The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
10 News (WTSP), Tampa Bay’s CBS affiliate, exposes cracks in Florida’s zero-deductable windshield-replacement law. While the law is designed to help consumers, 10 News shows the lack of policing over fraud has lead to a proliferation of glass companies pushing unnecessary replacements. The effect has been rising rates for all policyholders, and now, state legislators are…
Read MoreThe contract company hired to provide medical care to Arizona prisoners failed to treat an inmate and that may have led to his death, according to a report from KPNX-(NBC) Phoenix. The medical provider was already under fire and this is the latest example of a systemic problem in Arizona prisons. The investigation led to…
Read MoreAt its June 20 meeting during our annual conference in San Antonio, the IRE Board of Directors will consider modifying the policy that bans entries in the IRE Awards if a Board member has been involved with a story at any level. IRE currently has one of the strictest such policies of any journalism contest.…
Read MoreAfter the Obama administration promised it would “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government,” it has since carried out an unprecedented campaign against federal government whistleblowers. Since 2009, six government officials have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a World War I era act that had…
Read MoreIn a disappointing unanimous decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can ignore public record requests from non-residents. This is one of the most regressive, backward rulings the U.S. Supreme Court has issued on access laws for some time. Two reasons make this particularly alarming: The court continues to look at public records…
Read More“It happens thousands of times a year in Minnesota’s classrooms: Disabled students get punished for disruptive outbursts with severe forms of discipline — from forceful physical restraint to extended solitary confinement — that are either banned or more restricted in other states. State reports examined by the Star Tribune show that such discipline occurred nearly 22,000…
Read More“It is one of the oddest spending habits in Washington: This year, the government will spend at least $890,000 on service fees for bank accounts that are empty. At last count, Uncle Sam has 13,712 such accounts with a balance of zero. They are supposed to be closed. But nobody has done the paperwork yet. So even…
Read More“Police track known gang members in an electronic database and, although police won’t make public exact numbers, Lt. Ed Bombrys, who oversees the gang unit, said there are an estimated 2,000 gang members in Toledo. There are, he said, anywhere from 25 to 40 ‘big, major gangs.’ In 2012, gang-related homicides were down from 2011, said…
Read MoreA Statesman analysis of deaths at state mental health hospitals reveals the deaths are rarely investigated outside the hospital, doctors are regularly cleared of improper care and deaths in state prisons get more scrutiny than those in state hospitals. Read the full investigation here.
Read MoreThe U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously today that the state of Virginia had the power to restrict public records access to residents of that state. Virginia limits freedom of information requests to its own residents and certain media outlets. The case reached the court after Rhode Island resident Mark J. McBurney and California resident Roger…
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