December 17th, 2003 | by Derek Willis | published in Online
The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism spent three months exploring conditions along the eastern border of Romania, which soon will become the far reaches of an enlarged European Union. Reporters found widespread poverty, poaching and smuggling in the region, including a large black market for cigarettes. Stefan Candea, Sorin Ozon and Roman Olearciuc contributed reporting [...]
September 25th, 2003 | by Derek Willis | published in DIY, Miscellany, Online
I’m happy to unveil what it is that’s been keeping me so busy the last few weeks – a report from the Center for Public Integrity on the political activity of Section 527 committees. Aron Pilhofer and I were lead writers on the project and also did the data analysis for it. We were ably [...]
June 26th, 2003 | by Derek Willis | published in DIY, Online
The Center for Public Integrity published an investigation of local prosecutors in each of the nation’s 2,341 jurisdictions.?The project shows which prosecutors’ offices, and which specific lawyers within those offices, have bent or broken the rules to win convictions in every type of criminal case. Brooke Williams, Neil Gordon and Steve Weinberg reviewed more than [...]
June 18th, 2003 | by Derek Willis | published in Online, Paper Trail
My colleague Bob Williams at the Center for Public Integrity has a report on the Telecommunications Development Fund, a private venture capital fund created by the federal government and overseen by Federal Communication Commission Chairman Michael Powell. Although it has claimed to be independent from the government, TDF “gets its money from interest on deposits [...]
May 22nd, 2003 | by Derek Willis | published in Fed Data, FOIA, Online
The Center for Public Integrity (employer of your host) today released a study on the telecommunications industry. The most prominent feature is a “first-of-its-kind, 65,000 record, searchable database containing ownership information on virtually every radio station, television station, cable television system and telephone company in America” that aims to show ownership patterns. John Dunbar, Bob [...]