Council to change the law to require the tax office to immediately make public all of its reports -- bringing a new level of transparency to a once secretive agency. The Securities and Exchange Commission also launched a probe to see if the city had kept critical findings from audits used to determine bond ratings. The inquiry is ongoing.
Tags: tax fraud; taxes; taxpayers; tax office
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Abused & Used
The series focused on the treatment and care of the developmentally disabled in New York state, which spend far more than any other state on the developmentally disabled. The series comes nearly four decades after abuses were uncovered at Willowbrook, a state facility on Staten Island, a scandal that touched off a wave of deinstitutionalization nationwide.
Tags: developmentally disabled; new york; new york state; abuse; willowbrook; institutionalized
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Wounded Warriors
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review began following up on tips worldwide from military personnel inside the Warrior Transition Units, the special military-medical wards constructed in the aftermath of the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. After months of gathering leaked documents and compiling numerous interviews at bases nationwide, especially with soldiers, the Tribune leaked reams of secret reports detailing the Pentagon's own inspection of medical wards.
Tags: Military Personnel; Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Washington D.C. Documents
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Scandals In Atlanta Public Schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed of the 2008 standardized test scores in the Atlanta Public School System and laid the foundation for coverage of what is considered the largest case of academic fraud in the nation's history.
Tags: No Child Left Behind; Atlanta Public Schools; Cheating; Test Fraud; Academic Fraud
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OSU Scandals
An investigation of a football coach from OSU that covered up NCAA violations and knowingly allowed star atheletes to play in games even though he knew they may be ineligible for competition. The university attempted to dismiss Tressel's violation as a minor oversight and suspended him for two games.
Tags: NCAA; OSU; Ohio State University; Football; College