CIR: The Investigative Report

Support CIR through micropayments using Kachingle

Christa Scharfenberg — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:20:24 -0800

Here at CIR we are as concerned about a sustainable future for investigative reporting as we are about producing high-impact journalism that is important to you. For more than three decades, CIR has relied largely on foundations to support our reporting. We are hard at work now to identify more diverse funding sources, including building our individual donor base. We know that our readers, viewers and listeners are a diverse group and that, if you chose to support our work financially, you will have equally diverse goals for your giving. Some of you may be able to contribute $100, $500, or even $1,000 a year to support our hard hitting investigative work (you can do that over here. Others may be interested in supporting a specific investigation, like the Civil Rights Cold Case Project or The Price of Sex. Still others of you may want one simple way to support a variety of sites you like and depend on. Introducing Kachingle, one of the first crowdsourcing services that you can use to support your favorite online news sites and blogs. Kachingle is simple, user-centric and user-controlled alternative to cumbersome subscriptions, paywalls, and pay-per-article plans some media outlets are considering. It requires virtually no effort on your part - you just become a Kachingler, giving $5 a month through PayPal, and then click the Kachingle medallion on the sites you want to support. No credit cards, no passwords. Kachingle will keep track of your visits to each of the sites you've selected and at the end of each month, your monthly pay-in to Kachingle (minus small service fees) will be distributed proportionally among your chosen sites based on your visits. We hope you will become a Kachingler, helping to support journalism's future online, including the time and resource intensive investigative reporting that CIR produces. Your support alone won't save investigative reporting but if enough people decide to start supporting the journalism they care about, collectively we have the power to help ensure that this kind of reporting thrives in the future. Once you become a Kachingler, you can share which sites you support with colleagues, friends, and family (and soon Twitter followers and others), and turn them on to the sites you visit. Consider signing up and beginning to support CIR and the other sites you like today.

Journalist Craig Pyes to speak about prisoner abuse by U.S. military

CIR Staff — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:18:49 -0800

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Craig Pyes will speak about prisoner abuse by the U.S. military at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Tuesday, February 2, from 4-6 p.m. More info here:

More than 160 detainees have died in American military custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, many classified as homicides. But were these deaths properly investigated? Craig Pyes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose reporting launched an Army probe into two detainee deaths and their cover-up by a U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan, will argue that cases of homicide where abuse is suspected should be re-examined because the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) did not vigorously pursue suspected war crimes. Pyes will discuss his own multi-year investigation of a rogue Special Forces detachment in Afghanistan that adapted harsh interrogation techniques promoted by the Pentagon, that were later judged responsible for the vast majority of prisoner abuse. Ten detainees held at the base said they had been tortured, yet questions remain unanswered about the culpability of the Special Forces team six years later, despite the decision by the U.S. Army to close the criminal investigation - not once, but three times. Craig Pyes is a human rights investigator and an award-winning investigative reporter with extensive experience in Afghanistan and other conflict zones. As a special investigator for the non-profit Crimes of War Project, Pyes looked into possible breaches of U.S. and International law in the armed conflict in Afghanistan. While working as an investigative reporter for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, he wrote about the looming threat of the al Qaeda terrorism network both before and after the September 11th attacks on America, and profiled the corrosive and national security effects of drug corruption in Mexico. During the civil war in El Salvador, he and a colleague were the only reporters to reveal the inner workings of Salvadoran death squads that had killed more than 40,000 people with impunity. Pyes has received two Pulitzer Prizes, as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Los Angeles Times, and the Latin American Studies Association. In 2002, he was a finalist for Harvard's Shorenstein Center's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Currently based in Los Angeles, he investigates human rights abuses for lawyers and non-profits, and is a court-appointed death penalty mitigation specialist.

Libel tourism

Mark Schapiro — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:21:20 -0800

An important new report sheds light on a common challenge faced by journalists around the world: fear of British libel laws. The UK's laws are far more friendly to litigants than those in the United States (and most other developed countries), and global figures and businesses--recently, in Iceland, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Ukraine--have increasingly sought to have their libel cases heard there, according to the report published last week by the Center for International Media Assistance. The report's author, Drew Sullivan, a founder of the Sarajevo-based Bosnia-Herzegovina Center for Investigative Reporting identifies a disturbing trend: Publications around the world, including those in the United States, must increasingly vet their stories according to British libel laws due to the potential for global distribution made possible on the internet. Many thanks to Drew, who's work with the Balkan CIR we've highlighted in the past. He's pulled together the growing body of evidence that British libel laws--as well as those of Ireland, France and Australia--have created a form of "libel tourism", in which litigants search for venues most likely to gain a positive verdict, often irregardless of the truth of allegations in a story. One hopeful sign he's also identified: The state of New York recently passed a law ("Rachel's Law," prompted by the case of U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld, who refused to accept a UK judgment against her favoring a Saudi financier she'd investigated) which blocks state courts from enforcing civil damages from a UK libel suit if the judgment falls short of ensuring authors the same free speech rights they have in the United States. A similar bill passed the US House of Representatives last year, and is now making its way through the Senate--which would establish an important principle protecting US journalists (at least) from the far reach of British libel laws. Download the report here.

Sexual assault on campus

CIR Staff — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:50:52 -0800

About twenty percent of women who attend college will become victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate, according to a new report funded by the Department of Justice. A nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that a culture of silence at many universities prevents many victims from reporting incidents. The first and second articles in a series were published this week on CPI's website, along with audio slideshows—interviews with women who reflect on their own experiences. From CPI:

Many victims don’t report at all, because they blame themselves, or don’t identify what happened as sexual assault; one national study found that more than 95 percent of students who are sexually victimized do not report to police or campus officials. Local criminal justice authorities regularly shy away from such cases, because they are “he said, she said” disputes sometimes clouded by drugs or alcohol. That frequently leaves students to deal with campus judiciary processes so shrouded in secrecy that they can remain mysterious even to their participants. Critics question whether faculty, staff, and students should even adjudicate what amounts to a felony crime. But these internal proceedings actually grow from two federal laws, known as Title IX and the Clery Act, which require schools to respond to allegations of sexual assault on campus and to offer key rights to victims. Institutional barriers compound the problem of silence, and few victims in fact make it to a campus hearing. Those who do come forward can encounter secret disciplinary proceedings, closed-mouth school administrations, and off-the-record negotiations. At times, school policies and practices can lead students to drop complaints, or submit to gag orders—a practice deemed illegal. College administrators generally believe the existing processes provide a fair and effective way to deal with highly sensitive allegations, but the Center’s investigation has found that these processes have little transparency or accountability, and regularly result in little or no punishment for alleged assailants.

>> See the full project here: "Sexual Assault on Campus"

George Polk Awards seeking submissions

CIR Staff — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:15:06 -0800

Long Island University is seeking nominees and submissions for The George Polk Awards, which are given for investigative work in print, radio, photojournalism, TV, and web. Entries must include two original clips or recordings (with two copies of printed text plus URLs for digital submissions). They should come with an explanatory letter and be postmarked no later than January 8, 2010. The address for submissions is: John Darnton, Curator The George Polk Awards Long Island University The Brooklyn Campus 1 University Plaza Brooklyn, NY 11201-5372 Visit the website for more information.

FRONTLINE/World launches symposium on "covering conflict zones"

CIR Staff — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:18:39 -0700

At least 142 journalists have been killed in the field in the last three years, according to data collected by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of those killed were reporting in conflict zones—notably Iraq, Somalia, and Pakistan. A new project from FRONTLINE/World seeks to address the challenges journalists face while reporting from countries gripped by civil wars and violent conflicts:

This fall, FRONTLINE/World gathered a small panel of journalists and media representatives in New York to share experiences and discuss the challenges of covering conflict zones and repressive regimes.... With more journalists becoming the target of kidnappings and murders, and as video and images spread with lightening speed, the conversation centered on the question of how to protect reporters, fixers and sources, as well as the urgent need to develop a set of security protocols.

Visit the web portal, "Covering Conflict Zones," to watch highlights from the discussion and join the conversation online.

Len Downie urges a "reconstruction of American journalism"

Louis Freedberg — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:31:59 -0700

CIR board member Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, is making waves with a new report on the numerous challenges facing journalism in the United States: "The Reconstruction of American Journalism." Downie coauthored the report with sociologist Michael Schudson, who has joint appointments at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and UC San Diego. They make a powerful case for more "accountability news reporting" of the kind that CIR has been doing for several decades. Downie and Schudson put forward a number of recommendations, including urging universities to assume a more central role in doing reporting that traditionally newspapers have undertaken, and making information collected by local, state and federal governments more accessible to promote more informed citizen journalism. Their most controversial proposal—by far—is that the federal government subsidize local news coverage. The FCC, they argue, "should direct some of the money from the telephone bill surcharge—or from fees paid by radio and television licensees, or proceeds from auctions of telecommunications spectrum, or new fees imposed on Internet service providers—to finance a Fund for Local News that would make grants for advances in local news reporting and innovative ways to support it." This is a variation on arguments made over the years by various observers, including a compelling article by John Nichols and Robert McChesney in The Nation earlier this year. If the United Kingdom can do it by underwriting the BBC with television license fees, why shouldn't we do something similar in the United States? The idea is not as outlandish as it may seem, as Nichols and McChesney write. It is one that dates back to the nation's founding. According to Nichols and McChesney:

Jefferson and Madison devoted considerable energy to explaining the necessity of the press to a vibrant democracy. The government implemented extraordinary postal subsidies for the distribution of newspapers. It also instituted massive newspaper subsidies through printing contracts and the paid publication of government notices, all with the intent of expanding the number and variety of newspapers. When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s he was struck by the quantity and quality of newspapers and periodicals compared with France, Canada and Britain. It was not an accident. It had little to do with "free markets." It was the result of public policy.

A Fund for Local News is a terrific idea. Whether it should—or could—be underwritten by the United States government is another question altogether. Let the debate begin.

My time on the Pentagon Papers

Robert Rosenthal — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:32:47 -0700

I first learned about the Pentagon Papers while xeroxing copies of documents stamped TOP SECRET and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. I was 22 years old, less than a year out of college. The Vietnam War was raging, the country was in turmoil, and I was a copy boy at The New York Times. One evening in early 1971, I got a phone call while at a friend's house. The caller asked for me and my friend handed me the phone. "Who's this?" I wondered, and how had they found me? "Robert?" someone whose voice I did not recognize, asked. "Yes?" I replied. "Come to Room 1111 at the Hilton Hotel tomorrow, bring enough clothes for a few weeks, and don't tell anyone where you're going." "What? Who the hell is this and what are you talking about?" I demanded. It turned out the caller was a Times editor. I went to the Hilton, where a team of Times editors and reporters were secretly working on the Pentagon Papers project. I had been chosen as an editorial assistant for the project and within a few hours, after the publisher's office was closed for the day, I was xeroxing the Pentagon Papers, keeping track of them in two five-foot tall metallic green filing cabinets in a Manhattan hotel room. Nearly thirty-seven years later, after working at The Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and San Francisco Chronicle I joined the Center for Investigative Reporting as its Executive Director in January of 2008. Since then, I've met Daniel Ellsberg, and the time we've spent swapping stories about those days has helped me realized that my early exposure to those documents, that historic story, and the reporting team of which I was a small part, helped frame my journalistic values. Individuals like Dan Ellsberg who, from inside government or corporations, come forward to help expose wrongdoing can make all the difference. They do so at potentially huge personal risk, because they believe that the truth must be told. When sources like Ellsberg are willing to come to journalists, their actions can lead to important and powerful change. The Most Dangerous Man in America is a reminder of a tumultuous time. The facts have changed but the issues the film raises certainly exist in today's even more complicated world. On a personal level, the film is a stirrer of emotion and memory. It made clear to me that I had a ringside seat to a unique moment in our history and was a reminder of how life's journeys and often fragile strands are interwoven in unexpected webs. On a journalistic level, the film is a powerful reminder of the crucial role watchdog reporting plays in our democracy. If you're in the Bay Area, I hope you will join us for the Mill Valley Film Festival screenings of The Most Dangerous Man in America on Sat. October 17, 6:45PM at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, or Sun. October 18, 3:15PM at CinéArts @ Sequoia 2. Click here for more information.

The Most Dangerous Man in America

Christa Scharfenberg — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:15:13 -0700

This inspiring documentary thriller traces its protagonist's journey from US Marine to upper-echelon Defense Department and Rand Corporation analyst to Vietnam War whistle-blower, while reminding us how democracy relies on our potentially “dangerous” men and women in and out of government. Sat. October 17, 6:45PM, Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center 1 Sun. October 18, 3:15PM, CinéArts @ Sequoia 2 For tickets and more information, visit the Mill Valley Film Festival website. tel: 877.874.6333 Check out CIR Executive Director Robert Rosenthal's blog post about his time working on the Pentagon Papers project at The New York Times.

Major new nonprofit news initiative for the Bay Area

Robert Rosenthal — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:42:29 -0700

The announcement that Warren Hellman is funding a new San Francisco-based nonprofit news organization is a huge shot in the arm for journalism and for the Bay Area. At the core of this new endeavor, according to key Hellman advisor Susan Hirsch, will be collaboration with news organizations large and small. This could not be happening in a better place or at a better time. The Bay Area historically has been a breeding ground for innovation, risk taking and creativity. There is great opportunity here to put those qualities to work to develop new, sustainable journalism models. As Hellman recognizes, the future of journalism will rely on collaborations, something we are championing here at the Center for Investigative Reporting, and especially with our new California Watch project. We look forward to working with the new group and its partners (and longtime CIR collaborators) KQED and the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. The business model for journalism has fallen apart in the last decade, a decline heightened by the recession. There are journalists throughout the country struggling to create new models that will fill the void created by downsized legacy media. Whether blogging or deploying reporting teams focused on specific communities or regions, they all need financial help. Hellman, a substantial donor to CIR, joins other philanthropists who believe in the essential role that journalism plays in our democracy, including Buzz Wooley with the Voice of San Diego, Herb and Marion Sandler with Pro Publica, and John Thornton with the Texas Tribune. The last decade has been brutal for those of us who have spent our careers working in traditional newsrooms, but there is now an excitement, energy and passion in these new models that reflects the start of a great new adventure. It is clear now that the Bay Area will play a big part in this.

Crude, the doc, opening in the Bay Area

Christa Scharfenberg — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:59:34 -0700

Crude, a lively and gripping documentary directed by Joe Berlinger, follows the shifting course of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadoreans against Chevron over its responsibility for the country’s contaminated waters and streams. Part of The San Francisco Film Society's second annual Investigative Documentary Week, the film opens for a one-week run at the Landmark Lumiere (San Francisco) and Shattuck (Berkeley) Theaters on Friday, September 25th. Following the 12:00 noon screening at the Lumiere on Saturday the 26th, CIR board member and San Francisco Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein will moderate a discussion with Berlinger and Robert Rosenthal, CIR's executive director. The panel, called Slippery Slopes, will address the functions, roles and processes of documentary film as a form of investigative journalism. Free admission to the Forum; tickets to the film screening must be purchased separately. More information and a theatrical trailer of Crude are available at www.sffs.org.

Fast Flip, our new experiment with Google

Robert Rosenthal — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:32:16 -0700

Last week, we launched California Watch, a new department within the Center for Investigative Reporting, with a story about waste and a lack of oversight surrounding homeland security spending in California. It was a good story and we will continue to follow the issue. We have received tips from potential sources after publication and through documents we have obtained have many other leads.

The launch got a lot of attention, from Editor and Publisher to San Antonio News-Express blog. But the truly remarkable thing about the story was that it appeared on the front page of 25 newspapers throughout California and on TV and radio. The story was also published on news websites, along with an interactive-map and slideshow.

The announcement Monday that CIR and California Watch are now part of Google's Fast Flip offers the hope that our work will reach a wider audience. We, along with a range of news organization big and small, for profit and non-profit, are part of an experiment with this new search tool that allows users to a flip through websites, much as you would turn the pages of a book or magazine. We also have the opportunity to share ad revenue through Fast Flip.

We are a nonprofit, and investigative reporting is time consuming and expensive. We will be exploring many ways to bring in revenue in the months and years ahead, to help pay for our work and hopefully, down the road, create opportunities to hire more journalists. We want to be as innovative with revenue opportunities as we plan to be with our journalism. There is a tremendous amount of energy, ambitious thinking and opportunity around creating new business models so that growing audiences can be reached with high quality reporting.

Developing the strategies to fund the work is as challenging and crucial as the work itself. New models of sustainability must be tested, so that journalism that is a crucial part of our democracy can not only continue, but thrive. We believe the public will have a role in creating these new models and we welcome your ideas, feedback and perspectives along the way.

Who's behind the financial meltdown?

CIR Staff — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:31:00 -0700

A new project from the Center for Public Integrity takes a closer look at the global economic meltdown, and the 25 lenders responsible for the majority of high-interest or subprime loans from 2005-2007, "a period that marks the peak and collapse of the subprime boom." CPI's analysis found that:

At least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by banks that received bailout money — through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization.

Nine of the top 10 lenders were based in California, including all of the top five — Countrywide Financial Corp., Ameriquest Mortgage Co., New Century Financial Corp., First Franklin Corp., and Long Beach Mortgage Co.

Twenty of the top 25 subprime lenders have closed, stopped lending, or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. Most were non-bank lenders.

Eleven of the lenders on the list, including four recipients of bank bailout funds, have made payments to settle claims of widespread lending abuses.

>> View the project online.

Ken Light captures the San Joaquin Valley

Carrie Ching — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:42:01 -0700

California's San Joaquin Valley produces nearly half of America's produce—fruits, nuts and vegetables. But drought, shrinking farmland, a water war, and a wave of foreclosures have left the valley in crisis. In "The Valley of Shadows," a Newsweek special report, documentary photographer Ken Light captures the landscapes, faces, and voices of the region. An interactive map tracks the formation of a "perfect storm" that led to the current conundrum. Light also narrates a thought-provoking slideshow that compares the Depression-era photography of Dorothea Lange to his contemporary images of economic collapse. >> View the project on Newsweek.com.

Friend of three American hikers detained by Iranian authorities speaks out

CIR Staff — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:44:15 -0700

Three Americans, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, have been missing since July 31 after hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan and are reportedly being held by Iranian authorities. The Center for Investigative Reporting has published and supported Bauer's work in the past. He was not on assignment for CIR when he went missing. A fourth member of their party, Shon Meckfessel, did not join them that day and has now offered his statement on events, which is published below:

I'm writing this statement to help people understand what happened to my three friends, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, who went missing by the Iran/Iraq border. I have been close friends with Shane and Sarah for years, and recently met Josh, a longtime friend of Shane. Shane is a language student and freelance journalist; Sarah is an English teacher, and Josh arranges student exchange trips. All of us have done some writing about our travels, and all of us share a deep appreciation for Middle Eastern cultures. In late July the four of us decided to travel from Damascus, Syria to Iraqi Kurdistan for a short vacation. Sarah had to return to work in a week. While going there might seem strange to Americans, the Kurdish territory is actually very beautiful and quite safe. Since the Kurds gained autonomy in 1992, no American has ever been harmed there. The city of Sulaimania is increasingly popular with tourists, and a friend of ours told us it was the most beautiful area he'd ever seen. We arrived in Sulaimania the night of July 29 and stayed at the Hotel Miwan. Walking around town the next day, we asked a number of people--taxi drivers, hotel staff and people on the street--for good places to experience the mountainous terrain in the area. Every one of them told us to visit a place called Ahmed Awa. Not one of these people mentioned that Ahmed Awa was anywhere near the Iranian border. In fact, on the wall of our hotel there were three photos of tourists standing near the Ahmed Awa waterfall. Ahmed Awa seemed the clear choice for appreciating the stunning natural beauty around Sulaimania, far from any sort of risk. However, it may have been unclear to the people who encouraged us to visit Ahmed Awa that we intended to go hiking in the area, rather than simply visiting the waterfall. There is no Lonely Planet Iraqi Kurdistan, and Ahmed Awa was not on the map we'd printed out. My sense--wrongly as it turns out--was that Ahmed Awa lay northwest of Sulaimania, in the direction of Dokan Lake (and Dokan Resort), another scenic area we'd considered visiting during our trip through Kurdistan. On the evening of July 30, Josh, Shane and Sarah set out for Ahmed Awa with the plan to camp out. I stayed behind at our hotel because I was coming down with a cold and wanted a night to recuperate. We agreed to meet up the next day near Ahmed Awa. I purchased an Iraqi SIM card for my cell phone to make sure we could find each other the next day (providing the area had a signal, which very luckily it did). I spoke with Shane twice that evening. I called him at around 8 PM and he told me they'd just been dropped off near a strip of restaurants in Ahmed Awa. A couple hours later he told me they had followed a trail up from the strip of restaurants to the waterfall, and were continuing on the same trail to camp in peace. On July 31, I woke up feeling better and decided to join my friends. At about 11:30 AM I called Shane. He told me the weather had been mild all night. That morning they had woken up early and resumed hiking along the same trail. Shane sounded very calm and content, happy to be in a beautiful environment, and made absolutely no mention of any risk whatsoever. I am absolutely certain that they had no knowledge of their proximity to the Iranian border or they would have never continued in that direction. Shane told me they were planning to turn around soon. He thought we could meet up near the waterfall. I sent Shane two text messages, one at 12:50 PM and one at 1:22 PM, to which he did not respond. At 1:33 PM I received a call from Shane during which he told me that they were being taken into custody and that I should call the embassy. I hope that people understand my friends' presence in the area for what it was: a simple and very regrettable mistake.

Beware the wrath of investigative bloggers

Carrie Ching — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:54:24 -0700

This week, Ben Goldacre, author of the Bad Science column in The Guardian, wrote about a "ragged band of science bloggers" who successfully took on the British Chiropractic Association and meticulously investigated its claims. Here's a clip from The Guardian, found via the Online Journalism Blog:

The British Chiropractic Association has been suing [Simon] Singh personally for the past 15 months, over a piece in the Guardian where he criticised the BCA for claiming that its members could treat children for colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding conditions by manipulating their spines. The BCA maintains that the efficacy of these treatments is well documented. Singh said that claims were made without sufficient evidence, described the treatments as "bogus", and criticised the BCA for "happily promoting" them. ... An international petition against the BCA has been signed by professors, journalists, celebrities and more ... But it is a ragged band of science bloggers who has done the most detailed work. Fifteen months after the case began, the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers, referencing primary research papers, and looking in every corner. Professor David Colquhoun of UCL pointed out, on infant colic, that the BCA cited weak evidence in its favour, while ignoring strong evidence contradicting its claims. He posted the evidence and explained it. LayScience flagged up the BCA selectively quoting a Cochrane review. Every stone was turned by Quackometer, APGaylard, Gimpyblog, EvidenceMatters, Dr Petra Boynton, MinistryofTruth, Holfordwatch, legal blogger Jack of Kent, and many more. At every turn they have taken the opportunity to explain a different principle of evidence based medicine—the sin of cherry-picking results, the ways a clinical trial can be unfair by design—to an engaged lay audience, with clarity as well as swagger.

Five websites for digging up source documents

Carrie Ching — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:51:52 -0700

A large part of investigative reporting is crunching numbers and digging up source documents. Here are five websites that host digital archives of government documents, mostly acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests. Learn more about filing FOIA requests in this guide from Medill. The sites listed here are all run by private organizations. For documents and images archived by the federal government, try the National Archives. The National Security Archive An independent non-governmental research institute and library located at George Washington University, the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The Archive also serves as a repository of government records on a wide range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence, and economic policies of the United States. The Archive won the 1999 George Polk Award, one of U.S. journalism's most prestigious prizes, for—in the words of the citation—"piercing the self-serving veils of government secrecy, guiding journalists in the search for the truth and informing us all." GovernmentAttic.org Governmentattic.org provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting federal government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and government bloopers. The Memory Hole The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known. This includes: government files, corporate memos, court documents (lawsuits and transcripts), police reports and eyewitness statements, congressional testimony, reports (governmental and non-governmental), maps, patents, Web pages, photographs, video, and sound recordings, news articles, books (and portions of books). The Smoking Gun Best known for their collection of celebrity mugshots, The Smoking Gun also features police reports and other material obtained from government and law enforcement sources via Freedom of Information requests and court files. In December 2000, The Smoking Gun was acquired by Court TV. Wikileaks A website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.

Reporter released from Tehran prison tells his story

Carrie Ching — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:53:57 -0700

Last month, the streets of Tehran erupted in violence after disputed election results were announced June 13. Over the course of the next few days much of Tehran lost cell phone service and many Internet sites were blocked as the government cracked down on protesters. Foreign journalists were banned from covering rallies on the street—many had their visas revoked. I followed the events unfolding on the ground in Tehran through the Facebook posts of an acquaintance I met at a journalism conference—photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden was covering the elections for The Washington Times. On June 13, a female friend took over Iason's account: "Iason is in Tehran and FB is blocked. I am posting for him." On June 15: "to friends........update he is ok." Two days later, the posts stopped. On June 17, Iason was arrested as he was attempting to leave Iran; his visa was due to expire that same day. He was charged with espionage and thrown in Tehran's notorious Evin prison and detained there for three weeks. After his release on July 5, Iason spoke to FRONTLINE/World's Joe Rubin in an iWitness account. Watch the video, which was published online today: Iason also wrote of his experience in prison for The Washington Times:

My first bazjoo, or interrogator, was a silky-voiced presence with a rough streak who slapped me if I dared look behind me where he sat and conducted our discussions. His questions were general and betrayed how little he knew about who I was: Who were the Iranians I had met outside Iran? What payment methods did my newspaper use? Where had I gone over the past week? When I dallied or refused to answer a question, he would fly into a rage and shout at me that I wasn't there to "just eat and sleep. We want answers from you; you are accused of heinous crimes." When I answered a question about the fees paid me by my newspapers, he laughed derisively and told me, "You should have told me earlier, and I would have paid you that money out of my own pocket." One night, a guard came and pulled me out of my cell for what I could tell would be a special session. Entering the interrogation room, I sat at the front, removed my blindfold and stared at green uneven walls from which a hairy substance protruded, presumably for soundproofing. The hush did not conceal the presence of several men sitting in the back. When the questioning started, my bazjoo's voice was an octave higher, almost theatrical in its showmanship. He clearly had a special audience to impress that evening. "How are you spending your time, Iason?" he asked. "I'm reading the Koran," I told him, truthfully. "Can you recite a verse?" I recited the Fatiha and Surat al-Naas -- the opening and last verses of the Muslim holy book. When I ended, a subtle barometric shift had occurred in the room's atmosphere. The interrogation flowed more convivially. My bazjoo handed me two surveillance images of myself as a younger man chatting with a tall British diplomat in the theological center of Qom four years ago. The interrogator seemed to think it was conclusive proof that I was passing secrets to perfidious Albion. I pointed out that we were surrounded by people and the scene was clearly some sort of social gathering. Undeterred, he pulled out transcripts of SMS messages sent from my phone. The exchange on which he focused was between my number and someone called Sultan. They were a mixture of English and Persian, most of them flirtatious, but nothing I had never written. Then it dawned on me that they were the romantic writings of the owner of the phone who had lent it to me for temporary use. Laughing, I pointed that out. The interrogation ended soon afterward.

Keeping secrets—then and now

Carrie Ching — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:14:24 -0700

A new report from the National Security Archive shows the Pentagon has recently tried to cover up historical information that was declassified and released to the public years ago. From NSA's report, "More Dubious Secrets":

Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today's secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years. Today the National Security Archive posted multiple versions of the same documents—on issues ranging from the 1973 October War to anti-ballistic missiles, strategic arms control, and U.S. policy toward China—that are already declassified and in the public domain. What earlier declassification reviewers released in full, sometimes years ago, Pentagon reviewers have more recently excised, sometimes massively. The overclassification highlighted by these examples poses a major problem that should be addressed by the ongoing review of national security information policy that President Obama ordered on May 27, 2009.

For example, two different versions of a 1969 memo—the first released in 1989 and the second in 2008—show the Pentagon is trying to cover up more information now than it was twenty years ago: The National Security Archive is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University, the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

NPR examines new paths for investigative reporters

CIR Staff — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:49:07 -0700

A recent story on National Public Radio examined the new career paths that journalists—including many investigative reporters—are forging as newspapers around the country struggle to survive. Some are turning to teaching, PR, and public service. Others are working to create new models for journalism: The Investigative News Network—a coalition of two dozen nonprofit journalism organizations (including the Center for Investigative Reporting)—met for the first time last week in New York to create a plan. From NPR's "Investigative Reporters Move Outside Newsrooms":

As some newspapers are going out of business and many more are shedding costs, a lot of investigative journalists who have devoted years to exposing government corruption and corporate scandals are leaving their newsrooms. While some have been given pink slips, others left on their own steam, bailing out for corporate or political PR jobs, teaching gigs or even new careers as private investigators. ... Investigative journalists are just one element of the exodus from newspapers, which have taken a series of financial blows: Many companies have stopped advertising in print publications as circulation has fallen in recent years, and the economy has been brutal to remaining advertisers. Many major newspaper companies, including McClatchy, Gannett, Tribune and Lee, are struggling to make their debt payments. (The Tribune Co., which owns the L.A. Times, is in bankruptcy, as are the parent companies of big papers in Minneapolis and Philadelphia.) There are no firm figures quantifying how many investigative journalists have left the business in the past few years. Officials at the professional association Investigative Reporters and Editors said they did not know. ... For example, former Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson now teaches journalism at Northeastern University; his students' stories have been published by the Globe. Three former Los Angeles Times reporters have joined Pro Publica, a new not-for-profit organization in New York City, and their work has appeared on the front page of the L.A. Times. And other, less heralded examples have sprung up around the country, and are connecting to established groups such as the Center for Investigative Reporting in California and the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. "This is a grass-roots effort that's happening around the country and really started to blossom last year," says Houston, now a professor at the University of Illinois. On Wednesday, a coalition of not-for-profit media outlets—including NPR—announced the creation of what it's calling the Investigative News Network to harness this scattered energy.

>> Listen to the story on NPR.org.

Creating a nonprofit investigative news network

CIR Staff — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:34:14 -0700

From June 29 – July 1, 2009, nearly thirty investigative news organizations came together to strategize the creation of an investigative news network. At the conference, representatives from CIR, ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, Huffington Post, Investigative Reporters and Editors, The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, and many others explored new models for watchdog journalism at the Pocantico Conference Center in New York. The event was sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Surdna Foundation, and The William Penn Foundation. Today, the participants posted "The Pocantico Declaration: Creating a Nonprofit Investigative News Network":

Resolved, that we, representatives of nonprofit news organizations, gather at a time when investigative reporting, so crucial to a functioning democracy, is under threat. There is an urgent need to nourish and sustain the emerging investigative journalism ecosystem to better serve the public. Recognizing, that there are many forms of potential collaboration: Editorial, which at the least could be doing joint accountability journalism projects, publishing on the same day on multiple websites with other, multimedia partners, which would entail efficient, shared information, reporting and synchronous editing; Administrative, exchanging information about necessary organizational “back office” functions such as employee benefits, health care and general liability insurance, libel review and insurance, directors and officers insurance, etc., and perhaps even centralizing some of these functions to increase efficiencies; and Financial, at a minimum, exchanging development-related information and even jointly fundraising, at the most, pioneering new economic models to help to monetize the shared, combined content of the member organizations, in order to achieve a more sustainable journalism.

>> Read the complete declaration here.

The grim reality of North Korea's labor camps

CIR Staff — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:57:29 -0700

Early this morning, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists working for California-based Current TV, were sentenced to 12 years of "reform through labor." David Hawk, an expert on communist labor camps and author of the 2004 study, "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps," spoke to the Los Angeles Times and painted a grim picture of what their sentences might entail:

Ling and Lee may be sent to a "kyo-hwa-so" or re-education reformatory "that is the equivalent of a felony penitentiary in the U.S., as opposed to a county jail or misdemeanor facility," [Hawk] said. "It's extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions," said Hawk. "These places have very high rates of deaths in detention. The casualties from forced labor and inadequate food supplies are very high." Because the pair was tried by the nation's highest court, there can be no appeal, analysts say.

Reporters Without Borders issued a statement this morning saying members of the organization were "appalled" by the sentences, which were "clearly designed to scare journalists trying to do investigative reporting in the border area between China and North Korea, which is ranked as Asia’s worst country in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index." The Committee to Protect Journalists also issued a statement, calling the sentences "deplorable":

"Euna Lee and Laura Ling are journalists who were doing their jobs reporting on an important humanitarian story. It is deplorable that they have been tried as criminals and sentenced so harshly," said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. "We fear that their detention is linked to the ongoing security situation on the Korean Peninsula and we call on all parties to the Six Party Talks--North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States--to work together for their release."

BBC Americana profiles the life and death of a soldier

CIR Staff — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:51:18 -0700

On Sunday, BBC Radio launched a new program, Americana, in which host Matt Frei presents an insider guide to the people and the stories shaping America today. The debut episode included an abridged version of a story by Joshua Phillips and CIR correspondent Michael Montgomery about the life and death of American soldier Jon Millantz, who struggled to come to terms with incidents of violence and prisoner abuse conducted by his unit in Iraq. + Listen to Americana on BBC.

Twenty years after Tiananmen

Carrie Ching — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:32:11 -0700

Twenty years ago, in June 1989, the Chinese army killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed civilians in Beijing and other cities during demonstrations for democracy. How much has changed? A multimedia feature by Human Rights Watch examines the impact of and Chinese response to the Tiananmen Square incident, and finds the government continues to "victimize survivors, victims’ families, and others who challenge the official version of events." As the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen approaches on Thursday, Chinese authorities have seized dissidents and blocked social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and news websites like The Huffington Post. "Tiananmen taught the Chinese government that freedom of speech is the core issue that they must control," says Carroll Bogert of Human Rights Watch in the video. "Domestic press censorship doesn't just have consequences for people inside China," adds Dr. Sophie Richardson, also from HRW. "Because the domestic Chinese press couldn't write about SARS or melamine scandals or lead-painted toys, we wind up with global public health problems, product safety problems. This matters for everyone, everywhere."

Podcasts: Hunger and juvenile prisons

CIR Staff — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:41:07 -0700

Two new podcasts from Truthdig discuss hunger in America and the ways juvenile prisons could be better. Truthdig's podcasts feature in-depth interviews with newsmakers and commentary from a progressive point of view. Regular panelists include Truthdig editor Robert Scheer and contributors James Harris and Josh Scheer, also a CIR researcher. Fighting Crime in Juvenile Hall: This week Truthdig talks to Sheerly Avni and Omar Turcios from The Beat Within, a magazine written by and for the troubled kids in juvenile prisons. Such facilities could be “recruiting grounds for crime fighting,” argues Avni, and that’s in our self-interest. “If you want to stop crime—very simple. You look at a bunch of 5-year-old kids in the ghetto. Ask yourself: ‘Do I want them to be criminals or not in 10 years? What’s that going to do to the value of my home?’” Breadline USA: Sasha Abramsky discusses his new solution-oriented book about the millions of Americans who work 40 hours a week and still go hungry, “these forgotten communities and these forgotten families who are doing everything they’ve been told they need to do to survive and ... they’re still being pushed backward by economic forces that they really don’t control.”

The future of journalism will be 'collaboration'

CIR Staff — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:54:59 -0700

CIR's Executive Director Robert Rosenthal talks to PBS NewsHour about how media cutbacks endanger investigative reporting, and the search for new business models to sustain it:

Well, I think what's happening all across the United States in every newsroom is basically newsrooms are shrinking, and some have been eviscerated. The number of journalists, you know, this year -- I think last year 8,000 journalists lost their jobs. And what that means is that on every level there's less information, less government being covered, from the community to the state to the region. And part of what's happening is the investigative reporting is something that's being shoved aside in newsrooms that really sort of have to feed the beast. And it's -- I think the negative impact on all of us is drastic.

>> Read the full transcript and watch the episode online.

Loretta Tofani writes about the challenges of independent reporting

CIR Staff — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:53:13 -0700

In Nieman Reports, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Loretta Tofani writes about the challenges she faced in reporting "American Imports, Chinese Deaths,” an investigation into working conditions at Chinese factories that appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune last year. Tofani was partially supported by CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund. Her series won this year’s Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Gold Medal, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, The Michael Kelly Award given by the Atlantic Media Company, and numerous local and regional awards. It also was a finalist for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting and for the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. Tofani wrote a Backstory piece for CIR about how she came upon the story when she opened a furniture store that imported goods from China.

CIR co-presents two docs at SF International Film Festival

Christa Scharfenberg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:00:00 -0700

The Center for Investigative Reporting is proud to co-present Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country, directed by Andres Østergaard, and A Day Late in Oakland, directed by Zachary Stauffer, at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival – April 23 to May 7, 2009. I was an intern at the Festival years ago. We are lucky to have it here in the Bay Area and I encourage you to go. It literally brings the world to San Francisco with more than 150 films from everywhere you could imagine (Burkina Faso anyone?) and many of the directors and actors in attendance. I hope you can join CIR for screenings of these films: Burma VJ – Reporting from a Closed Country This harrowing, breathless documentary revisits the 2007 protests by hundreds of silent monks and thousands of chanting citizens against Burma’s military dictatorship, using the stunning concealed-camcorder footage smuggled abroad by a network of youthful correspondents that calls itself the Democratic Voice of Burma. Danish filmmaker Anders Ostergaard artfully merges breathless sequences from the smuggled tapes with recreations of the DVB bureau chief Joshua’s cell phone conversations, crafting a harrowing narrative that thrusts us into the protestors’ giddy celebrations and the terrifying aftermath. Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country demonstrates the potential of consumer technology to divert power to the people, but above all salutes the heroes who pressed “record” within eyeshot of the secret police. – Michael Fox This film screens on May 1 at 6:30PM and on May 2 at 9:15PM at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, and again on May 6 at 8:45PM at the Pacific Film Archive. A Day Late in Oakland On the morning after reporter Chauncey Bailey’s murder in 2007, a sordid tale of corruption and abuse stemming from Oakland’s once-mighty Your Black Muslim Bakery unraveled in the press. That same day, a police raid in the works for months stormed the business and found the murder weapon. This short film was made by Zachary Stauffer while he was a student in the documentary program at the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley. This short film screens with Speaking in Tongues on April 26 at 3:15PM, on May 2 at 3:30PM, and on May 7 at 2:30PM at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. For tickets and information visit www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.

Rosenthal in Salon: "The watchdog role is disappearing"

CIR Staff — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:06:12 -0700

An article on Salon.com surveyed editors at successful nonprofit news organizations about the benefits and challenges of their business model. CIR's Executive Director Robert Rosenthal weighed in:

"The watchdog role is disappearing at the county, city and state level," says Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, in Berkeley, Calif. He was the former executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Center for Investigative Reporting signals one way forward for nonprofit journalism. Founded in 1977, it has a long history of collaborating with other news organizations, including Salon, to conduct and publish original reporting. Its annual budget is $2.5 million. Recent stories have included immigration sweeps, sex trafficking and the Mexican drug war. It funds reporting that finds a home in multiple outlets -- on the Web, in print, and on TV and radio. And it's now starting a California-focused reporting initiative to try to pick up the slack as Golden State newspapers shrink.

>> Read "Spare change for news" on Salon.com.

Phil Bronstein talks about dying newspapers on The Colbert Report

CIR Staff — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:33:31 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the state of newspapers, and news. Bronstein, a Center for Investigative Reporting board member, plugged CIR's nonprofit journalism model as a solution for the struggling industry.

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Australian magazine rolled by bogus biotechnologist

Clare Fletcher — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:12:48 -0800

Australia's foremost conservative journal Quadrant has been provoking debate with contentious articles since the 1960s. So when it put a story on the cover of its January issue extolling the possibilities for genetically engineering plants and animals with the ability to fight human diseases like cancer and malaria, the journal's editor, Keith Windshuttle, looked forward to sparking some spirited debate. The story, written by a self-described "Brisbane-based New York biotechnologist" with the byline Sharon Gould, featured heavily footnoted scientific references, and, by touting GMO's potential benefits, was aimed at environmentalists who have made genetically modified food a hotly debated topic in Austrailia. Until recently, the government had a moratorium on importing any genetically modified organisms into the country, and the disputes over its safety and whether to permit its spread into Australian agriculture continues to be a hot topic. Windshuttle, the editor, certainly got a debate, one that went far beyond his intended audience. Sharon Gould's assertions—that scientists had imbedded wheat with cancer-fighting genes and mosquitoes with anti-malarial antibodies—were a hoax. "Gould" turned out to be Katherine Wilson, an activist and former editor who kept a running blog of the entire incident. Her motive was apparently to puncture the scientific pretensions behind many of Quadrant's more controversial positions. The publication has a history of skepticism on some of Australia's biggest debates. While populists leapt aboard Al Gore's Prius bandwagon to decry manmade climate change, Quadrant questioned the science behind global warming. As Australia began to tangle with its own grim historical treatment of aborigines, Windshuttle's Quadrant was on the frontlines disputing allegations that indigenous and mixed-race children had been removed from their families and "adopted" by white settlers or shipped to religious orphanages. Windschuttle is famous for combing academic footnotes for errors, a proponent of the kind of unsentimental skepticism and empirical rigor that he promoted to bolster Quadrant's credibility. The magazine was one of former Prime Minister John Howard's favorites. Preferring to call her experiment "culture jamming" rather than a hoax, Wilson's premise was that Windschuttle would not be so vigorous in his fact-checking if the article suited his ideology. The footnotes she included were false, though the publications she cited were real. In her own words, the sting was to "employ some of Quadrant's sleight-of-hand reasoning devices to argue something ludicrous." After the hoax was revealed Windschuttle posted on the Quadrant website that "Gould" had "tricked" Quadrant into publishing the article. But even after the hoax was irrefutable, Windschuttle stood by the article. He told the Sydney Morning Herald that he had investigated the piece and satisfied himself that it was "only 10 to 15 percent invented. When I discovered that my gloom and embarrassment changed completely." Many, including Wilson herself, drew parallels with Australia's biggest literary hoax. In the 1940s two young men invented a poet, "Ern Malley," to undermine the modernist literary journal Angry Penguins. Malley became a sensation among the avant-garde until it was revealed that his creators, the young poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart, developed his oeuvre in a single afternoon. It was the stuff of hoax legend, and just the kind of perversely elaborate irreverence Australians love to mythologize. The Australian writer Peter Carey drew upon the story for his 2005 novel, My Life as a Fake. The Quadrant affair became yet another ideological battleground for Australia's bloggers and commentators. Was it a cheap pissing contest for intellectuals or a legitimate revelation of hypocrisy? After all, most publications of Quadrant's size have little to no fact-checking budget; but then it seems Windschuttle didn't so much as Google his new contributor. Ultimately, Wilson succeeded in undermining Windschuttle's puffery and raised debate about the nature of science reporting. She can also take credit for prompting a nationwide spike in Quadrant's newsstand sales. It was a clamor to make fake poet "Ern Malley" proud. And there is no small irony in the fact that after he "created" the erstwhile poet, James McAuley went on to found a literary and political journal in the early 1960s—called Quadrant. Clare Fletcher is a former intern at CIR and currently an assistant editor at the bi-monthly Australian media publication, The Walkley Magazine: Inside the Australian Media.

Rosenthal talks about downsizing, and possible sale or closure, of SF Chronicle

CIR Staff — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:31:23 -0800

Yesterday Hearst Corp. announced that it will make "significant" staffing cuts to recover financial losses at the San Francisco Chronicle, and if savings can't be made quickly, it will sell or close the newspaper. The Chronicle lost more than $50 million in 2008 and is headed for more losses in 2009. Robert Rosenthal, CIR's executive director and former managing editor of the Chronicle, told NPR: "This is arguably one of the great cosmopolitan, sophisticated markets in the world, and yet the business model of the Chronicle has been broken for years. We're in a crisis and I think in the next few years there will be solutions, but right now nobody has one." Rosenthal also spoke to local ABC News affiliate KGO and other outlets about the state of the newspaper industry. "Is this a move to go just to a web-based newspaper?" he said to the online news service The Public Press. "I wouldn't be surprised." Photo by Dickson Louie

Investigative reports from Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Gaza

Clare Fletcher — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:43:41 -0800

Top-notch investigative journalism, and discussion on the reporter's craft, from our colleagues around the world: Investigative showcase: Out of Africa The Forum of African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) has launched a dossier of resources from its 2008 Pan-African investigative summit. The dossier collates documents, case studies and lectures showcasing the best investigative reporting from Africa. Read fascinating stories from reporters on the ground. Topics include environmental reporting across borders, "How to topple a government," and the benefits and ethical questions involved in working undercover. You can download the dossier in PDF form here. FAIR also highlights an investigation from South Africa, published in the Mail & Guardian. Supported with links to documents, the investigation shows a former prison boss was treated to flights and luxury hotels by facilities management group Bosasa. Highway to corruption in Philippines The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism reports massive corruption in the World Bank-funded National Road Improvement and Management Project (NRIMP-1). The Department of Institutional Integrity (INT), the World Bank's anti-corruption unit, concluded that a cartel of contractors and bureaucrats had corrupted NRIMP-1 with the support of the highest levels of Philippine government. The INT said $30-45 million of the $150 million loan was at risk or lost in bribes and kickbacks. Witnesses alleged that media and non-government groups were bribed, as well. The INT's investigation eventually implicated 16 individuals and 17 companies after 60 witness interviews and hundreds of documents. Baby steps for democracy in Balkans One year from its declaration of independence, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)'s BalkanInsight.com news service has put together a special collection of news and analysis on Kosovo. The first anniversary of independence was celebrated in the streets, but still half the population lives near or below the poverty line. Amid the public celebrations, journalist Krenar Gashi blogged "How come that since independence, my colleagues have been receiving more and more threats and facing more and more direct censorship?" While 90 percent of Kosovans are Albanian, the Serb minority still rejects the secession and looks to Serbia as its administrative capital. There are still some countries who don't recognize the secession and Balkan Insight reports Serbia, with Russia as its ally, continues to block Kosovo's entry to the United Nations, and lingering ethnic tensions have done little to secure investor confidence. Balkan Insight's package includes a telling piece on Kosovo's school history books—where nationalism and hate speech are being toned down but "'objectivity' remains a matter of perception". News was a "casualty of war" in Gaza Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF) has released a report on the media situation in the Gaza Strip. The report says the "news was another casualty of this war" in Gaza. RSF criticized both the Israeli authorities and Hamas for press freedom violations, asserting that throughout the world in times of war control of the news has become a military objective. According to RSF, six journalists have been killed during the conflict, and 15 wounded. RSF argues that closing the Gaza Strip to the press constitutes a serious violation of press freedom. They called for an end to the targeting of media facilities and for media equipment (cameras, tapes, editing equipment, generators)—currently in short supply—to be sent to the Gaza Strip.

A refuge for journalists in danger

Clare Fletcher — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:26:52 -0800

While journalists around the world contend with the prospects of job cuts and outlet closures, some face much more serious dangers: persecution, imprisonment, threats, violence, and death. The Doha Centre for Media Freedom was created as a refuge for such journalists, who risk their life or their freedom in the line of duty. That may mean literal shelter or refuge for journalists on the run from threats. The Doha Centre also provides day-to-day assistance in the form of financial assistance for medical care, legal costs, and support for threatened media outlets, journalists and their families. The Doha Centre also attempts to address the causes of threats to journalists by advocating for peace and understanding of diversity, promoting dialogue, and providing resources for education. In just the past week, The Doha Centre has:

• Provided support to Iraqi journalist Omar al-Ibadi, who fled Iraq with his family after receiving death threats. • Condemned an Israeli official’s announcement that al-Jazeera employees would not have their visas renewed and their access to press conferences would be restricted. • Given a grant to the family of Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who was arrested after throwing a shoe at George W Bush. The family had been receiving threats. Meanwhile, al-Zaidi’s lawyer says his physical and mental state is at risk after more than 40 days in jail. No date is set for al-Zaidi’s trial, but if convicted of assault he faces a jail term of five to fifteen years. • Called for the release of hunger-striking Fabio Prieto Llorente, one of 21 journalists imprisoned in Cuba. There are fears for Prieto Llorente’s health. In January he wrote to president Raul Castro about the conditions for prisoners at El Guayabo, including cramped cells, “rotten burnt animal food” and forced labor. • Assisted with the defense fund for Boussada Ben Ali, editor of Niger’s independent newspaper L’Action. Ben Ali was arrested in late January, accused of publishing false information Niger’s finance minister and embezzlement from an oil contract between Niger and China.

The organization was created in December 2007 by a decree of Qatar’s emir, H.H Sheikh Hamad vin Kalifa al-Thani. Its board is led by Sheikh Hamad bin Thalmer al-Thani, chairman of al-Jazeera. Similar organizations: Committee to Protect Journalists This non-profit head-quartered in New York keeps a running tally of journalists killed, threatened and imprisoned. International Federation of Journalists Brussels-based organization promotes journalists’ safety, professional and industrial rights. Reporters Sans Frontiers Issues the Worldwise Press Freedom Index each October, ranking the degree of freedom journalists have in over 160 countries.

Tension in post-election Anbar

Brian Pollack — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:26:20 -0800

Iraqi provincial elections are over, and while the purple ink is drying, the tallying continues until Thursday. There have been various election-related assassinations across the country (six candidates specifically), but one of the biggest slaughters took place a month ago, when a suicide blast killed 24 Awakening Movement tribal leaders while they gathered for a meeting. One of the trusted participants blew himself up. The Awakening Movement consists largely of Sunni tribal leaders, former Iraqi military personnel, and former insurgents. The Movement is largely responsible for the sharp decrease in violence that transformed Anbar Province, including Fallujah and Ramadi, from one of the most violent regions (referred to as the "Wild West" in 2004, according to Corporal Kyle Shields) to one of the calmest. According to the Washington Post article “Iraqis Anxious Over Outcome of Provincial Elections”, the Anbar tribes may not gain the ground they sought, but it's a lot of conjecture right now. Only 42% voted in Anbar this go round, one of the lowest turnouts in Iraq, but the tribal party can only improve their representational status, since many of the Sunnis boycotted the 2005 elections. Their main competition comes from the Iraqi Islamic Party (religious Sunnis) who now hold 26 of the 29 Anbar Provincial Council seats, which the Washington Post compares to “state legislatures in the United States, that dispense patronage locally.” Things got a little hot in Anbar when Hameed al-Hais accused the Iraqi Islamic Party of rigging the election. "We will not let al-Qaeda return to Anbar through the IIP," he said. Al-Hais is known for fiery rhetoric—last month he told the Washington Post: "If anything happens to any of our candidates, even a scratch on one of their bodies, we will kill all of their candidates!" A curfew was imposed. Al Jazeera reported that citizens’ disappointment with the legislative results following religiously motivated elections in 2005 could help more secular candidates. According to the first reports coming in, this is in fact what is taking place. Maliki's Dawa Party appears to have made solid gains. It will be interesting to see how the election plays out, particularly whether Baghdad will end up with the strong central government that Prime Minister Maliki says he desires.

Investigative reporting around the world—from Brazil to Bosnia

Clare Fletcher — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:28:23 -0800

From Uganda to Brazil and Bosnia, journalists around the world are linking up to produce great investigative reporting. The topics vary but their commitment to exposing the truth—be it injustice, corruption, or a surprising trend—is universal. Here's a look at what some of our colleagues around the world are investigating: MIDDLE EAST In the southern part of the Gaza Strip, a network of cross-border tunnels provide a lifeline for Palestinians, allowing an influx of consumer goods from northern Egypt. The Israelis argue Hamas are using the tunnels to smuggle in weapons, and targeted them in warplane attacks. Al Jazeera reporter Jeremy Young has posted this behind-the-scenes diary on how he and his crew accessed and filmed from the bomb-ravaged tunnels. You can also watch Al Jazeera’s report on the tunnels. AFRICA The Federation of African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) focused their comprehensive 2008 report on human trafficking across Africa, but its latest investigation concerns the trade of fish. Wambi Michael reported for the Mail & Guardian on how unsustainable practices on Lake Victoria are causing fish shortages in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Massive exports of illegally traded unprocessed Nile perch, largely to the European Union—overtaking cash crops like coffee and cotton in exports earnings—are driving up local prices and threatening the livelihoods of millions of East Africans. Nile perch, a species introduced to Lake Victoria in the 1950s, had already killed off many indigenous species of fish. CHINA Each year, China’s spring festival marks a massive tide of human movement. Up to 130 million migrant workers, the fuel of China’s economic engine, head home from cities and factory towns to celebrate with their families. But this year the January 26 festival was marked by widespread anxiety, with millions of workers forced out of work months earlier and stranded in their hometowns by unemployment. As overseas demand falters, production cuts and factory closures are on the rise—but so are the numbers of migrant workers seeking employment. Leading Chinese investigative magazine Caijing has a detailed report into the changes underway for the migrant labour phenomena. BOSNIA The Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo (CIN) has taken an in-depth look into the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional court. As the country’s highest judiciary authority and the nexus between law and politics, some experts worry that the court’s independence is compromised by the appointment of judges based on their political affiliations. CIN have compiled many interviews and documents with their findings. In December, the group also published a series of stories on corruption in Bosnia’s underperforming football scene. BRAZIL The Association of Brazilian Investigative Journalism has put together a project with “Mapping the Media in the Americas”. Maps created to help reporters show correlation between geographic areas of Brazil and levels of education, media coverage, political affiliations and election outcomes. View the Brazilian project here.

Al Jazeera releases Gaza video archive for public use

Carrie Ching — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:21:14 -0800

Since the most recent attacks in Gaza began, much of the Western news media has been blocked from the region by the Israeli military. Into this news vacuum flowed an organization frequently shunned by the West: Al Jazeera. As the International Herald Tribune points out: "Al Jazeera has had a distinct advantage. It was already there." This week, Al Jazeera began an aggressive Internet campaign to get its reporting to viewers worldwide by offering all of its video material of the conflict in Gaza to the public under a Creative Commons license, "which effectively means it can be used by anyone—rival broadcaster, documentary maker, individual blogger—as long as Al Jazeera is credited," reports the International Herald Tribune. Each video is hosted on blip.tv, allowing for easy downloads, and includes a detailed information page describing the content. Raw footage, interviews with residents, and press conference material is included. More from the International Herald Tribune on Al Jazeera's web campaign:

It currently streams its broadcasts in a variety of formats and has a dedicated YouTube channel with more than 6,800 videos. The report on the couple shopping for furniture in Gaza City, for example, was viewed nearly 6,000 times on YouTube, generating more than 100 comments in the six months it had been available. By contrast, a recent segment in which Mohyeldin played exclusive videotape of what appeared to be a Hamas sniper's killing of an Israeli tank commander, which included repeated cautions that what was being shown could not be independently confirmed, has been viewed nearly 150,000 times in less than three days, with more than 700 comments. Al Jazeera said that since the war started, the number of people watching its broadcasts via the Livestation service has increased by over 500 percent, and the number of videos viewed on the YouTube channel has increased by more than 150 percent. Al Jazeera has also created a Twitter feed on the "war on Gaza," which provides short cellphone messages that refer the public to new material that can be viewed online. Over the weekend, there were more than 4,600 followers, not including the many more who view those "tweets" online. The Twitter feeds are also streamed onto the Al Jazeera English Web site.

>> Visit the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository.

Tropical depression

Carrie Ching — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:20:02 -0800

A new project from the Pultizer Center on Crisis Reporting highlights an alarming trend in Cuba—waves of suicides that have echoed the nation's political and economic ups-and-downs for decades. Lygia Navarro reports for The Virginia Quarterly Review:

Socialismo o Muerte. Socialism or Death. In that slogan splashed across Cuba, there is nothing honorable, or revolutionary, about choosing suicide; the very idea is intensely political and taboo. Sit down with most medical professionals in Cuba, in fact, and they will assure you that suicide is rare, that there is nothing striking about the country’s relation to self-destruction. They may not even know the truth themselves, may never have seen the statistics: according to the World Health Organization, year after year, more Cubans commit suicide than citizens of any other Latin American country. The national suicide rate trails just behind that of the People’s Republic of China, of high-strung developed countries such as Japan and Finland, and of a slew of depressed post-Soviet states.

The Cuban government does not track suicide rates, or the use of anti-depressants and sedatives, which are hot commodities on the black market. Six months after Fidel Castro left power, Navarro talks to Cubans struggling with this silent epidemic.

'We can bomb the bejesus out of them.'

Carrie Ching — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:10:34 -0800

The National Security Archive recently published a collection of transcribed telephone conversations taped secretly by Henry Kissinger during his term as national security advisor under Richard Nixon. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, Kissinger taped his ingoing and outgoing phone conversations and had them transcribed by his secretary. When he left office in 1977, Kissinger took the transcripts with him claiming they were "private papers". After years of legal actions, Freedom of Information Act requests, and careful cataloguing and indexing, the National Security Archive has released the transcripts—more than 30,000 pages—to the public for the first time.

The set sheds light on every aspect of Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1971 South Asia crisis, and the October 1973 Middle East War, among many other developments. Kissinger’s many interlocutors include political and policy figures, such as Presidents Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel, James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show business friends as Frank Sinatra.

>> Visit the National Security Archive to view the Kissinger telephone transcripts.

Silent addiction

CIR Staff — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:30:57 -0800

This week, a dispatch from FRONTLINE/World investigates a silent epidemic in Afghanistan—opium addiction among women and children. A web-exclusive report by award-winning reporter Nadene Ghouri profiles young mothers at the Sanga Amaj treatment center for women in Kabul. In a country where few trained doctors remain—many have fled or prefer higher-paying work as translators—the clinic struggles to shelter female addicts from the crippling shame they experience in a restrictive, patriarchal society. The clinic can't provide heroin substitutes, such as methadone, but can offer a safe environment where women go through a slow withdrawal process with support and counseling. An excerpt of Ghouri's report:

The story of Khadija, who has been in and out of the clinic, shows how easy it is for entire families to fall into addiction. She lost her husband and all but one of her brothers to war. "My last brother came to my house one day and I was so depressed I couldn't move," Khadija said. "He asked me to try his opium and I did. I forgot my pain." To fund her habit, Khadija started to beg. While she was out of the house, her two children stole her drugs and began using too, she told me. Soon after, all of them were begging on the streets. "We made a couple of dollars a day but we didn't buy food, just drugs," she said. Khadija and her son and daughter were all treated at Sanga Amaj last year. But the children ran away and Khadija relapsed. Only her 12-year-old daughter, Gul Pari—which means flower fairy—came back to the clinic and is now drug free. "She weighed 40 kilos when she first came in," said Hakeem. She was a little nothing." The young girl didn't know that what she was doing was wrong; she just remembers the warm comfortable feeling the drugs gave her. When she stopped, first her feet hurt, then she began to hurt all over. "I couldn't eat and I was vomiting all the time. I was very scared," she said.

New European investigative reporters network takes on Big Pharma

Mark Schapiro — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:42:20 -0800

A new European journalists network launched a trifecta of stories last week investigating the pharmaceutical industry. The stories reveal how European pharmaceutical companies have put the lid on disquieting information about potential side effects from an array of commonly used medicines, the power of the pharmaceutical lobby in influencing European legislation, and the new policies which permit drug advertising. The series suggests that the pharmaceutical industry in Europe is wielding its influence in much the same ways as it has been revealed to be doing in the United States, through connections with university researchers and asserting confidentiality on basic medicinal information. The stories represent the debut effort of the new network, IRENE—Investigative Reporters Network, Europe—which now has journalists working in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. The authors of the jointly bylined stories are Brigitte Alfter, Joop Bouma, and Marleen Teugels, each of them award-winning journalists in their home countries of Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, respectively. The stories were published simultaneously in the Danish magazine Samvirke, the Dutch newspaper Trouw and the Belgian magazine KNACK. An English-language translation of the series appears here. The team also wrote an original English-language condensation of the series for the Brussels-based newspaper EU Observer. In that story, they explain their pioneering use of the EU freedom of information law, which enabled them to gain access to pharmaceutical industry and government documents from the EU capital in Brussels and from each of their three countries. The group works closely with the Belgian journalism foundation, Pascal deCroos Fund for Investigative Reporting, which promotes the use of the Europe’s freedom of information laws through a website called, simply, wobbing—a Flemish slang word adopted by European journalists and interpreted to mean: Getting documents out of the government which they’d rather not provide. We will keep you posted on IRENE’’s latest revelations on The Muckraker blog.

Israel-Palestine: Life on the border

Mark Schapiro — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:06:22 -0800

An extraordinary series of short videos were launched onto the web last week revealing, side by side, glimpses into the life of Israelis and Palestinians living within twenty miles of one another. The series, Gaza: Sderot: Life In Spite of Everything features new films daily from the Palestinian territory of Gaza and the Israeli town of Sderot, just over the border. Each two-minute film in the series (in Hebrew and Arabic, with English subtitles) features profiles of residents who, despite being the target of bombings and rocket attacks, "never stop working, loving and dreaming," in the words of the filmmakers. The show originated with ARTE television in France, and was produced in cooperation with Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. The website encourages virtual interaction between Israelis and Palestinians as well as the general public. On October 25, the series was awarded the Prix Europa for Emerging Media. The point of the series is to offer a glimpse to non-Middle Easterners of how the routine elements of life continue, even amidst the heavy stresses of conflict. But the audience is also those in the region: "We wanted to offer a chance for reflection and engagement between those who are the 'other' to each other," one of the producers, Alex Szalat, commented to the French website Journalisme.com. "We evoke a difficult situation, but also the reality of Israelis and Palestinians who never rub shoulders but who live almost side by side." A recent video from Gaza: And one from Sderot:

Images of war

Mark Schapiro — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:44:31 -0700

While the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary efforts to prevent grisly realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from making it into the U.S. press, photographers have not stopped doing their work. People in other countries frequently view photographs from those wars that are far more explicit than those viewed by Americans. On display this month in the French town of Bayeux is a powerful exhibit of photos as part of the annual Bayeux-Calvados Prize for photo-journalism. This year, special recognition is being paid to war correspondents, and to the Dutch photo agency, Noor, whose photographers—including Stanley Greene, Francesco Zizola, and others—have contributed photos from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, post-election Kenya, the Niger Delta, Somalia and other conflict zones. The photos are arrayed around the ancient town of Bayeux, the first French town liberated from the Nazis in 1944. Key participants at the festival—including Anthony Lappe, author of the recently published graphic novel Shooting War, and photographer Catherine Wyatt, jury president for the Bayeux-Calvados Prize—discuss their work in interviews hosted by Journalisme.com, a French association attempting to promote a vigorous and independent press in France and elsewhere around the world.

SF International Film Fest call for entries

CIR Staff — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:31:52 -0700

The San Francisco International Film Festival is now accepting submissions for the 2009 festival, which will be April 23-May 7, 2009. Cash prizes total nearly $100,000. Entries can be narrative, documentary, animation, experimental, youth-produced, television works on film, video or digital media. Submissions can be of any length. For the 2009 festival, SFFIFF is also creating a new, juried cash prize of $25,000 for best investigative documentary. >> Visit the San Francisco Film Society website for more information.

Citizen journalism contest on YouTube

CIR Staff — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:54:05 -0700

This week YouTube and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting launched Project: Report, a journalism contest (sponspred by Sony VAIO and Intel) for citizen journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told. The contest will take place over three rounds. The first round will be judged by the Pulitzer Center and will narrow the field down to the top ten reporters. The YouTube community will then vote to select the top five finalists and the ultimate winner. The winner will receive a $10,000 grant for travel abroad and the opportunity to work with the Pulitzer Center on a story of global importance. The finalists will also receive high-end video and editing equipment from Sony and be featured on the YouTube homepage. Additional prizes will be given to the top ten and top five participants as the contest progresses. Assignment for Round One: Create and submit a video profile of an individual of significance in your community. The submission should be three minutes or less. Deadline for uploading is October 5. >> For more information, visit The Pulitzer Center website: www.pulitzercenter.org.

The new wave of nonprofit journalism

CIR Staff — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:22:02 -0700

A Dutch journalist writes about philanthropy and journalism in the U.S. for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:

Although American philanthropists historically have not shown much interest in journalism, non-profits see an increasing interest among donors wanting to support quality journalism. “More and more donors are concerned about what is going on with media,” says Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “If journalists all go away, who will provide information? Where is the watchdog role? That is a real issue for democracy.”

>> Read "Non-Profit Journalism: Is Philanthropy the Answer?" online.

Drawing a red line in Georgia

Carrie Ching — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:26:09 -0700

In a new episode of iWitness, FRONTLINE/World's web series, curator Joe Rubin talks to Gigi Ugulava, the mayor of Georgia's capital Tbilisi and a confidant of President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Ugulava describes the mounting refugee crisis facing his city as Georgians flood in from Gori and other towns bombed by the Russian army, and how the city is reacting as Russian tanks remain less than 40 miles from the capital. Ugulava tells FRONTLINE/World that when it comes to Tbilisi, Georgians are drawing a red line. "If Russia will succeed here, they will be halfway to reestablishing the Soviet Union and nobody can stop them then."

>> Watch the episode on the iWitness website.

ONA recognizes best of investigative media

Rhyen Coombs — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:40:51 -0700

This week, the Online News Association announced the finalists for its Online Journalism Awards, honoring excellence in digital journalism. Among them were nine investigative reports, many of which used multimedia tools to get behind the story with powerful visuals, databases and original documents. Investigative, Large Site > Unequal Justice | DallasNews.com, The Dallas Morning News Five-part series uses video, print and interactive features to probe why so many Dallas County murderers are on probation. Also nominated for the Knight Award for Public Service. > Talking to the Taliban | TheGlobeandMail.com Provides a portrait of Taliban foot soldiers in their own words, based on interviews conducted by a single researcher with a video camera and standardized questionnaire. All 42 transcribed, raw videos are included in the six-part series, along with graphics, maps and discussions with reporter Graeme Smith. Also nominated in the Multimedia Feature, Large Site category. > Inside the CIA's Notorious "Black Sites" | Salon.com, Mark Benjamin The "first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons," given by Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni held for 19 months without being charged. > Big Phat Liar | TheSmokingGun.com Print story unravels how "a federal inmate duped the Los Angeles Times, fabricated FBI reports, and linked Sean 'Diddy' Combs to 1994 ambush of Tupac Shakur." Investigative, Small Site > Schools Promote Students Despite Widespread Failure | Azstarnet.com, Arizona Daily Star Three-part series uses print and video storytelling to uncover social promotion of failing students in Tucson-area schools, then provides original documents and a database of local school performance to dig deeper. > Blood and Money | EastValleyTribune.com, East Valley (Ariz.) Tribune Traces the path of human smuggling from Mexico to Arizona using a three-part print series, videos in both Spanish and English, and interactive route maps. > Coincidence or Cluster | NWHerald.com, The Northwest (Ill.) Herald Six-part series on the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits and the stories behind them, told through videos, interactive maps and original documents gathered over a six-month investigation. > The Permanent Republican Majority | RawStory.com, The Raw Story Five-part investigation into the "architects and the execution of backroom Republican politics," starting with the jailing of Don Siegelman, former Democratic governor of Alabama. > 'I Didn't Do That Murder': Lebrew Jones and the death of Micki Hall | RecordOnline.com, The Times Herald Record (Middletown, N.Y.) Uses videos, graphics and original case files to investigate the 20-year-old murder case of a New York City prostitute, and the man who says he was wrongly convicted. The winners will be announced at the 2008 ONA Conference Awards Banquet on Sept. 13 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C.

Surge in poisonings from "safe" pesticides

Carrie Ching — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:16:21 -0700

A type of "safe" pesticide found in household products—from lice shampoo to Raid bug spray—is responsible for a surge in injuries and deaths over the past decade, according to Environmental Protection Agency data acquired by the Center for Public Integrity. In a new report, "Perils of the New Pesticides," CPI reveals that "the number of reported human health problems, including severe reactions, attributed to pyrethrins and pyrethroids increased by about 300 percent over the past decade ... [the chemicals] accounted for more than 26 percent of all fatal, 'major,' and 'moderate' human incidents in the United States in 2007, up from 15 percent in 1998."

Pyrethrins, extracted from the chrysanthemum plant, and their synthetic relatives, pyrethroids, have exploded in popularity over the last decade. They are now used in thousands of consumer products from Hartz Dog Flea & Tick Killer to Raid Ant and Roach Killer. These chemicals are found in bug-repellant clothing, flea collars, automatic misting devices, lawn-care products, and carpet sprays. Manufacturers developed them as safer alternatives to a class of compounds, derived from Nazi nerve gases, called organophosphates, found in products such as Dursban. The chemicals were widely used in American homes as recently as the late 1990s but are no longer approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for indoor use.

The EPA released its pesticide incident-reporting database in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from CPI earlier this year. The database was called one of the “Ten Most Wanted Government Documents” by the Center for Democracy and Technology. >> Read "Perils of the New Pesticides" by the Center for Public Integrity.

iWitness talks to survivors of war in Bosnia and Serbia

Carrie Ching — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:16:34 -0700

FRONTLINE/World iWitness posted two video reports this week about the capture and arrest of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic this past Monday. iWitness talks to reporter Saska Rankovic, who worked as an independent journalist under Milosevic and has been covering a divided Serbia for the last few years. "I think it is so pitiful, for the man who was so powerful during that war period ... after all he was the master of life and death ... It is so pitiful," Rankovic says of Karadzic's capture and the way he's been living in disguise for more than a decade. iWitness also checks in with Hasan Nuhanovic, who lost his mother, father, and brother in the massacre at Srebrenica. Nuhanovic was featured in a FRONTLINE/World documentary in 2006 about the hunt for Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic: "The Men Who Got Away." "There is no place for euphoria," Nuhanovic says of Karadzic's arrest this week. "It came 13 years late. He's still in custody in Belgrade. We'll see when he is going and how he is going to be transferred to The Hague international tribunal. We'll see what happens when he gets there ... It's one important step forward, of course. But many problems remain unresolved." >> Watch these iWitness episodes and more online.

Scandal & Torture: Who's on the hook

Rhyen Coombs — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:39:04 -0700

Not to be missed today: The ACLU's release of three memos it received from the Department of Justice and the CIA in response to a FOIA request. All three, issued between 2002 and 2004, detail the authorization of "enhanced" interrogation tactics for use on specific detainees. From the AP:

The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break prisoners' will would not cause "prolonged mental harm." The Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. The Bybee legal opinion defining torture was withdrawn more than two years later. The new documents indicate that senior Bush administration officials were aware of the controversial and potentially problematic use of certain interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

Track those officials yourself with today's interactive flash feature from Slate, Crimes and Misdemeanors: An interactive guide to Bush-administration lawbreaking: Says Slate:

The accompanying diagram highlights a truth of criminal conspiracy: Whenever legal liability is spread among many actors, it becomes difficult to ascertain with any specificity who's on the hook for what. This, to steal a phrase from Douglas Feith, is "the whole point."

While the graphic doesn't offer any new information, it does give a stark, powerful visualization of which officials have been involved in warrantless wiretapping, coercive interrogation, Department of Justice hiring and firing practices, and the destruction of CIA video tapes – and which ones might stand a chance of being prosecuted. For example, here's what Slate detailed on Bybee:

Jay Bybee Office of Legal Council Implicated in: coercive interrogation As the head of the OLC, Bybee signed the infamous August 2002 torture memo. Now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, he was confirmed before the memos leaked and hasn't come under the same scrutiny as Yoo. Should he? By all accounts, Bybee relied heavily on Yoo's work. But the ACLU just released another memo that Bybee signed, which explicitly approved enhanced interrogation techniques for use on a specific detainee, based on the questionable theory that they did not constitute torture because "we believe those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering." Case for prosecuting: By signing these memos, Bybee took responsibility for them. He may have also helped draft them. Yoo testified before Congress in May that his superiors reviewed and edited the torture memos. Case against prosecuting: As with Yoo, there is resistance to prosecuting Bybee for giving legal advice. He is a sitting federal judge to boot. And as far as we know, there's no evidence that he helped set policy on interrogation.

Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon will be online Friday at noon EST to discuss the story behind the project, and its possible impact.

Online Emmy nominations

Lisa Pickoff-White — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:34:54 -0700

Last year, the Emmys created a category for online documentaries and multimedia projects. Nominees include major media organizations and user-generated content. The reports span the relocation of trailer home dwellers in California to NATO soldiers in Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission. The Washington Post received the most nominations. "A Nation Divided" examines how three different American towns deal with losses in the Iraq war. Reporter Travis Fox returns to New Orleans in "After the Destruction." Iraqi and Vietnam veterans speak about their experiences in "Living with PTSD." "OnBeing" lets normal people in Washington, D.C. speak about pet peeves and life. FRONTLINE/World followed the British NATO commander in "Afghanistan: The Other War." Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova examines prostitution in Dubai, while Victoria Gamburg went to Russia to look at Moscow’s version of Sex and the City. The San Jose Mercury News follows a community of trailer home residents as they are dislocated in "Uprooted" and a health care reform campaign in Sacramento for “Into the 25th Hour.” A New York Times reporter follows a homeless man through the process of moving from a cave in the Bronx to an apartment in Little Italy in “Life in Transition.” MediaStorm and The Los Angeles Times follow a marine home after serving in Iraq in the "Marlboro Marine." MediaStorm was also nominated for an audio slideshow: "Crisis Guide: Darfur." Current TV's Christof Putzel received two nominations for "Mogadishu Madness", a story about the new self-proclaimed government in Somalia, and "From Russia With Hate", about a growing anti-immigrant Neo-Nazi movement. >> View these projects and the complete list of broadband Emmy nominations.

Examining criminal histories in the military

Lisa Pickoff-White — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:23:59 -0700

A year-long-investigation by The Sacramento Bee examines the past criminal histories of soldiers and Marines. The Bee linked 70 military personnel with “questionable backgrounds” who were involved with criminal incidents in the military or back home. The Bee is one of the first news organizations to examine military personnel’s past histories in connection with recent incidents.

A number of those incidents were identified for the first time through military records; even in some well-publicized incidents, The Bee uncovered criminal records not previously made public. Though dozens of these soldiers would not have qualified for law enforcement jobs in this country, the military sent them to Iraq, where troops often function as police officers.

The New York Times wrote about how the number of waivers the Army granted to new recruits with criminal backgrounds grew by 65 percent in 2007. More recently the Times looked at 121 veterans who committed or are charged with a killing in the War Torn series.

Hear no evil, smell no evil

Marguerite Davenport — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:14:02 -0700

"There are days when the pollution is so bad it blocks out the sun," says Carol Taylor a Texas resident living fifteen miles from a TXU operated power plant. TXU, a "political powerhouse" and the operator of four coal-fired power plants in Texas and owner of three of the five worst polluting plants in the country has been inaccurately reporting its sulfur dioxide emissions to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality since 1997, reports the Center for Public Integrity. A review conducted by CPI showed that from 1997 to 2006, "TXU's coal-fired plants exceeded federal emission limits nearly 650 times, spewing more than 1.3 million pounds of excess sulfur dioxide into the Texas air." How has TXU over-emitted for ten years with one $720 violation penalty? Joaquin Sapien from Fort Worth Weekly reports that enforcement is not adequately regulated on the federal level: "Although the EPA keeps records, it relies on state agencies to enforce federal air pollution standards. In Texas, state law requires companies to file deviation reports to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality when a power plant exceeds federal emissions limits." The TCEQ has allowed power plants to "self-report" their emissions levels and has failed to compare filed reports from the plants with federal data from the EPA. Sapien reports that:

Prominent doctors in the east Texas medical community are concerned that TCEQ may have failed to force TXU to adhere to its federal emissions limits. "The tools I have to help people suffering from chest disease and respiratory ailments are fairly limited, and if they [TCEQ] are letting polluters exceed their limits, then they are counteracting what we are trying do here, as physicians," said Dr. David Coultas, a pulmonologist at the University of Texas Health Center at Tyler, one of the nation's most prestigious lung and chest disease research institutions, located about 25 miles west of Martin Lake. He said many of his patients complain that their symptoms are intensified on days when air pollution is particularly bad.

Texas citizens are addressing health and environmental threats through grassroots activism, lawsuits and lobbying. Records gathered by the Center for Public Integrity show that, "air quality enforcement came at the point of a citizen lawsuit, not from the agency (TCEQ)." However, citizens are facing a "formidable opponent" in their efforts to ensure clean air. Sapien reports:

According to Texans for Public Justice, TXU and two investor groups spent approximately $17 million during the 2007 Texas legislative session on lobbyists, advertising, food and beverages, entertainment, and gifts — including sending 2,400 tacos to legislators and their aides on the first day of the session. TXU is never a slouch when it comes to lobbying. During the 2006 election cycle, according to another Texans for Public Justice report, TXU gave contributions to all but seven members of the Texas Legislature.

In addressing the causes of reporting discrepancies that have allowed TXU, other coal-fired power plants and oil companies to over-emit, "Eric Schaeffer, the former EPA official, said the findings show the need for TCEQ — and the legislature — to rethink whether TCEQ's self-reporting system actually works."

Keeping tabs on Congress

Lisa Pickoff-White — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:53:47 -0700

The word "transportation" was spoken aloud by members of Congress 122 times on July 7. "Energy" was the most commonly used word during the entire first week of June, the same week the national average price of gas hit $4. Capitol Words, a project from the Sunlight Foundation, gives viewers a snapshot of what members of Congress are talking about using a database that searches the Congressional Record and tallies how often words are used. The Sunlight Foundation also provides other useful reporting tools: Fortune 535 tracks the net worth of members of Congress since 1995, though it also points out there is no clear way to find out how much they are really making under current laws. For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her family's net worth could be between $86 million and negative $9 million, according to her disclosures. The Foundation's Visualizing Earmarks feature illustrates earmark spending by agency, by type of organization, and by state—in 2005, Alaska received far more earmarked money per capita than any other state. Two years ago the Sunlight Foundation began compiling more than eight sources on Congressional bills, resolutions, staff, reports and more. Their searchable databases create easy ways for regular people to track the movements of Congress.

iWitness: A journalist in Zimbabwe speaks out

Carrie Ching — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:21:01 -0700

The latest episode of iWitness, a new web series from FRONTLINE/World, spotlights a journalist working to expose human rights abuses in Zimbabwe—where practicing journalism "has become a crime punishable by death." The woman, who is not named and does not appear on camera to protect her identity, talks to series curator Joe Rubin by phone about some of the most striking experiences she has had reporting in Zimbabwe during Mugabe's fight to maintain power—a dangerous time for anyone who publicly criticizes him and his party. iWitness launched in June 2008 on FRONTLINE/World's website:

The idea for iWitness grew out of a sense that we wanted to expand our network of voices from around the world and to respond more quickly to events, especially dramatic situations. Reaching people in countries such as Iran or Burma via web cam provides an immediate and powerful storytelling tool. We'll be checking in mid story with our regular reporters, but we will also be connecting directly with activists and artists, doctors and teachers, even avatars reporting from virtual communities, such as Second Life.

>> Visit the FRONTLINE/World iWitness site to watch videos and learn more.

2008 Murrow Awards: Investigative

Rhyen Coombs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:38:48 -0700

Edward Murrow's spirit lives on in the work of broadcast journalists he inspired, says the Radio-Television News Directors Association, which this week announced its 2008 picks for excellence in electronic reporting. Investigative reporting has its own category of the Edward R. Murrow Awards; this year's national winners are:
ABC News, Brian Ross Investigates | Prescription for Error Television Network/Syndication Service Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross exposed pharmacy errors in America's major drug store chains, and their effects. Watch the original report, "Pharmacy Errors: Unreported Epidemic", or track the follow-up stories on The Blotter's Pharmacy Investigation blog. NPR | Sexual Abuse of Native American Women Radio Network/Syndication Service Reporter Laura Sullivan led a two-part investigation, from South Dakota and Oklahoma, on the ongoing epidemic of sexual violence on Native American reservations. Read the transcript, listen to the original broadcasts, and dig deeper with interactive maps at "Rape Cases on Indian Lands Go Uninvestigated" and "Legal Hurdles Stall Rape Cases on Native Lands". Hear Sullivan discuss the the reporting challenges she faced in this interview with Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center:
KNBC-TV | Contaminated Television: Large Market Reporter Joel Grover and his team went undercover for four months to expose contaminated food supplies delivered to Southern California restaurants, and public health officials' failure to protect the public. Explore the project site, Produce Market Investigation, to read the transcript and watch parts one, two and three of Grover's video series. WLOX-TV | Home Sweet Meth Home Television: Small Market In this three-part series, reporter Keli Rabon investigated how former meth labs in Biloxi, Miss. were being rented and sold to unsuspecting people, exposing them to harmful chemicals. See the full reports: "Mississippi Failing To Protect Families From Former Meth Labs", "Meth: It Can't Be Seen, But Could Be In Your Home" and "Innocent Families Discover Meth Still Lurks In Their Homes", and follow-up stories. WTMJ-AM | Unlawful Restraint? Radio: Large Market Reporter Dan O’Donnell investigated the use of restraining devices in a special education classroom in Racine, Wis. Read the transcript and listen to the original report.
Hundreds of other radio and television reports received Edward R. Murrow Awards at the regional level. Explore the full list.

Who gets Iraq's oil?

Marguerite Davenport — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:01:13 -0700

The U.S. State Department has played an integral role in advising oil deals between five major western oil companies and the Iraqi government, reports Andrew E. Kramer for The New York Times. According to Kramer, "the disclosure, on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct American involvement in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development." The small advising committee of the U.S. State Department, comprised of American government lawyers and private sector consultants told the Times "that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals." However, democratic senators led by Charles E. Schumer of New York said that the oil contracts to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron could "deepen political tensions in Iraq and endanger American soldiers." The BBC also reported on the U.S. and other nations’ interests in investing in the six Iraqi oil fields: Rumaila, Kirkuk, Zubair, West Qurna, Bai Hassan and Maysan, and “officials’ hope that the presence of multinational oil firms in Iraq will stimulate more foreign investment.” >> Read about daily life in Iraq on the Baghdad Bureau blog of The New York Times.

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CIR Staff — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:21:22 -0700

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Investigative reporters honored in the Philippines

Rhyen Coombs — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:39:23 -0700

Top investigations in the Philippines on human rights, the environment and governance and corruption were honored June 26 with the Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism for 2007. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, a nonprofit promoting and protecting ethical media in the Philippines, administered the awards. Writers for Newsbreak, an online magazine covering the nation's news and current affairs, took home the two highest honors:

Glenda Gloria for "Trapped in a Web of Lives," her report on the disappearance of Jonas Burgos, the son of press freedom fighter Joe Burgos. She also received the Marshall McLuhan Prize, a travel study award to Canada. Gloria is managing editor of Newsbreak, the author of several books -- most recently Spin & Sell: How Political Ads Shaped the 2004 Elections -- and teaches investigative reporting at KAF Asian Center for Journalism of the Ateneo de Manila University. Reach her here.

Roel Landingin for "The Battle for Manila's Gateway," his series of explanatory articles on the controversial opening of Terminal 3 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He also received the Australian Ambassador's Award, a travel grant to Australia. Landingin is Manila senior correspondent for The Financial Times of London and a fellow with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Earlier this year, his three-part series, "The Perils and Pitfalls of Aid," capped a 6-month PCIJ investigation into official development assistance projects, and "reflected the reluctance by many government agencies to allow public access to documents that involve use of taxpayers’ money."

Newsbreak describes its coverage as "honest, independent, and spunky reportage" that emphasizes "in-depth stories, investigative reports, incisive analysis, as well as insider stuff that give a ringside view of the workings of people, politics, and power." Paid subscribers can access the winning articles by Gloria and Landingin in its archives. Finally, Prime Sarmiento of the PCIJ received a Plaque of Merit for "What's Swimming in Your Soup?", in which she documents the impact of domestic wastewater pollution on the Philippines' waterways and wildlife. Sarmiento now works for IPS-Asia Pacific; see more of her work on her website. The JVOAEJ program was established in 1990 by CMFR in the name of Jaime V. Ongpin, secretary of finance during the Aquino administration, who struggled against the Marcos dictatorship and advocated a stronger alternative press. Past winners include The Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star, Newsbreak, and Philippine Graphic. See the full list of this year's finalists here.

Pushing prescriptions

Shahien Nasiripour — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:49:44 -0700

The pharmaceutical industry spent $168 million lobbying Capitol Hill last year, reports the Center for Public Integrity. That's a 32 percent increase from 2006, making it Washington's largest lobby. Big Pharma and other health-product manufacturers spent a combined $189 million on lobbying in 2007, nearly three times the $67 million they spent in 1998. Drug interests have spent more than $1 billion on federal lobbying efforts in the past decade. The spending binge helped fuel some big wins for the pharmaceutical industry, CPI reports. Some of their biggest wins include blocking inexpensive drug imports, patent protection, and securing greater market access in international free trade agreements. The intense lobbying effort wasn't the only weapon in their arsenal. In the current election cycle, the industry has given more than $14 million to candidates—half to Democrats, half to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The biggest recipients? Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his vanquished opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Since the 1990 election cycle, the pharmaceutical and health-products industry has contributed more than $154 million to campaign coffers, nearly twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Billions lost in Iraq could be "the largest war profiteering in history"

Shahien Nasiripour — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:09:15 -0700

About $23 billion may have been lost, stolen or not properly accounted for in Iraq, reports the BBC's news magazine show, Panorama. It's not the first investigative report detailing lost billions in Iraq. Back in February 2006, 60 Minutes reported that the Coalition Provisional Authority couldn't account for nearly $9 billion. And late last month, a congressional oversight committee held a hearing saying much the same thing: billions of American taxpayer funds were not properly accounted for in Iraq. But $23 billion is a staggering amount, nearly three times the amount the Pentagon's Inspector General reported in last month's House hearing. To put $23 billion in perspective: more than 100 nations produced less than that in 2006, says the World Bank (countries like Kenya, Costa Rica, Iceland, Uruguay and Lebanon all reported lower GDPs in 2006 than the U.S. government has potentially lost in Iraq since the war began in 2003); the U.S. Department of Justice spent about $23 billion in the 2007 fiscal year; and it's a few billion more than Coca-Cola and McDonald's reported in total revenue last year. The program originally aired across the pond on BBC One on Tuesday. Americans hoping to catch it on BBC America will have to wait; Panorama isn't part of the broadcaster's slate of shows. It will, however, be posted to the BBC's website soon.

Blackwater—the new CIA?

CIR Staff — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:01:13 -0700

Private mercenary company Blackwater USA made headlines last fall after its security forces in Baghdad killed 17 Iraqi civilians in a gunfight. Though the Iraqi Minister of the Interior attempted to ban the company from operating in Iraq, the U.S. State Department recently renewed Blackwater's year-long contract there. Now Blackwater is making headlines again: Jeremy Scahill reports in The Nation that the Pentagon has asked Blackwater to bid on another lucrative international security contract—this time to “fight terrorists with drug-ties” in Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia. In “Blackwater’s Private Spies,” Scahill investigates how Blackwater and other private security companies are taking advantage of “emerging war and conflict markets," and why Washington is investing $42 billion annually in private intelligence contractors. Scahill reports on Blackwater's possible expansion into Latin America:

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater expanding into Latin America, joining other private security companies well established in the region. The massive US security company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia and other countries as part of the "war on drugs." In Colombia alone, US military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border, the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other companies. "Blackwater USA's enlistment in the drug war," observed journalist John Ross, would be "a direct challenge to its stiffest competitor, DynCorp--up until now, the Dallas-based corporation has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security contracts." The New York Times reported that the contract could be Blackwater's "biggest job ever."

But, Scahill reports, the creator of Blackwater, Erik Prince, has even bigger plans: A move into privatized "CIA-style" intelligence services with a new enterprise called Total Intelligence Solutions. "The company's leadership reads like a Who's Who of the CIA's 'war on terror' operations after 9/11," Schahill writes.

As the United States finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. "This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community," says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. "My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It's outrageous."

>> Read “Blackwater’s Private Spies" by Jeremy Scahill in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation. >> Learn more about Blackwater USA in the New York Times special report on the company.

It's alive ...

CIR Staff — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:08:46 -0700

ProPublica, the new investigative journalism outfit based in New York, launched its new website today. Check it out. From the editors:

Five months ago, ProPublica was an idea, a rudimentary Web site and a nearly empty office in Lower Manhattan. Today, we take our first concrete step in building an investigative publishing platform that will produce original stories focusing on betrayal of the public trust and abuse of power. Our goal is to do stories that would otherwise escape notice and to follow up on work done by others that demands change or is being overlooked. This is the beginning of what we see as an experiment and we invite your comments and suggestions on stories, or on how we can make our organization more useful to readers. We have nearly completed our hiring (more than 20 out of perhaps 27 news staff) and reporters are at work on some promising avenues of inquiry. You will see those results in the months ahead. In the meantime, we offer what we hope will a thorough, thought-provoking look at investigative stories that are breaking elsewhere.

Child prostitution in America

CIR Staff — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:21:07 -0700

This week's NOW on PBS episode investigates child prostitution in America, a shocking social epidemic. The Department of Justice says, on any given day, tens of thousands of children across America are involved in prostitution. In Atlanta, the mayor has launched an aggressive campaign to crackdown on paying customers. One new approach is the "John School"—a program to reform "johns" and keep them from paying for sex again. > Watch the episode "Fighting Child Prostitution" online. > Watch a video interview with a former stripper now trying to rescue girls from the sex trade and adult entertainment industry. > ALSO: NOW won the Gracie Allen Award from American Women in Radio and Television for “Outstanding Interactive Website” for its work in revealing the issues and problems of child marriage in Niger, India, and Guatemala in "Child Brides: Stolen Lives." The website contains interviews with underage brides and information about the health consequences and problems associated with the practice.

Corruption on the border

Carrie Ching — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:32:33 -0700

The number of border patrol agents employed by the Department of Homeland Security is expected to grow to more than 20,000 by 2009, which is more than double what it was in 2001. An investigation by The New York Times and FRONTLINE/World found that the increased manpower has also led to increased corruption—agents accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to smuggle illegal immigrants, drugs, and weapons across the border they were hired to protect. “If you can get a corrupt inspector, you have the keys to the kingdom,” one FBI agent told the reporters. The Times article, by Randal C. Archibold and Andrew Becker, catalogs a number of recent cases of agents-gone-bad. The accompanying FRONTLINE/World documentary begins airing on PBS tonight and will also be available online. Check local listings.

Understanding Abu Ghraib

Carrie Ching — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:00:07 -0700

In his NYTimes.com blog, filmmaker Errol Morris reconstructs the series of events that led to the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, the dead man shown in the well-publicized Abu Ghraib photo with Sabrina Harman flashing a thumbs up. In the process of making his new film, Standard Operating Procedure, Morris conducted hours of interviews with the soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib, including Harman and others convicted of abuse. He also carefully analyzed the photographs taken by Harman and others stationed at the prison. Morris's own investigation into the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and the death of al-Jamadi might very well be the best examination on public record today. Morris also talks a lot about Sabrina Harman, and how the photograph of her smile over the corpse of a dead man, in his view, "aided and abetted a terrible miscarriage of justice." In true Morris fashion, he takes the investigation deeper, contacting psychology professor Paul Ekman at the University of California, San Francisco, an expert on facial expressions and emotions. Morris actually has Ekman analyze several photos of Harman to determine whether her smile in the Abu Ghraib photograph expresses true happiness or is just posturing for the camera. > Read the Errol Morris blog: "The Most Curious Thing"

A global standard for libel

Mark Schapiro — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:24:17 -0700

As the news media has gone global, legal principles of libel and journalistic protections have not followed suit. In this article, which recently appeared in the London Times, a British attorney argues for a more harmonized set of global libel standards—to prevent plaintiffs from taking advantage of Britain's weak journalistic protections.

The deadliest job in Iraq

Carrie Ching — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:35:15 -0700

One of the deadliest jobs for civilian Iraqis is working as a translator for the U.S. military. Foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen profiles a 23-year-old Iraqi interpreter in today's San Franciso Chronicle. Badkhen is also writing an Iraq reporting journal for CIR's Muckraker blog. From the Chronicle:

Neither his parents nor his siblings know he works for the U.S. Army. It's bad enough that he wakes up each night around 2 a.m., the hour his armored convoy was hit by a roadside bomb several months ago. He doesn't want his family to have the same nightmares. The 23-year-old translator, who goes by the name Travis, is intent on protecting his loved ones from Iraq's sectarian militias, which consider anyone who works for the Americans as traitors. He is also well aware that translating in Iraq has become one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in the world. Since the war began five years ago, at least 200 Iraqis translating for U.S. troops have been killed, most of them in targeted killings, according to L3 Communications, a New York company that supplies interpreters to the American military. To avoid being killed or maimed, Travis and most other Iraqi translators lead dual lives, concealing their identities and addresses. On patrol, the young man covers his face with a military-issue bandanna that he pulls down to the bottom of his sunglasses.

Webby awards recognize the best online journalism

Carrie Ching — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:39:54 -0700

The 12th Annual Webby Award winners were announced today, and if you're at all interested in new media, the list is definitely worth checking out. A web reality series called "Hometown Baghdad" swept the news video awards this year, winning for best news and politics series, best public service and activism, and best reality content. The series follows three young Iraqis through everyday life in Baghdad—showing a side of Iraqi life viewers never see on network news. In the midst of war, how do people work, go to school, fall in love? The series, launched in March 2007, has been applauded by the Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Guardian (UK), National Public Radio, and many others. "Finding the Way Home," a touching video by photojournalist Brenda Ann Kenneally and MediaStorm about families struggling to pull their lives back together two years after Hurricane Katrina, won for Best News and Politics: Individual Episode. The People's Voice winner in the same category is a FRONTLINE/World video by photojournalist Mimi Chakarova and video journalist Sachi Cunningham about prostitution and sex tourism in Dubai called "Dubai: Night Secrets." The piece is a follow-up to Chakarova's stunning audio slideshow on sex trafficking in Eastern Europe: "Moldova: The Price of Sex." Christof Putzel of Current TV won an award for best individual drama episode with "From Russia with Hate"—a dark story about the anti-immigrant backlash in Russia and neo-Nazi groups that use the Internet to spread their messages. And, not surprisingly, the online teams at the New York Times and the hilarious fake-news-producing Onion News Network won numerous awards for their continually strong online content.

Feeding frenzy

Shahien Nasiripour — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:43:22 -0700

A few months ago, the forward-thinking British weekly The Economist put today's global food crisis in perspective by declaring on their cover: "The End of Cheap Food." The message—that food prices are rising like never before, threatening to destabilize much of the world—was accompanied by hope: The world has a tremendous opportunity to address decades of misguided government policies and management, resulting in a higher standard of living for all of us. The Washington Post began publishing a series Sunday to educate its readers. The series, entitled "Global Food Crisis: The New World of Soaring Food Prices," began with a look at how we got to this point: "The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world's poorest nations." The series's second day tells the story of a family in Mauritania struggling to make ends meet. Mauritania has been particularly hurt by the food crisis. The Post reports that the African nation produces just 30% of what its people eat and imports the rest—a recipe for disaster when food prices are rocketing to new levels, exporting countries are raising export taxes or halting foreign sales altogether, and rich countries are hoarding food. Worse, Mauritania doesn't have the agricultural means to feed itself:

U.N. experts, World Bank officials and aid groups fear it marks the onset of the worst food crisis in [Africa] in decades; officials are calling for $755 million in fresh emergency food assistance from rich countries. Aid groups are already falling behind in their efforts to provide food across the continent, leaving even the poorest communities increasingly dependent on the market. This is the new face of hunger.

The third day examines wheat prices in America and begins with an anecdote of a Maryland bagel store owner who resists raising the price of his bagels to past the dollar mark:

I've never seen anything like this in 20 years," he said. "It's a nightmare." Fleishman and his customers are hardly alone. Across America, turmoil in the world wheat markets has sent prices of bread, pasta, noodles, pizza, pastry and bagels skittering upward, bringing protests from consumers.

Of course, for those readers aged 34 and up this isn't the first global food crisis of their lifetime. In 1974, Time magazine began a report about the global food shortage with a Bible verse:

For nation shall rise against nation ... and there shall be famines and troubles; these are the beginnings of sorrows. —Mark 13:8 Nothing is older to man than his struggle for food. From the time the early hunters stalked the mammoths and the first sedentary "farmers" scratched the soil to coax scrawny grain to grow, man has battled hunger. History is replete with his failures. The Bible chronicles one famine after an other; food was in such short supply in ancient Athens that visiting ships had to share their stores with the city; Romans prayed at the threshold of Olympus for food. Every generation in medieval Europe suffered famine. The poor ate cats, dogs and the droppings of birds; some starving mothers ate their children. In the 20th century, periods of extreme hunger drove Soviet citizens to cannibalism, and as late as 1943, floods destroyed so much of Bengal's crops that deaths from starvation reached the millions. After World War II, however, it seemed that man at long last was winning the battle against hunger … experts now question whether man can prevent widespread starvation … Against this gloomy backdrop, about 1,000 delegates from some 100 nations and a dozen international organizations are gathering in Rome this week for the World Food Conference, sponsored by the United Nations. It will be the first concerted global effort in history to confront the problem of hunger … This is urgently needed to avoid fulfilling the nightmare of Parson Thomas Malthus, the English economist who predicted nearly two centuries ago that population would outrun man's capacity to produce food.

The crisis in news

CIR Staff — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:46:39 -0700

A two-day symposium on the future of investigative reporting brought the industry's top editors and reporters together at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism over the weekend. CIR reporters and Executive Director Robert Rosenthal were joined by Paul Steiger, the editor in chief of ProPublica, Bill Buzenberg of the Center for Public Integrity, and Lowell Bergman, whose Investigative Reporting Program at Berkeley organized the event.

Robert J. Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, got right to the point. "The reality," he said, "is the newspaper industry in this country has been destroyed." Rosenthal should know. He's seen the carnage up close, as editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in Knight Ridder's declining days and as managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle as it staggered under the burden of an imposing annual deficit. He made the comment over the weekend during the Reva and David Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. The symposium's title sounded pretty grim – "The crisis in news: Is there a future for investigative reporting?" But as it turned out, the two-day gathering, featuring panels and an audience both studded with outstanding journalists, wasn't quite as dominated by despair as you might guess.

>> Read more in the American Journalism Review.

Are secrets necessary for our national security?

Carrie Ching — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:33:24 -0700

A new documentary about national security and government secrecy is screening at both Tribeca and the San Francisco International Film Festival over the next few weeks. In Secrecy, journalists, lawyers, and government officials debate who should have access to sensitive government data and why. From the SFIFF site:

Are secrets necessary for our national security? Is an informed American public the best way to fight terrorism? Where does the line exist between public safety and civil liberties? And, if secrets are necessary, who gets to know? ... From World War II and the creation of the atom bomb through September 11 and recent abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we see the role information management has played in some of this country’s biggest triumphs and tragedies.... The issues and images of this timely, troubling documentary will stay with you for days and make you wonder about all of the things being kept from you.

National Security Archive director Tom Blanton is a featured speaker in the film. The NSA is a clearinghouse for declassified government data and documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. "There's a seduction of secrecy for the securocrats because that is the key tool they use to gain and keep and regulate power. To get a release of a secret means a reduction in official power," Blanton says in the film. "There's a thrill to [uncovering secrets] ... You're looking into the unknown, you're looking in the taboo ... What was it that your parents did at night ... ? What is it that the national security state does at night to wage wars?"

Bob Greene was a "pioneer" of investigative team reporting

Shahien Nasiripour — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:41:39 -0700

Pioneering investigative journalist Bob Greene, who twice helped Newsday win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and led reporters to uncover everything from corruption in Arizona to how heroin made its way from Turkey to Long Island, died Thursday after a long illness. He was 78. In 1975, Greene helped form Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE), and a year later, after the murder of one of its founding reporters in Phoenix, who was investigating organized crime and public corruption, Greene led a team of reporters from across the country dedicated to completing the slain reporter's work. Dubbed "The Arizona Project," the resulting 23-part series won numerous accolades. His teams at Newsday won the 1970 Public Service Pulitzer for exposing scandal in Long Island land deals and four years later for tracking heroin from Turkish poppy fields to Long Island neighborhoods. "He was clearly a pioneer in modern investigative team reporting in the newspaper business," former Newsday associate editor Les Payne wrote of Greene in a staff tribute. "He founded it almost singlehandedly." Before embarking on his journalism career, Greene worked as a staff investigator for the New York City Anti-Crime Committee. At Newsday, he once took a year off at the behest of Robert Kennedy to work as an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee. Greene is survived by his wife and son. For more information: IRE obituary Newsday obituary, editorial, opinion column, staff memo, and staff tributes. Columbia Journalism Review Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Daughters for sale

CIR Staff — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:08:56 -0700

NOW on PBS reports from Nepal to shed light on a heart-wrenching practice: the sale of young girls into slavery. As NOW reports, many families in western Nepal are selling their daughters as bonded servants to make ends meet. As young as six, the girls are sold to work in private residences far from home, where schooling can become a luxury and prostitution a way of life.

NOW travels to Nepal during the Maghe Sankranti holiday, when labor contractors come to the villages of the area to "buy" the children. There, we meet the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, which is trying to break the cycle of poverty and pain with an enterprising idea. They're providing desperate families with an incentive to keep their daughters: a piglet or a goat that can ultimately be sold for a sum equivalent to that of their child's labor.

>> Watch "Daughters for Sale: Fighting Child Slavery in Nepal."

Documentary explores first post-9/11 hate crime

Erica Baker — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:34:39 -0700

On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, vengeance overtook some Americans, leading to a number of misguided acts of violence. On September 15, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas-station owner in Mesa, Arizona, was murdered by a man who assumed that because Singh wore a turban, he was Muslim and somehow responsible for the attacks. Sodhi, a Sikh, became the first post-9/11 hate-crime victim in the United States. Sodhi and his family emigrated from a small village in the Punjab region of India in 1985, after the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards led to anti-Sikh violence. They describe themselves as having come to the United States in search of religious liberty. A Dream in Doubt is an immigrant's story of survival as a wave of deadly hate crimes terrorize Sikh communities across the country. The film is told through the eyes of Balbir's brother, Rana Singh Sodhi. Acting as the spokesman for his family and community, Rana seeks vindication for his brother's murder and other incidents of hate crimes against Sikhs through education and awareness, all the while determined to uphold his belief in the American values of freedom, self-reliance, and equality. >> Visit ITVS Community Cinema for information on upcoming screenings in the Bay Area. >> Visit Independent Lens for more information on the film, nationwide screenings, and educational resources. >> A Dream in Doubt will premiere Tuesday, May 20, 2008 on PBS. Check local listings.

Death penalty doc reveals disturbing trends

Erica Baker — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:24:32 -0700

Race to Execution was a poignant film about the devastating effects racial prejudice plays in determining the fate of those accused of capital crimes in America. The stories of Madison Hobley and Robert Tarver left me haunted by the unscrupulous nature of the way their cases were tried, and distressed by the frequency of how similar cases are handled across the country. One disturbing scene that lingered with me long after the film was Madison's personal account of the verbal and physical abuse he endured at the hands of police. At one point he says: "They said they didn't care who did it. As far as they were concerned, I was a nigger and I did it and they had me. One officer stood behind me and held me while the other officer hit me in the stomach. And then one of them got a plastic typewriter cover and put it over my head." A clip from Juror Number Six explored the role the media plays in producing and reinforcing stereotypical images of criminals. This piece resonated most with the audience of mainly reporters and journalism students at the San Francisco screening last Thursday, and fostered a lively discussion about the responsibility journalists have in curbing this trend. Panelist and filmmaker Rachel Lyon cited the O.J. Simpson trial as a tipping point of media sensationalism of race and murder. Co-panelist Audrey Herron shared startling anecdotes of how she's seen negative media representations manifested in our legal system. And a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter in the audience summed up the evening by applauding the films as being some of the best counter-narratives to biased reporting that he's seen. I walked away from this documentary with a better understanding of how the death penalty is used disproportionately against African-Americans, the poor, and the powerless. I believe this film will leave viewers longing for true justice on behalf of the marginalized in our society.

That song is driving me crazy

Carrie Ching — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:27:18 -0700

Ben Allbright was still in high school when he enlisted as an Army reservist. In 2003 the Arkansas teenager was shipped off to Kuwait, then Iraq, where he was assigned the task of "softening up" prisoners—which involved keeping them handcuffed and blindfolded in a shipping container that reached 145 degrees, forcing them to stand in uncomfortable positions, and blasting loud music to keep them awake for days at a time. In the March/April Mother Jones, Justine Sharrock profiles Allbright and other soldiers who had the unenviable jobs of abusing and sometimes torturing Iraqi prisoners. Sharrock is currently working on a book on the same subject. In "The Torture Playlist," Sharrock also describes the specific songs used as "environmental manipulation" in military prisons in Iraq. In an audio interview, Sharrock says "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, country music, Barney's theme song, the Meow Mix jingle, and Christina Aguilera are commonly used to disturb Iraqi prisoners. >> Read "Am I a Torturer" by Justine Sharrock in Mother Jones. >> Listen to "The Torture Playlist" online.

Death penalty doc to screen in San Francisco tonight

Erica Baker — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:58:22 -0700

Race to Execution, a film by Rachel Lyon, is a compelling investigation of America's death penalty system that probes how race discrimination and bias infect our capital punishment system. Following two death row inmates—Madison Hobley of Chicago, Illinois and Robert Tarver of Russell County, Alabama—the film interweaves their stories together with groundbreaking scholarship, and reveals that the race of the victim and the accused deeply influence the legal process. It examines how a crime scene is investigated, the deployment of police resources, the interrogation and arrest of major suspects, how media portrays the crime, and ultimately, jury selection and sentencing. The film suggests that beyond DNA and beyond innocence, the open secret of our capital punishment system is, indeed, a matter of race. The number of states that have instituted moratoriums on the death penalty in recent years demonstrates that lawmakers are acknowledging that the capital punishment system is deeply flawed and is in need of assessment and reform. According to The Death Penalty Information Center's (DPIC) 2008 fact sheet, there are currently 36 states that exercise capital punishment, and 14 that do not. It also notes a correlation between race discrimination among victims and defendants: "Recent studies on race revealed that in 96% of the states where there have been reviews of race and the death penalty, there was a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both." An article in the Washington Post highlights the significance of the landmark decision New Jersey lawmakers made in December 2007 when they abolished the death penalty. And according to the Baltimore Sun, this month Maryland's legislature established a commission to re-examine the death penalty in its state. (DPIC's website has comprehensive listings of recent legislative activity on capital punishment nationwide.) Juror Number Six, a short film that explores the impact of traditional and new media representations of race and crime on sentencing for minority defendants in the criminal justice system, is a continuation of the film Race to Execution. This new piece considers both the potential and the dangers of new Internet technologies in combating racism and creating a fairer justice system. San Francisco State University's Department of Journalism will host a screening of Race to Execution and Juror Number Six tonight: Thursday, March 27, 2008 6:30 Reception with light refreshments 7:00pm Screening 8:15pm Discussion and Q&A with expert panelists SF State Downtown Campus Westfield San Francisco Centre 835 Market Street, 6th Floor, Rm 609 San Francisco, CA 94103 Guest panelists: Claire Cooper, Bay Area freelance journalist and former Sacramento Bee Legal Affairs writer Aundré Herron, Staff Attorney, California Appellate Project Rachel Lyon, Director/Producer, Race to Execution Moderated by Dori Maynard, President and CEO of the Maynard Institute Co-sponsored by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism, Amnesty International Western Regional Office & SFSU's Center for Integration & Improvement of Journalism. In partnership with DePaul University Center for Justice in Capital Cases, Lioness Media Arts, Inc., and Active Voice.

The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib

Carrie Ching — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:19:27 -0700

This week's New Yorker features an astonishing profile of Sabrina Harman, "the woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib." Harman took hundreds of photos documenting the abuse of Iraqi prisoners—some showing her posing with dead prisoners, flashing a winning smile and a thumbs up. Her photographs were the primary evidence used in the courts-martial of several soldiers in her unit, including herself. From the New Yorker article:

The M.P.s on the M.I. cellblock never learned the prisoners’ names ... A prisoner who made a shank and tried to stab someone was Shank, and a prisoner who got hold of a razor blade and cut himself was called Slash. A prisoner who kept spraying himself and his cell with water and was always asking for a broom was Mr. Clean ... There was a man they called Smiley, and a man they called Froggy, and a man they called Piggy. There was a man with no fingers on one hand, only a thumb, who was called Thumby—not to be confused with the enormous man called the Claw or Dr. Claw, because one of his hands was frozen in a half-clenched curl ... The nicknames made the prisoners both more familiar and more like cartoon characters, which kept them comfortably unreal when it was time to mete out punishment ... Sabrina Harman [said] she felt herself growing numb at Abu Ghraib, yet she kept being startled by her capacity to feel fresh shocks. “In the beginning,” she said, “you see somebody naked and you see underwear on their head and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty bad—I can’t believe I just saw that.’ And then you go to bed and you come back the next day and you see something worse. Well, it seems like the day before wasn’t so bad.”

Writer Philip Gourevitch and documentary filmmaker Errol Morris collaborated on the article, which captures both the surreal lunacy of the prison environment and, through Harman's interview and excerpts of her letters home, a soldier's struggle to make sense of her own involvement in the abuses. You couldn't find a better match of the minds for telling the story of Abu Ghraib than these two. Gourevitch, best known for his award-winning book on the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families) and Morris, who won an Oscar for his film The Fog of War (about the chaos of military planning in Vietnam) are both masters of conveying how conditions of war can warp the human mind and spirit. Morris's new feature documentary Standard Operating Procedure, opening in theaters in late April, takes a closer look at Harman and other soldiers based at Abu Ghraib. Excerpts from the doc are posted on the New Yorker's website, and the trailer is spectacular. Gourevitch and Morris are co-authoring a book by the same name, due out this May.

Bearing witness

Carrie Ching — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:31:57 -0700

A multimedia feature by Reuters and MediaStorm launched on the Reuters website yesterday to coincide with the five year anniversary of the start of the war. In "Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War," Reuters journalists who've covered the war speak candidly about their experiences in the Middle East and a photographic timeline of the past five years creates a compelling visual narrative.

Wiretapping without a warrant

Carrie Ching — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:17:37 -0700

Should telecom companies that helped the National Security Agency wiretap consumers without warrants receive retroactive immunity for their actions? Last Friday, the House voted "No" in its first secret session in 25 years. The Senate, which already passed a bill supporting legal immunity for phone companies, will revisit the debate next month after a break. The White House called the House vote "a significant step backward in defending our country against terrorism." PBS NOW sheds some light on the debate by interviewing whistleblower Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who witnessed the company's data-gathering firsthand:

Klein tells David Brancaccio about the "secret room" set up by the National Security Agency inside his AT&T office in San Francisco. He also describes in remarkable detail—with documents to back him up—how wires were split and extra equipment was brought in to essentially suck up and store emails from all over the country. Klein claims this activity is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, yet the White House continues to press Congress not only for authorization to continue surveillance but also for legal immunity for cooperating telecom companies.

>> Watch the interview on NOW.

Photojournalists tell the stories behind the images on flashPOINT

Carrie Ching — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:00:16 -0800

Last year, FRONTLINE/World launched a new web series called flashPOINT: a gallery of some of the world's best photojournalism in slideshow format, narrated by the photojournalists themselves. This week, flashPOINT launched a beautiful new website showcasing all seven of the features produced so far. The series curator, Mimi Chakarova, teaches photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. FlashPOINT debuted with Chakarova's own audio slideshow about Eastern European women forced into the sex trade: "MOLDOVA: The Price of Sex." Other flashPOINT features about genocide in Darfur, Muslim minorities in Southeast Asia, and life in war-torn Kashmir followed.

Child labor moves from sweatshops to farms

CIR Staff — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:55:07 -0800

Newsdesk.org's weekly roundup of international stories that got little play in the mainstream media—"News You Might Have Missed"—features investigations about child labor in rural India and the Phillipines. According to Newsdesk.org, several recent news reports show that child labor is still prevalent in rural parts of the developing world. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that "children as young as 9 work in sugar cane plantations, deep-sea fishing, mining and other industries in the islands' rural areas." Newsdesk.org also cites a Forbes magazine article about cotton plantations in India, where Monsanto is growing hybridized cottonseed.

Much of the manual labor is performed by children who are paid 20 cents an hour to stoop over cotton fields from dawn to dusk ... [O]ne study that found that 420,000 children under the age of 18 were employed by cotton plantations in India, with 54 percent of that number under the age of 14.

>> Read the Newsdesk.org report "Child Labor Goes Rural" for more details.

Eastern European reporting team investigates tobacco racket

Mark Schapiro — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:35:46 -0800

While investigative reporting is often associated with "American" journalism—from Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell to I.F. Stone and Seymour Hersh—the methodology has been spreading rapidly around the world. Money and power move globally. Journalists on every (inhabited) continent are unearthing the hidden interests behind the politicians and business leaders whose decisions can have devastating impacts on the environment, civil liberties, human rights and the functioning of democracy. From unearthing corporate abuses of power to government corruption, human rights abuses and environmental devastation, top-notch reporting is coming from outside the United States. Some twenty years ago, I helped organize a transnational network of investigative journalists between (then-Western) Europe and the United States. Those were in the days before the Internet; much time was spent cursing fax machines. I never imagined then the extraordinary boom in top notch investigative reporting that we're now seeing across the globe. To bring this work to greater public attention, CIR will be highlighting international investigations on our new blog: The Investigative Report: International. Sometimes they'll have an American angle, sometimes not. But our aim is to highlight the work of great journalists working around the world—sometimes in conditions far more difficult than those in the United States. We'll be keeping our eyes open, but hope you will send us ideas when you see or participated in a story worthy of broader attention. We launch this new project with "Tobacco Roads," the result of a team investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project at the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CIN). A team of reporters spent months unearthing the links of big tobacco to political figures and the illicit smuggling schemes used to dominate national markets in five countries: Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Romania and Ukraine. The team of reporters and editors at CIN in Sarajevo is itself reflective of the phenomenon of investigative reporting' s global rise: Started as a training center in the nineties, the CIN has evolved into a working journalistic force, often engaging in trans-national investigative collaborations which they market to local print, television and radio press, and feature on their web site. Their Organised Crime and Corruption Project is a joint project with the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism and involves a network of journalists in Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Moldova and Russia. Down the line, we'll be featuring interviews with reporters from CIN as well as investigative journalists from all international, commercial and non-commercial, media. >> Read "Tobacco Roads" online. >> Visit the homepage of THE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: INTERNATIONAL to learn more about this project.

CIR co-founder honored

CIR Staff — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:56:03 -0800

CIR co-founder Dan Noyes will be honored with a career achievement award by the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter at its annual James Madison Awards banquet on March 18. The announcement states:

Dan Noyes has spent his life committed to investigative reporting for the public good. In 1977, Noyes, Lowell Bergman, and David Weir, recognizing that in-depth reporting was slipping through the cracks at many major news outlets, founded the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting. Over thirty years later, the increased ebb of news resources makes the non-profit CIR even more important. Noyes’ work expanding the Center’s reach into different media outlets and his tutoring of fledgling journalists deserves great honor.

Dan, more than anyone else, has held CIR together over the years, whether running the organization; serving on the board; working as a reporter and editor; or providing guidance, institutional memory and support. When center staffers faced threats for a story on the Black Panthers in 1978, Dan temporarily moved CIR into his apartment. When the center’s executive director left in 2006, Dan stepped up to the helm, as he had many times before. Over thirty years, Dan has been CIR’s anchor, and he certainly deserves this award. Congrats!

Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney wins Oscar

CIR Staff — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:07:24 -0800

Congratulations to Alex Gibney, whose "Taxi to the Dark Side" won best documentary at the Academy Awards on Sunday. The film, recently acquired by HBO, investigates the use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay through the story of a young taxi driver who was tortured and killed in Afghanistan by U.S. interrogators in 2002. Gibney is working as a consulting producer on an upcoming CIR documentary. >> Listen to an interview with Gibney on Democracy Now!

Documents detail U.S. ties to paramilitaries in the search for Escobar

Carrie Ching — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:08:39 -0800

The National Security Archive, an independent research institute at The George Washington University, collects and publishes declassified government documents pertaining to national security, foreign policy, and military intelligence. Most of the documents are obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and many are posted online. This week, the NSA posted documents tying the U.S.-Colombia task force pursuing Pablo Escobar to one of Colombia's most notorious paramilitary groups. In the race to get to Escobar, was U.S. intelligence shared with Colombian terrorists and narcotraffickers as dangerous as Escobar himself? >> Read the story and view the documents.

Should journalists vote?

Carrie Ching — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:59:04 -0800

If you're covering the campaign, does voting equal political bias? Is true objectivity ever possible? Is it irresponsible for journalists to vote? Is it irresponsible not to? Three political reporters sound off on Politico with three different answers: Yes, no, and sometimes.

Study on environmental hazards in Great Lakes region suppressed

CIR Staff — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:29:09 -0800

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a health study suppressed by the Center for Disease Control's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The study, which was due to be released last July, documents enviornmental hazards in the Great Lakes region. According to CPI, the study "warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen 'areas of concern'—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants ... In many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer." CPI has released excerpts of the study on its website.

PBS series investigates African American "roots in a test tube"

Carrie Ching — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:06:14 -0800

A new series on PBS digs deep into America's history of racism by mapping the genealogies of famous African Americans—including Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Don Cheadle, Maya Angelou, and Morgan Freeman. Through analysis of DNA and historical documents—including slave ship records and wills—"African American Lives 2" recreates the family trees of 12 people and reveals stories that are both poignant and shocking. A review of the series in The New York Times recounts:

[Comedian Chris] Rock can be seen wiping away a tear after learning that his great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, served in the South Carolina Legislature, and died owning dozens of acres of land. He never knew any of that history, Mr. Rock says in the program. He recounts growing up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood and being bused to a white school where he was bullied. “Until I lucked into a comedy club at, you know, age 20, just on a whim, I assumed I would pick up things for white people for the rest of my life,” Mr. Rock says. “If I’d known this, it would have taken away the inevitability that I was going to be nothing.”

Maya Angelou learns for the first time that her black great-grandmother was impregnated at 17 by her 50-year-old white former master. Morgan Freeman is told similarly troubling information about his own great-great-grandparents. The four-part series—which Harvard professor and series host Henry Louis Gates Jr. refers to as "roots in a test tube"—is the sequel to a 2006 PBS series that mapped the genealogies of Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker, Quincy Jones and Whoopi Goldberg. Both series call into question the concept of race, and what it means to be black in America today. "It’s a complicated message to get across,” one of the series guests says in an interview with The New York Times. “We can find the geographic origins of our ancestors, but it doesn’t mean that race is a biological destiny.” >> "African American Lives 2" premieres tonight on PBS. Check local listings.

China's failed "green" village

Carrie Ching — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:06:06 -0800

China's exploding population, and the nation's race to urbanize in an effort to house it, is a hot topic in global debates about energy efficiency and pollution. The village of Huangbaiyu in rural northeast China was supposed to be a model for energy-conscious design. But the joint China-U.S. project to build 400 sustainable homes went awry. Timothy Lesle investigates in an audio slideshow for FRONTLINE/World.

Rebuilding Afghanistan

Jonathan Vanian — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:00:00 -0800

In the most perilous reaches of Afghanistan where Taliban bandits roam, reporter Gregory Warner explores how an international aid program is helping to restore and develop the most rural and dilapidated areas of the war-torn country. So why is the United States slashing the program’s funding? Warner’s article in the Washington Monthly describes how an internationally supported development initiative called the National Solidarity Program has helped Afghanistan rebuild and develop in a variety of ways, such as helping to construct a hydropower plant in the village of Dadi Khel. What the development initiative does is provide international funding to the Afghanistan government, which is responsible for managing the funds. Warner contrasts this approach to the United States Agency for International Development, which is providing the funds for a new highway project, but is being hampered because of insurgent threats. Warner describes a situation in which the U.S. is contributing a relatively small amount to the NSP:

Washington's failure to support the NSP is also emblematic of its top-down approach to Afghanistan's reconstruction in general. Since 2002, the United States has given just 6.3 percent of its aid money through the Afghan government. Meanwhile, most of the international community is moving in the opposite direction. At a January 2006 meeting in London, representatives from the United Nations, major donor nations, and the Afghan government met to develop a new framework for reconstruction, known as the Afghanistan Compact. One of the principles of the agreement was that donor nations would give more generously to accounts over which the Afghan government has discretion, such as the trust fund that covers about a third of the National Solidarity Program's budget. The next year, most major donors' annual pledges to this fund rose significantly: Canada's contribution jumped from $59 million in 2006 to $121 million in 2007; Germany's went from $20 million to $67 million. The contribution from the United Kingdom, already a firm supporter of the program, rose from $128 million to $131 million. However, the annual U.S. contribution to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund fell, going from $74 million in 2006 to $50 million in 2007. Even as the Bush administration has increased overall funding for Afghanistan this year, it has resisted efforts to relinquish more control of the budget to the Afghan people themselves.

Optimism in a time of chaos and change

CIR Staff — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:00:00 -0800

In the latest Nieman Reports, CIR's new executive director Robert Rosenthal writes about his own experiences in the newspaper business and the "new models" that journalists must embrace in order to survive and succeed:

What will new models look and be like? ... To use the term “news organization” does not begin to describe the potential opportunities I see ahead for these new ventures. “Publishing” partnerships will be formed and collaborations among news organizations—though these might look very different than we think of them today—will be crucial. Creating these organizations—using a new DNA—will be easier than the slow transition we are witnessing today with the “old model” organizations. Energy increases when we become engaged in building something new instead of feeling demoralized as institutions we once valued so highly are being destroyed by our own cannibalization.

>> Read "Optimism in a Time of Chaos and Change" in the Winter 2007 Nieman Reports.

Iraq: The War Card

Carrie Ching — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:26:41 -0800

Did the United States go to war under false pretenses? A new multimedia investigation by the Fund for Independence in Journalism and the Center for Public Integrity shows President Bush and seven of his top officials made at least 935 false statements in the two years following 9/11 about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The project, "Iraq: The War Card," shows this orchestrated campaign was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for going to war with Iraq. The project, housed on CPI's site, is an exhaustive and searchable database containing every public statement made by eight top Bush administration officials from September 11, 2001, to September 11, 2003, regarding (1) Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and (2) Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. A chart of the frequency of false statements by month shows:

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion. It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation.

Meet the Marlboro Marine

Carrie Ching — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:48:29 -0800

Journalists often become close to their sources. It's a relationship that is at once intimate and detached: professional boundaries are drawn, but shared experiences often blur the lines. When Los Angeles Times photojournalist Luis Sinco snapped a photograph of Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller during the Battle of Fallouja—covered in ash and war paint, propped up against a wall, smoking a cigarette— their lives became forever linked. The shot of Miller became an iconic image of the Iraq war: "The Marlboro Marine." Americans connected with the photograph so much that Miller was immediately sent home because, as his superior told him, "nobody wanted to see him wounded or dead." Sinco didn't expect to ever see Miller again. But a year and a half later, back in the U.S., Sinco learned that Miller was kicked out of the Marines for a violent episode because of PTSD. Sinco decided to pay him a visit. A moving video journal by Luis Sinco on MediaStorm, a multimedia journalism project sponsored by Washingtonpost.com, tells the story of Miller's struggle to heal his scars of war, and of Sinco's struggle to determine his role in the process—was he a journalist, helper, or friend?

You don't get more from less

Carrie Ching — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:58:33 -0800

Reporter Joe Eskenazi takes a look at the state of investigative journalism in a cost-cutting, downsizing industry. A three-part series of blogs on the SF Weekly's The Snitch:

While “getting more from less” is a favorite refrain in newsrooms—especially amidst cutbacks—it’s a patently ridiculous notion. You don’t get more from less. You get less from less. And that, in a nutshell is the future of investigative journalism: Less. We’ll have fewer reporters writing fewer stories on fewer subjects while authorized to spend less time and less money.

Today: A glance at the present and future of this fine mess we’re in. Tuesday: Know your "enemy": The Internet. Wednesday: So, who’s going to pay for all this?

Stories we missed in 2007

Carrie Ching — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:07:51 -0800

In a video interview for New America Media, award-winning investigative reporter A.C. Thompson reflects on the stories the news media is largely missing at a time of great turmoil in the industry.

McClatchy challenges Bush's claims of North Korean counterfeiting

Jonathan Vanian — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:10:59 -0800

McClatchy is challenging the Bush Administration’s claims—again. For the past ten months, reporter Kevin G. Hall has examined President Bush’s assertions that North Korea is responsible for printing counterfeit U.S. dollars. According to this McClatchy report, the Administration’s claims are based on unsubstantial evidence. In an investigation that crossed three continents, Hall found that many of the key sources pivotal in the Bush Administration’s claims that counterfeit money was being produced by North Korea, were in fact questionable and unreliable. For example, Hall writes that a major source used by the Administration has a shady past and posseses limited knowledge of American currency itself. In fact, the major source the Administration used to bolster its case against the regime did not know that Benjamin Franklin’s image was on the $100 bill.

CIR names "Rosey" as new executive director

CIR Staff — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:46:38 -0800

Robert J. Rosenthal, an award-winning journalist with nearly 40 years of experience, has been named Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Rosenthal has worked for some of the most respected newspapers in the country, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and, most recently, the San Francisco Chronicle. While Rosenthal was managing editor of the Chronicle, the paper received the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, the George Polk Award for its BALCO coverage of steroid use in baseball, and the White House Correspondents Association's Poe Award for national reporting, among many others. As a reporter, Rosenthal (known as "Rosey" to his colleagues) won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for magazine writing, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished foreign correspondence, the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Third World Reporting, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. "We conducted an extensive, nationwide search and Rosey delivered on all fronts--a great reporter, unquestioned integrity and strong management experience," said CIR Board President Tom Goldstein. "He's the perfect choice to lead CIR as it enters its fourth decade of hard-hitting, investigative reporting," he added. Rosenthal begins his new assignment on January 2, 2008. >> Read the full press release and download the PDF.

"The Enemy Within" nominated for WGA award

CIR Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:20:00 -0800

This morning the Writers Guild of America announced their award nominations for outstanding achievements in television and radio writing during the 2007 season. PBS Frontline secured five of the six nominations for documentary (current events), including "The Enemy Within," co-produced by CIR's Oriana Zill de Granados. The other Frontline episodes nominated were "News War" parts 1 and 3, "Return of the Taliban," and "Spying on the Home Front."

Doping up the elderly

Jonathan Vanian — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:46:36 -0800

There are plenty of things to look forward to when approaching old age: wisdom from life experience, frolicking grandchildren, senior discounts, and ... copious amounts of antipsychotic drugs? According to the Wall Street Journal’s Lucette Lagnado, as many as 30 percent of nursing-home residents in the U.S. are receiving antipsychotic medications, and in many cases, the drugs are used to treat patients who show signs of disruptive behavior related to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Lagnado’s piece addresses the root causes of what experts say is a harmful scenario in which seniors are being over-prescribed powerful medications at the risk of their health. The article describes how antipsychotic medications with heavy sedative effects have in some ways replaced methods deemed inappropriate for dealing with rowdy seniors, such as physical restraint. Lagnado reports that in many cases the use of antipsychotic drugs are creating more health risks for patients, as the drugs “can trigger strokes, induce body tremors, fuel weight gain and affect an elderly person's gait, increasing their chances of falling.” Lagnado’s report also shows that any implied dangers of the drugs have not offset company earnings. Indeed, sales of the drugs have skyrocketed over the past five years. Drugs like Seroquel and Risperdal have become pharmaceutical “blockbusters” taking in $11.7 billion in sales just last year. Lagnado also reports on the marketing campaigns behind the drugs, and the backlash by consumer advocates: Last month, the Arkansas attorney general filed suit against Johnson & Johnson for creating a “false and misleading campaign” to promote Risperdol to the elderly.

Civilian shootings in Chi-town

Jonathan Vanian — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:34:54 -0800

Here’s a hypothetical question based in reality: What happens if you accidentally get shot in the back by a cop in Chicago? The answer is, assuming you survive the initial blast, you may be charged by police and prosecutors and then ordered to serve in trial. That’s what an eight-month investigation by the Chicago Tribune found, including other details highlighting methods used by the Chicago Police Department to clear officers involved in civilian shootings. Reporters Sam Roe, David Heinzmann, and Steve Mills analyzed more than 200 Chicago Police Department shooting cases and found astonishing evidence of law enforcement officials who “have failed to properly police the police” when it comes to civilian shootings. It’s a truly detailed and informative piece that deserves to be read in its entirety, including this sidebar which details how the police department destroys evidence implicating any wrong doing. During their research the reporters found:

On average, a civilian is shot by a member of the Chicago Police Department once every 10 days.
In cases where full accounting and internal investigations of civilian police shootings occur, they are often a result of wrongful death lawsuits.
Off-duty shootings have been viewed as “administrative issues” by the Chicago Police Department and officers “rarely face serious punishment.”

AIDS in the Caribbean

Carrie Ching — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:50:17 -0800

The island of Hispaniola, shared by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, has the highest rates of HIV in the western hemisphere. A recent series by Antigone Barton of the Palm Beach Post, made possible through support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, shows how those combating the disease among certain high-risk groups—sex workers in the Dominican Republic and prison inmates in Port au Prince—are fighting an uphill battle because of U.S. restrictions on how AIDS funds can be used. The series is supplemented by an elegant and densely packed multimedia presentation with photo slideshows and videos that capture an intimate portrait of life on Hispaniola.

Filling the gap

Carrie Ching — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:17:03 -0700

Newspapers are downsizing. And investigative reporting is often the first to go. As The New York Times reported this week, a new journalistic venture called ProPublica is stepping up to fill the gap. ProPublica will be led by Paul Steiger, former top editor at The Wall Street Journal, and funded largely by Herbert and Marion Sandler, former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation in California. The New York Times reports:

The nonprofit group, called ProPublica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

The Center for Investigative Reporting has been working with this model for 30 years. And others, such as the Center for Public Integrity, have been practicing nonprofit journalism for more than a decade. While the independence of our groups shields us from many of the pressures—daily deadlines and the need to make a profit—that traditional media outlets face, there are inherent challenges as well. Investigative reporting is risky and news outlets are frequently uneasy about taking projects conducted by reporters outside of their own organizations. Concerns range from editorial credibility to the perception that funders exert undue influence on the reporting. ProPublica will face these challenges as well, but the difference is it will be a Goliath. With $10 million a year from the Sandlers and support from other heavy hitters, a staff of 24 reporters and editors, and a New York City headquarters, ProPublica promises to be the largest operation of its kind. An opinion piece by Jack Shafer in Slate has already raised the question of whether ProPublica's founders, the Sandlers, will influence the reporting with their political views: "What do the Sandlers want for their millions? Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press." But ProPublica's website states its journalism will be conducted in "an entirely non-partisan and non-ideological manner, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality." On Media Matters, Eric Alterman counters Shafer, saying there's no way Steiger would let ProPublica become "a MoveOn-style partisan news operation." As newsrooms across the country are decimated, new and innovative ideas are crucial to keeping the fourth estate vibrant in this country. There is great promise for independent outfits to help fill the gaps in existing news outlets and to develop new models for disseminating high-quality journalism in the public interest. Hopefully the creation of ProPublica, with its significant resources and high-profile leadership, will help lend credibility to non-profit, independent efforts such as our own.

Shocking investigation of school for disabled kids

Jonathan Vanian — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:32:35 -0700

Spare not the rod; nor the cattle prod. At the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, disciplining troubled students goes well beyond timeouts and calling one’s parents. Jennifer Gonnerman’s recent report for Mother Jones on the Massachusetts-based facility for developmentally and behaviorally challenged students documents horrific accounts of abuse that rival torture methods used on enemy combatants. Dr. Matthew Israel, the Harvard graduate with a Ph.D. in Psychology who founded the center, started out in 1971 with a small school at which he tested "a large repertoire of punishments: spraying kids in the face with water, shoving ammonia under their noses, pinching the soles of their feet, smacking them with a spatula, forcing them to wear a 'white-noise helmet' that assaulted them with static.” Later Israel moved on to electric shocks, which are disseminated by remote control via devices the children carry around in backpacks. The state of Massachussetts has twice tried to shut Israel's center down because of lawsuits. But both times parents rallied to keep it open. The Rotenberg Center is often the last resort for parents of severely mentally disabled and emotionally challenged children. They turn no one away. And with an annual tuition of $220,000 per student, they can afford such luxuries. What worries many critics is not only the severity of punishments applied at Rotenberg, but the "one punishment fits all" policy. The school boards both "low-functioning" children -- who are severely mentally disabled -- and those with more common disorders like OCD and ADD, considered "high functioning." Students are shocked for a wide range of "misbehaviors" ranging from extreme violence and self-abuse -- such as slamming one's head against the floor -- to minor infractions such as swearing and nagging. When CBS's Connie Chung investigated the center in 1993, she was eviscerated by the other networks after a carefully planned media counterattack by Israel himself. Jennifer Gonnerman's piece in Mother Jones received a similar, though quieter, backlash. One glance at the article's comment section on MotherJones.com is evidence enough that Gonnerman touch a nerve. And a lengthy response from Israel, posted on the Mother Jones site, on the center's own website, and published in The Patriot Ledger of South Boston shows that Israel isn't going down without a fight.

Redefining terrorism

Anna Isaacs — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:52:23 -0700

It seems there is yet another way to label someone a ‘terrorist.’ As Shane Harris explained in a recent National Journal article, a pre-9/11 law is being used to effect terrorist-grade jail sentences for criminals who are, by and by, of the more common ilk. Harris cites several examples of alleged criminals turned bona fide terrorists—or at least those whom prosecutors attempt to label as such. While the law purports to punish terrorism, it serves equally well as a "bargaining chip," holding stiffer sentences over defendants' heads as a way to pump them for what the government believes may be precious information. The so-called terrorism enhancement measure was enacted in 1995 as the country was just coming to terms with terror on the home front—the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Harris says the Justice Department has been reluctant to remark on how federal prosecutors determine when to seek the terrorism enhancement's application. It has been resurrected, he says, in cases in which the familiar connotation of terrorism is entirely absent: Even criminals "who didn’t commit a religiously motivated act of terrorism, or who consciously avoided human casualties," Harris writes, can fall victim to petty wordplay and the whims of individual judges. Without the aid of a jury, the judges are entitled to apply what critics say is a "government shortcut to label criminals as terrorists and to punish them in extraordinary ways." In some cases, Harris says, the only "proof" required is government reassurance of the so-called terrorist's intent, even if that intent never played out in an actual attack. The powerful enhancement measure is a scant 11 words long, making the space between a criminal and a terrorist, quite possibly, smaller than this sentence.

Stone on the sly

Anna Isaacs — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:05:34 -0700

When President Bush suddenly second-guessed himself regarding Justice Sam Alito's replacement on the 3rd Circuit, the rumors abounded. Bush originally nominated Noel Hillman (currently a federal district judge in Camden, New Jersey) for the spot, but then ditched him, with no official statement concerning the hasty change of heart. Hillman apparently had his Justice Department background to blame. His previous position as Chief of the Public Integrity Section, pundits charged, ran him the high risk of too-close-for-comfort questioning by prying Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And so it seems Bush has chosen another tack, dipping instead into the private practice sector of Jersey lawyers to find Shalom D. Stone, whose lack of any government employment makes his nomination as strategic as it is surprising, as he is relatively unknown. Indeed, he remains somewhat of a political enigma: Since he registered to vote in Union County, New Jersey in 1993, he has never declared a political affiliation. And unlike his heavily Democratic colleagues at the law firm Walder, Hayden, & Brogan, Stone has, at least since 1990, never made federal campaign contributions. Don’t fret—he just may have some opinions: proof of possible conservative leanings lies in his reported membership in the New Jersey Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, which could make Stone persona non grata to the Democratic majority. Such an affiliation with the conservative group may add to the ire of Senate Democrats as Bush nominated Stone on the sly; W. eschewed the political courtesy of consulting with Stone’s Democratic home-state senators before announcing his decision.

Off the beaten path

Jonathan Vanian — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0700

If a one’s home is one's castle, should off-road vehicles be allowed on the premises? According to Christopher Ketcham’s recent article in Mother Jones, an old federal law created during the Civil War era may be the answer to that question. Ketcham’s article focuses on Revised Statue 2477, a law passed in 1866 for the purpose of building the nation’s highway system during a historical period of Western expansion. Because of R.S. 2477, thousands of miles of highways were constructed. Although it seems as if this law was meant for a different era, Ketcham writes how R.S. 2477 is still wielding influence in the beltway’s decision making process in regards to public land. Ketcham writes:

In a sweeping new interpretation embraced by the Bush administration, counties across the West have argued that RS 2477 allows them to claim as "highways" thousands of paths, trails, and wagon tracks, even on private property and inside national parks and wilderness areas. If the counties succeed in establishing their reading of the statute as legal precedent, warns SUWA [Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance] executive director Scott Groene, it could "open the door to motorized use of nearly all of America's public lands."

Under this law, numerous automobile lobbying organizations, such as the Blue Ribbon Coalition, have used RS 2477 to disqualify lands designated as wilderness, and have even gone so far as to apply the law in cases where land is owned by private citizens. Ketcham explains how this happened in the case of Kane County, Utah ranchers Ron and Jana Smith, who came home one day and found that their property was broken into by Kane County officials without any notice. The county officials tore down the couple’s private property signs and scattered RS 2477 claims across their land. Their nightmarish ordeal is explained:

The Smiths tried to reason with Kane County. They asked for a map of the RS 2477 roads the county had identified on their land, and for proof that the roads were covered by the statute. Their requests were ignored, they say, and the sheriff called to warn them that the fences they'd put back up across the alleged roads would be cut down. Jeepers ran right over the fences in any case, and Ron spent a lot of time chasing off trespassers who had been told by Kane County that the trails were open and legal. In the end, the Smiths sued the county, forcing officials to identify "highways" that, according to Jana, "began nowhere, went nowhere, ended nowhere, provided access to nothing." In court the couple presented the county attorney with the limited access deed they had received when they purchased the property (and had shown the county years before), which clearly stipulated that the land was immune from RS 2477 claims. Within 30 minutes the county attorney dropped the matter, but it took another year to get the three-man county commission to vote to abandon the claim on the couple's property.

The death toll of a border town

Jonathan Vanian — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:00:00 -0700

Brooks County in Texas is undergoing a rapid and tragic change. Mary Jo McConahay’s recent investigative piece in The Texas Observer shows how immigration politics have been transforming this Texas county, located 70 miles from the border with Mexico, into a migrant necropolis. More and more immigrants have been dying as they pass through the secluded and perilous trails that make up the border crossings in the county. McConahay concludes: “As increased U.S. border security closes certain routes, undocumented migrants continue to come but squeeze onto fewer, more dangerous and isolated pathways to America’s interior.” And as the dead keep pilling up in Brooks county, the county’s already meager budget becomes further drained due to spending on autopsies and burials for undocumented immigrants. Additionally, in Falfurries, the county seat, the section dedicated for unidentified dead in the local cemetery is running out of room. When reading about policy debates in Washington D.C., it’s easy to forget that what politicians are arguing about actually has some significance other than partisan politics. McConahay's reporting brings the immigration debate back down to earth. As in this beautiful, yet horrifying, description of the border county:

Pictures of the dead are kept discreetly in certain places in this town, a collective album that tells an important part of what Brooks County—which used to be better known for oil, watermelon, and a Halliburton facility—has become in the last couple of years: a grave for the weak or unlucky. The local Minuteman-type militia, for instance, has a collection of matted 11x14’s. Some are artful: a skull amid crawling vines, a kind of meditation; a young man’s figure with legs softly bent, his head thrown back against a bush with the arc of a ballet dancer’s neck—only an accompanying close-up of the winsome face, mouth open and vacant eyes, speaks death. Some remains are partially clothed. There is a condition that comes with too much sun: judgment wanes, and the affected person mistakenly believes stripping will assuage the heat inside. Many fallen dead from dehydration are found with jugs of water lying nearby; the inexperienced trekker—especially when lost-—will save water instead of sipping it periodically, until a line is crossed in the brain and the person no longer feels thirst even as he is expiring from it. Among the pictures are corpses bloated so grievously they look ready to pop. The body of one young woman is not badly swollen, lying with face and torso intact, but her legs have been gnawed down to the long bones by a feral pig.

McClatchy probes voting fraud

Jonathan Vanian — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:00:00 -0700

It's hard to criticize the state of the media when the McClatchy D.C. bureau continues to churn out in-depth reporting on a daily schedule. This time the D.C. Bureau hammers out an investigative piece on Patrick Rogers, a lawyer based in Albuquerque who was involved with the firing of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico. Reporter Greg Gordan, who, along with other McClatchy reporters including Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor, has been writing quality pieces on the scandal for quite some time, has learned that Rogers demanded Iglesias prosecute voting fraud cases, even in instances, "where little evidence existed." It also doesn't help that Rogers "was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pushing for tougher voter identification laws." Rogers was a member of the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund , the lobbying arm of the recently disbanded American Center for Voting Rights. McClatchy reports that the ACVR, along with the Republican National Lawyers Association, "sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic." Indeed, Gordan reports that Rogers has "appeared at separate hearings before the House Administration Committee last year in Ohio and New Mexico," where he and a key member of the RNLA discussed reasons for stronger voting fraud laws. Gordan's report found that the ACVR and the RNLA were actively involved with helping the GOP maintain control of Congress in the 2006 election in various ways:

Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and the Lawyers Association were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.

The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.

Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.

While numerous media outlets have reported on how the issue of voting fraud has been used as political motivation for the firings of U.S. Attorneys, even though there has been hardly any evidence that proves voting fraud should be a major concern, McClatchy continues to pile on the evidence that politics lies at the heart of the U.S. Attorney scandal.

Meet the man behind the curtain

Emma Brown — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:00:00 -0700

In public, Dick Cheney wears a grimace. In private, Americans have never been quite sure what Cheney does--until now. From June 24-June 27, the Washington Post ran a four-part series on Cheney’s vice presidency that, in the words of Post columnist David Broder, “reveals more about the inner workings of this White House than any previous reporting.” “Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before,” write reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker in the series’ first installment. To back that claim, they spent a year working on the series and conducted over two hundred interviews with people who work with, for, or in the orbit of Cheney. The result is a high-resolution picture of how the vice president, armed with an intimate knowledge of the federal bureaucracy and connections accumulated during his forty-year career in Washington, exercises unprecedented and unseen influence on policies ranging from air pollution and water allocations to war and torture.

Before you rent that U-Haul ...

Will Evans — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Catch the last installment of the Los Angeles Times’ three-part series on U-Haul today, and be forewarned: you may never look at those orange-and-white trucks and trailers the same way again. "Danger in Tow," by Alan C. Miller and Myron Levin, details a numbing litany of grizzly smashups and settled lawsuits to show that the company’s own policies have increased the risk of accidents. (The series ran Sunday, Monday and today.) U-Haul’s responses to the Times didn’t always help. Some highlights: * The company’s fleet includes small trailers without brakes, in conflict with the laws of 14 states, according to the paper. U-Haul’s chairman, Edward J. “Joe” Shoen, compared the state codes that mandate brakes with an old North Carolina law banning unmarried couples from cohabitating. * U-Haul almost always blames accidents on the customer, but doesn’t always provide safety guides, the paper says. And there are no guides in Spanish. U-Haul’s Shoen says a guide en español is “a nice idea,” but “we don’t have a big demand for it.” * One man, Art McCain, narrowly averted an accident only to find his unsteady U-Haul truck had missing lug nuts and inside rear tires so small they allegedly didn’t touch the ground. “Asked for comment, U-Haul said the truck was checked and found safe before McCain drove it. The company said it could not explain what happened.” Perhaps the most colorful gem, however, comes near the end of the series’ final segment. To learn about the “internal document known as the ‘dumb shit’ memo,” you’ll have to read it yourself.

Pao, drugs, and the CIA

Jonathan Vanian — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:00:00 -0700

When a prominent Laotian exile, Vang Pao, was arrested this month in Orange County and accused, with nine others, of plotting a coup to overthrow the communist government of Laos, some of us paused over our morning coffee, then shrugged and flipped to the comics. But this bit of news sent shockwaves through the refugee Hmong community. Why? Pao is a revered war hero to many Hmong refugees for his role in the "Secret War" -- a covert operation during the Vietnam War in which the CIA enlisted Hmong in Laos to fight communists and attack Vietnamese supply lines. Pao's link to the CIA is briefly mentioned in news reports about his recent arrest. What isn't mentioned is the way he allegedly used his CIA connections to sell vast amounts of opium and jumpstart Southeast Asia's underground heroin trade. It seems only the OC Weekly picked up on that angle. A fascinating 1988 investigative report by FRONTLINE shows just how messy the situation between the CIA and Pao really was. According to FRONTLINE, while the CIA was using Pao to lead a guerrilla army against Communist forces, Pao "used the CIA airline, Air America, to send narcotics to a CIA-run base in Laos and on to other distribution points in Asia; opium was a primary source of funding for the Laotian army." And of course, there were serious consequences to Pao's actions. In the FRONTLINE report, CIA member Victor Marchetti says in an interview: "I doubt that they had any strong deep understanding of what they were allowing to happen by turning their head the other way and letting Vang Pao ship his dope out which was made into heroin, which was going to our troops, which was corrupting people throughout Southeast Asia and back here, the effect it had on crime, I doubt that any one of them really thought in those terms at the time." Another highlight from this investigation includes a snippet from a 1972 secret field report which describes the hypocrisy of the CIA involvement in drug monitoring during the Vietnam era: "It was ironic that the CIA should be given the responsibility of narcotics intelligence, particularly since they were supporting the prime movers. Even though the CIA was, in fact, facilitating the movement of opiates to the U.S., they steadfastly hid behind the shield of secrecy and said that all was done in the interest of national security." Given that Pao and the others' arrests are so serious -- the charges include conspiring to gather "scores of AK-47 assault rifles, ground-to-air Stinger missiles, anti-tank weapons, mines, rockets, explosives and smoke grenades with which to oust the Laotian communist regime" -- it's only fair to take a look back in time and see how Pao originally got to the position that allowed him to be involved with such an endeavor in the first place. P.S. Oh yeah, and Pao might have an elementary school named after him.

Far-away field trips

Jacob Schneider — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:18:13 -0700

Public school teaching may not be the most lucrative profession in the United States, but at one suburban Missouri school district, it comes with some attractive perks. Teachers, principals, and school board members in the Riverview Gardens school district have racked up nearly $2 million in travel expenses on junkets to exotic locales such as San Francisco and Cape Town, South Africa over the last four years, an investigative report by David Hunn and Jaimi Dowdell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed this month. Expenses billed to the school district included room service meals, pedicures, and trips to art galleries, as well as travel and hotel costs for hundreds of trips—all in a school district with shrinking finances and allegations of corruption on the part of a former superintendent. But state auditors failed to spot the exorbitant travel expenses because many were mislabeled in the district’s bookkeeping. When Hunn and Dowdell went through the records line by line, they found that Riverview’s expenses totaled twice what one education expert would have expected from a district of its size. Since the former superintendent was sacked in March, leaving the district’s finances in shambles, such spending has been put on hold. But when confronted by Hunn and Dowdell, many Riverview leaders offered no apologies for their past profligacy. "The president of the United States travels all over and nobody says anything of it," school board member Marlene Terry told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Terry was linked to 23 trips since January 2003.

Sudan—the world is watching

Jacob Schneider — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

How do you document destruction in a particular region when the government and its militia forces have restricted access to tourists, journalists, and even humanitarian organizations? Go over their heads—literally. Robin Mejia, a former CIR correspondent, writes in the Washington Post magazine about a unique project that uses satellites with high resolution cameras to capture images of razed and burned villages in Africa and Asia. The project is a collaboration between Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The process has been most useful in tracking violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, where the satellite photos show a marked contrast between the distinctive round huts that make up traditional Sudanese villages and the black swaths of burned land that today cut across Darfur. As Mejia reports, the activists hope that the revealing photos will bolster pending claims of destruction in the International Criminal Court which Sudan has ignored in the past, citing a lack of evidence. They also hope that the images will send a message to the Sudanese government that the international community is watching—the project is currently building an archive of current pictures of existing villages that are believed to be threatened. Amnesty believes that it can use the same methodology in other regions with civil strife, but each situation presents its own unique challenges. Take Burma, for example, where the activists hope that the images will prove that the government has targeted villages of the Karen, an ethnic minority that lives in the jungle. There, the project faces an obstacle that not even satellites can penetrate: the cloud cover of the impending monsoon season.

Digging up dirt, literally

Emma Brown — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Journalist Michael Gartland incited the wrath of concerned parents in Paramus, NJ, when he reported in late May in the Bergen Record that soil at a local middle school was contaminated with pesticides at levels 39 times greater than the state's safety guidelines. What's more, school district officials had known about the pesticides since January, but failed to inform the public -- and failed to fix the problem. As a result of Gartland's work, the state and city re-tested the school’s soil and found pesticide amounts exceeding 160 times the safe level. Superintendent Janice Dime is enjoying an indefinite period of leave, the contractor responsible for removing the contaminated soil has been fired, and authorities have promised to clean up West Brook Middle School. Paramus authorities aren't exactly thanking Gartland for his public service, however. The reporter was arrested for trespassing on June 2, when he removed soil from the school’s grounds for independent testing, and police confiscated the soil samples. Gartland, who faces arraignment on June 27, contends that such newsgathering is protected under the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.

False citizenship and tasers make headlines at IRE awards

Jacob Schneider — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Last week, the members of Investigative Reporters and Editors gathered in Phoenix to give their annual awards for the most incisive examples of investigative reporting in 2006. Here are some of the highlights: A multi-million-dollar scheme promised illegal immigrants a way to enter and stay in the United States legally -- by selling them fake papers to become an American Indian. Miami's WTVJ uncovered the man at the center of a scheme that swindled hundreds of South Florida immigrants out of thousands of dollars in "Citizenship for Sale." In the series, Jeff Burnside travels from Mexico City to North Dakota to expose the fallacy of the operation and its founder, a convicted felon who claims he was divinely inspired. A group of graduate students from the University of North Texas teamed up with professional reporters at the Fort Worth Weekly to compile "A Stunning Toll," a record of fatal and dangerous misuses of taser guns by Texas law enforcement. "Secret Political Piggy Bank," a series in the Albany Times Union, won the FOIA award for using public records, which the paper had to sue for, to reveal corrupt spending practices by members of the New York State Legislature, including the state senate's majority leader.