IRE Radio

Federal regulators counted 99 cases of advanced black lung over a five-year period in the U.S. So why is it that hundreds of miners with the most serious stage of the disease are walking into clinics across Appalachia? That’s the question NPR’s Howard Berkes set out to answer last year. Howard ultimately found that the number of advanced black lung cases was at least 10 times the number generated...

If there's one word to describe Craig Harris and Dennis Wagner's Arizona Republic investigation, it’s diligence. They spent 18 months untangling a complex web of issues feeding the Navajo Nation's housing crisis, all while turning other stories. Their investigation put the Navajo Housing Authority and HUD under a microscope for consistently failing to provide the homes and renovations needed by th...

Thomas Hargrove spent decades reporting for the Scripps Howard News Service — until he was abruptly laid off in 2015. Then things got interesting: Court battles, destroyed records, and an algorithm that just might be able to spot serial killers. EPISODE NOTES: bit.ly/2q5nxSj

How do you cover a topic as complicated and divisive as immigration? On this episode, Jay Root and Todd Wiseman take us through the Texas Tribune’s approach. Their “Bordering on Insecurity” project went beyond border walls and sanctuary cities to explain the deeper issues at play in the immigration debate. The reporters talked their way onto a crime scene in El Salvador, calculated how many people...

If there’s a sweet spot in investigative journalism, Brian Rosenthal found it. His investigation into special education in Texas schools managed to pull back the curtain on a policy that was felt by thousands of students, teachers and parents – and was understood by none. Brian’s reporting for the Houston Chronicle revealed that state officials were arbitrarily blocking hundreds of thousands of ch...

What happens when you investigate the leader of your own country? There’s perhaps never been a more relevant time to ask that question. On this episode, we’ll hear from two journalists who went up against some of the most powerful people and institutions in their own backyards. Rita Vásquez of Panama’s La Prensa and Vlad Lavrov, a staff writer for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, discuss how they contrib...

Soaring heroin and opioid addiction rates have left journalists across the country looking for new ways to cover the crisis and make the statistics stick. On this episode, we talk to reporters at two papers who found innovative ways to humanize America’s heroin epidemic. Stephen Stirling of NJ Advance Media takes us on a tour of “Herointown,” the state’s fourth largest city. Then Pat Beall and Mik...

It’s been 50 years since the federal Freedom of Information Act was signed into law. A lot’s happened since then – not all of it good for the press. We’re calling this bonus episode "The State of the FOIA" because, over the next 30 minutes, we’ll be talking to three experts to figure out what our open records law looks like today and where we go from here. Media law scholar Jonathan Peters will pr...

One of the biggest scoops this election cycle came from Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold. His relentless shoe-leather reporting – and list making – revealed that Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the philanthropist he was claiming to be on the campaign trail. Instead of donating his own money to charity, Trump would give away or spend dollars donated to his foundation by other people. On this...

If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re affected by the topic of our show today. The phone, computer or tablet you’re using to play this episode is likely powered by a lithium-ion battery. And one of the main ingredients in those batteries is cobalt. Much of our cobalt comes from the Congo, where miners often dig by hand in unsafe conditions to find and sell the valuable mineral. On this episo...

How many people in the U.S. die of antibiotic-resistant infections? It seems like a simple question. But when a team of journalists from Reuters set out to gather the numbers, they realized that the answer would be anything but straightforward. They found out no one was properly keeping track of how many people die from these “superbugs” every year. On this episode, Deborah Nelson, Ryan McNeill an...

If you’ve ever been stopped by police, it’s likely an officer filled out something called a field contact report. Officials say the documents can be useful crime-solving tools, but they also have an unintended side effect: police now have massive digital databases tracking law-abiding citizens. On this episode, Glenn Smith and Andrew Knapp of The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, dis...

Brandon Stahl has spent years reporting on foster care for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But at a meeting with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he stumbled across a fact he’d never heard before: Minnesota places a higher share of American Indian kids into foster care than any other state. A year-long investigation with data journalist MaryJo Webster left them with a series of articles, some heartbrea...

What happens when a state cuts $100 million from its mental health budget? Reporters from the Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune spent 18 months finding out. Their Pulitzer-winning investigation exposed deadly violence in Florida's mental hospitals, where staff shortages, regulatory fumbling and years of neglect were, for years, hidden from the public eye. In today's episode, we hear from...

A team of journalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered a nationwide phenomenon of sexual abuse in the medical community. Thousands of doctors, many still practicing, had a lurid history of sexual misconduct, their crimes hidden from the public. On this episode, we’re talking to reporter Carrie Teegardin and illustrator Richard Watkins about how they found victims of abuse all over the...

Prisons have long posed a challenge for investigative journalists. And when you’re trying to report on a private prison – one owned by a company, not the government – the situation becomes even more challenging. On this episode, we’re talking to three reporters who managed to pull back the curtain on the for-profit prison system. Shane Bauer describes his risky decision to go undercover as a priso...

No parent wants to put their child in danger. But when parents in some states enroll their children in religious day cares, that’s exactly what happens. On this episode, Reveal reporter Amy Julia Harris discusses what she found when she began investigating the exemptions granted to faith-based day cares. In a handful of states, religious day cares are free from government regulation, a fact some p...

You’ve probably heard of Jason Leopold, even if his name doesn’t immediately ring a bell. He’s the journalist who forced the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails. He’s also unearthed shocking details on CIA torture and spying. Jason works at VICE News, and he's the master of the federal FOIA request. In fact, he’s such a prolific requester that a government employee once called him a “FOIA terroris...

No es un secreto en México, ni en Colombia, que la gente desaparece, muchas veces por los carteles y sin razón clara. Daniela Guazo y su equipo de datos de El Universal trabajo con El Tiempo de Colombia para darle una cara humana a la grave situación de los desaparecidos en ambos países. NOTAS DEL EPISODIO: bit.ly/1QWqr0a

It’s no secret to Mexicans or Colombians that people are disappeared, all the time, often at the hands of cartels and with seemingly no reason. We talked with Daniela Guazo from Mexico’s El Universal about the work she and her team did along with Colombia’s El Tiempo to give a human face to an issue that has affected nearly 100,000 families. EPISODE NOTES: bit.ly/1YhMrsp

For nearly 15 years, a journalism professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has been investigating the case of the Fairbanks Four, a group of men convicted in the 1997 beating death of a teenager. And he hasn’t been working alone. Each year, students in Brian O’Donoghue’s investigative reporting class picked up the case. Their work had a huge impact: In December 2015, the Fairbanks Four were...

Approximately 2,700 women are serving time at Lowell Correctional Institution, the nation’s largest women’s prison. On this episode, Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown discusses her year-long investigation into Lowell. Documents, interviews and a Facebook page for former inmates helped her expose a world of sexual extortion, abuse and corruption inside the Florida prison. EPISODE NOTES: bit.ly/1XcW...

There are certain pieces of advice you hear over and over again at our annual computer-assisted reporting conference: Get out there, take risks and experiment. So at our recent conference in Denver, we sent University of Missouri journalism student Jack Howard to do just that. On this bonus episode, you’ll hear his five-minute experiment: capturing the NICAR experience and turning it into audible...

Chicago drivers have forked over more than $600 million for traffic fines captured by red light cameras. But an investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that the largest robotic camera system in the country hasn’t done much to make the streets safer. Instead, city officials have used Chicago drivers like a network of cash machines. Reporter David Kidwell takes us behind the story. EPISODE NOTES:...

All across America, you can find foreign guest workers peeling crawfish, setting up carnival rides and trimming trees. But the visa program that legally brings them here is rife with problems. On this episode, Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison take us through their BuzzFeed News investigation into H-2 visas, a program that condemns thousands of workers to abuse and exploitation.