IRE Radio
IRE Radio Podcast | America’s Exploited Guest Workers
All across America, you can find foreign guest workers peeling crawfish, setting up carnival rides and trimming trees. But the visa program that legally brings them here is rife with problems. On this episode, Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison take us through their BuzzFeed News investigation into H-2 visas, a program that condemns thousands of…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | The Journalists and the Death Squad
On this episode, reporter A.C. Thompson discusses his investigation into the deaths of five Vietnamese-American journalists between 1981 and 1990. Officials seemed to think that an anti-Communist group called the Front had been behind the slayings, but law enforcement agencies never charged anyone and the cases went cold. Thompson reopened the investigation for ProPublica and…
Read MoreTips for investigating child and family issues
Domestic violence, foster care and mental illness are important issues for journalists to cover. But anytime you’re dealing with families and children, there are ethical decisions to consider. We pulled some of our favorite tips and insights from a panel at the 2015 IRE Conference. IRE members can listen to the entire panel online. …
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | BONUS: Spotlight
If you attended an IRE Conference in the early 2000s, the plot of the movie “Spotlight” might have sounded familiar. That’s because the Hollywood depiction of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the clergy sex abuse scandal stayed surprisingly true to the real behind-the-scenes story. How do we know? A few of the journalists depicted in…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | The Forgotten Dead
Every reporter has their own version of the story bucket list – a collection of ideas or issues they can’t die without covering. On this episode, we’ll hear how G.W. Schulz of The Center for Investigative Reporting crossed one off of his. G.W. spent nearly eight years reporting on America’s missing and unidentified dead, unearthing…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | The Toughest Interview of My Life
There are some phone calls that will always be hard to make as a reporter. Reaching out to grieving relatives in the wake of a death is one of them. On this episode, Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Jeff Meitrodt discusses what it was like to do that over and over again as he pieced together…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | The NFL’s Concussion Cover-Up
Meet Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada. You might have guessed from their names that they’re brothers. They’re also both investigative journalists working for ESPN. On this episode, we’re sharing pieces of our conversations with the brothers during their recent trip to the University of Missouri. We talk about everything from their reporting on the NFL’s…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | BONUS: Interviewing Liars
How do you get the truth out of a liar? On this bonus episode, experts weigh in on just that. You’ll hear from investigative reporter Matt Apuzzo, former CIA polygraph examiner Barry McManus, and former FBI counterterrorism agent Don Borelli. In this audio pulled from the 2015 IRE Conference, the three discuss how to develop…
Read MoreAUDIO: Tips for interviewing liars (and everyone else)
The CIA’s former chief polygrapher, an ex-FBI counterterrorism expert and a Pulitzer-winning reporter walk into a bar. Ok, that’s not true. But the three did come together for a panel at IRE’s 2015 conference in Philadelphia called “Interviewing Liars.” Matt Apuzzo, a New York Times reporter who was on the Associated Press team that revealed…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | Ghost Schools
For years, the U.S. has pushed education as one of its major triumphs in Afghanistan. The government helped build schools, train teachers, issue textbooks and educate scores of girls. And for years, that legacy went relatively unchecked. But when Azmat Khan of BuzzFeed News began questioning the numbers and visiting schools in the region this…
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