Introducing the 2026 IRE Conference Fellows!
Paula Lavigne of The Dallas Morning News found that “the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out.” Audits and inspection reports point to weak oversight of the certifying organizations that bestow official organic status on behalf…
Read MoreKent Fischer, Tawnell D. Hobbs and Molly Motley of the Dallas Morning News analyzed local school district credit card transactions to find that “only a fraction of purchase receipts are scrutinized, and thousands of purchases run afoul of DISD policy and state purchasing laws.” Among the $20 million spent each year by district employees with…
Read MoreIn a 9-month investigation, The Miami Herald uncovered inaccuracies regarding the government’s reporting of the frequency of fatal cargo crashes. Through the analysis of extensive government documents dating back to 2000, the reporters found that 69 planes have crashed claiming the lives of 85 people, thus “making air cargo the nation’s deadliest form of commercial…
Read MoreWith Fourth of July revelers bound for the lakes, Marc Chase of The Times of Northwest Indiana wrote, A Times’ computerized analysis of U.S. Coast Guard recreational boating accident records for Lake and Porter counties between 1995 and 2004 shows the circumstances involved in the three cases are largely the rule, not the exception, when…
Read MoreRichard Willing of USA Today reports that “The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million. . .to produce a national “model statute” that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information ‘stays out of the hands of the bad guys.’” The grant was included in this year’s budget…
Read MoreMike Sherry of the Kansas City Star used federal data to determine that the Lake of the Ozarks is the “third-most accident-prone waterway in the country.” The Lake of the Ozarks trails only the Atlantic Coast and the Colorado River in number of of serious mishaps according to his analysis of over decade’s worth of…
Read MoreDan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul of The Washington Post analyzed payment records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an investigative series. People who don’t farm at all have received $1.3 billion in government handouts since 2000, the investigation found. They also found that growers reaped benefits even in good years from…
Read MoreMichael Cabbage of the Orlando Sentinel studied e-mails sent from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General to an agency administrator and the chairman of an advisory panel that monitors NASA safety and found that “key officials responsible for overseeing NASA expressed serious concerns about launching space shuttle Discovery without additional work to prevent foam insulation…
Read MoreSharon Coolidge of The Cincinnati Enquirer won a two-year battle with the Cinncinnati Health Department to obtain records of properties cited for lead contamination violations. Coolidge analyzed the city health records and found that “Cincinnati’s Health Department is failng to force property owners to fix their buildings, leaving hundreds of children at risk for lead…
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