An update on American watchdog reporting

SHOWCASE | January 27, 2006

The investigative reporting cup overflows with stories of faulty dam inspections, questionable Congressional behavior, crime stats, and mine safety.

By Alex Kingsbury
akingsbury@niemanwatchdog.org

Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) regularly directs their readers toward exceptional work by watchdog reporters in an online feature called Extra!Extra! Here's a digest of some of the most compelling investigative journalism as highlighted by IRE.

Dam inspection reports faked

Readers living down river of New York state dams took notice of an investigation by the Times Herald-Record, which found that "inspection reports designed to prevent catastrophic failings at two New York City-owned dams in the Catskills were repeatedly fabricated, even as water officials publicly proclaimed the structures' safety."

Reporters Greg Bruno and Jessica Gardner write that "since September 2002, about 70 percent of the city's weekly inspections for the Neversink Dam in Sullivan County and the Merriman Dam on the Rondout Reservoir in Ulster County have been photocopies of previous reports."

Moreover, their story says, "Not only are the inspector's observations unchanged from week to week - citing evidence like cracks, seepage and other structural woes - but the handwriting on each questionable form is identical. In most cases, the only information unique to each survey - completed by inspector Ronald Hewlett and initialed by section engineer Russell Betters - is variable data like date, time and reservoir elevation."

Journalists looking to investigate their local dams can begin at the National Inventory of Dams database.

Fixing broken windows

New York's remarkable computer-aided crime reduction program that changed the very nature of police work may not be quite as remarkable as first imagined. An investigation by the Village Voice found that "the number of lost-property reports filed with police jumped by 44 percent from 1997 to 2004…. Nearly half of that increase occurred in the last two years of that period. And 2005 was on pace, as of November 1, to beat out the previous year."

What can explain the drop, asks Voice reporter Paul Moses: "The most obvious suspect in the lineup: Police are taking complaints that once would have been treated as grand larceny or another property crime and reporting them as "lost property."

And why does it matter to the average reader? "Grand larceny is one of the closely watched seven major "index" crimes monitored in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, the basis for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's claim that New York is the nation's safest large city. It makes up nearly 60 percent of the reported index offenses, so police commanders know that if they are going to get their numbers down, they have to report fewer thefts."

Mine saftey and rescue system needs major reforms

In the wake of the Sago mine disaster, an investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail found "the nation's miners face a mounting risk because of a rescue system that is growing ever short on personnel and is in major need of reforms."

Reporter Ken Ward, Jr., writes that "across the country, the number of mine rescue teams available to respond to coal industry emergencies is slowly but surely dwindling. Over the past 30 years, the number of teams taking part in the once-popular national mine safety contest has dropped by nearly 70 percent, according to U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration records."

Ward's reporting showed that "from 2000 to 2002 alone, the number of MSHA-approved safety teams nationwide dropped by 10 percent. By law, every coal mine in the United States must have at least two mine rescue crews. As of 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, there was actually just one rescue team for every four underground coal mines nationwide, according to a computer-assisted analysis of the MSHA data."

Congressmen said to stifle investigation

Richard A. Serrano and Stephen Brau, staff writers for the Los Angeles Times, investigating Congressmen John Doolittle and Richard Pombo, found that the two "joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion."

That investigation was ultimately dropped.

Their story revealed that the Congressmen "inserted many of the sensitive documents into the Congressional Record, making them public and accessible to Hurwitz's lawyers, a move that FDIC officials said damaged the government's ability to pursue the banker. The FDIC's chief spokesman characterized what Doolittle and Pombo did as 'a seamy abuse of the legislative process.'"

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