The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. Add to that more than 3,000 tipsheets from our national conferences on how to cover specific beats or do specific stories and you have a resource that no reporter or editor should be without. These stories and tipsheets 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. Logged-in members can view the tipsheets free online:
Search results for "fatal accidents" ...
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CAR for Broadcast
Porter describes various data-based stories that make good broadcast investigations, including campus crime and dams. Porter describes the data needed for each story, and then gives examples of how stations have run those types of stories in the past.
Tags: television; TV news; broadcast; computer-assisted reporting; data analysis; fatal accidents
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Sources for Covering Auto Accidents
McGinty gives information on how to use the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatal Accident Reporting System, or FARS. He covers why it exists, how comprehensive and accurate the data is, and how it is tructured.
Tags: Transportation; car accidents; FARS; fatalities; national databases
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Traffic Fatalities
This tipsheet is a basic overview of what resources to use when reporting on traffic fatalities. McGinty offers some background on FARS, paper documents and driving records, and then explains how all three can all be helpful when reporting on the topic.
Tags: Fatal Accident Reports; analysis; drivers; traffic; Access; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
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"Crash Course" and "On the Wings of Controversy"
Crash Course-This tipsheet deals with traffic reports. It explains how to obtain this type of data and analyze it. The tipsheet explains how the reporters broke down the database to come up with specific findings. On the Wings of Controversy-The tipsheet deals with airplane flight information. It talks about how the reporters obtained flight manifests and put it into a computer spreadsheet from paper records. It talks about how passenger, flight departure, and arrival information was analyzed to determine if a university airplane was being used for personal matters.
Tags: Interstate interchange; hazardous interchange; accident rate; crash database; injuries; fatal crashes; traffic engineers; transportation planners; traffic counts; AAA; UT Center for Transportation Research; Metropolitan Planning Commission; Department of Transportation; University of Tennessee; airplane; flight manifests
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Using state highway crash databases
It’s probably not worth trying to cover every injury crash as spot news. Even if your coverage area includes just 300,000 people, that would mean writing about more than 500 injured people each week! But it suggests that you might want to try to do more enterprise. One resource is your state’s crash database. Overberg gives some suggestions on how to do some enterprise work using crash data.
Tags: None
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Airline Maintenance and Safety
This tipsheet is basically a list of databases and information available to anyone looking in to the subject of airline maintenance. Mellnik gives sources of information he used in his own exhaustive series on the topic.
Tags: None
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Deaths, Dying, and Full Disclosure
"State laws can be designed to thwart inquires about suspicious deaths in vulnerable populations," this tipsheet begins. "Hints that something is amiss in your state can be found on paperwork as seemingly routine as a police accident report." Bennish lists a number of events surrounding a death or injury that journalists should look out for, and other factors that send up a flare regarding a possible story. This tipsheet provides a list of resources on where to find records on suspicious deaths, including "funeral homes, nursing homes inspection reports, death certificates, computerized state vital statistics compilations of deaths, state compilations of addresses of institutions and homes, medical examiners, coroners reporters and autopsies, police and news reports."
Tags: nursing homes; deaths; suspicious deaths; accidents; fatalities; wrongful death; assisted living; major unusual incident reports; aging; mental retardation; mental illness