Investigative Units Garner
Top Peabody Honors

VOLUME XXVIII, NUMBER 16 APRIL 21, 2008

Prestigious Peabody Awards went to stations where managers committed to expanded projects and investigative reporters persisted in the face of official opposition --- until they got their stories.
Here are the details of two of the winning investigations.

Two reporters, four stories, one big award

The judges awarded a Peabody to the investigative unit of WFAA-TV, Dallas, for the overall quality of its work.
The station won for four separate stories submitted by investigative reporters Brett Shipp and Byron Harris.

The Peabodys do not recognize categories, nor are there a set number of awards given each year.
Although the WFAA entries were submitted separately, Executive News Director Michael Valentine says it was the caliber of the work by the unit as a whole that made it a winner.
"It is probably hard to differentiate which story had a greater impact or which was a better story. In their best judgment, all four reports were of Peabody quality, which is great," he says.

Station executives have maintained a commitment to in-depth investigative reporting, allowing the unit to work stories until they are ready to bring to air.

Valentine doesn't hold big investigations for a book.
"When the story is ready, we put it on the air," he says.

Offering viewers a consistent news service --- in a book and out --- is key to their success.
"When you are building a news department, you don't look at the individual nights. You look at whether you are consistently providing a quality product over time," he says.
"In that consistent production of quality, there are some really shining moments. All of these stories provided shining moments in what has become a consistent product," he says.

Ask "Why?"

One successful technique is to focus on the reason that something important has happened.
"What makes Brett and Byron strong reporters is a natural inquisitiveness. They ask questions. That's what we base our newsroom on, and it is the foundation for what we have built here. I try to hire inquisitive people and support inquisitive people. I want us to ask questions, and to find out why," says Valentine.

For example, when a couple died in a gas explosion, the news manager told Shipp to find out why they died --- and to stay with it until he had the answer.
It took the reporter nearly a year to bring the story to air. In the end, it was an important warning to viewers that dangerous gas couplings are buried under homes all over the state. And, the gas utility and state regulators knew of the danger, but did nothing about it.
The series of reports on the gas coupling hazards was one of the entries that garnered the award.

Four strong pieces were all winners

When the two reporters submitted their entries, they thought they would be competing against each other. They were somewhat surprised to hear that the whole unit won for its diverse probes.
"In this case, the Peabody judges decided the work was so meritorious that they would lump four of our pieces into one award," says Shipp.

Harris' submissions included:

Snaring sex offenders for TV.
This examined the relationship between the police, NBC-TV, and a group that says it is working to catch child predators. Perverted Justice creates stings to attract offenders. NBC News cameras are rolling when the eager predators arrive.
The investigation looked at the case of the Dallas attorney who committed suicide after he was exposed. Harris questioned whether the lines between entertainment and journalism are blurred in this kind of partnership.

Big loans to Mexican companies.
This was an investigation of the little known Import-Export Bank and its dubious loan practices. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been given away to Mexican companies for what Harris says were obviously bogus loans.
"When we looked at the documents for the bad loans, we could tell they were fraudulent. If we could tell, why couldn't a bank that has a $50 billion loan portfolio not tell?" Harris asks.
The bank was set up by Roosevelt during the Depression to help American companies export goods overseas.

Shipp's stories included:

Gas coupling dangers.
Hundreds of thousands of unsafe gas couplings run under homes in Texas and sometimes pull apart and explode.
Shipp documented the danger and the fact both the utilities and regulators knew of the danger, but did not act until it was exposed on TV.

Immigrant women and children in prison.
This exposed the conditions in a Home-land Security Prison that holds immigrant families. Kinder Prison looked at the conditions that women and children lived in for months --- small rooms that used to be cells and little area for kids to play.

Gas leak danger remains significant

Shipp says the gas coupling investigation is one that many stations' reporters should look into in their areas.
"Any time there is a natural gas explosion and a house goes up, it may be due to some sort of faulty coupling that should have been pulled from the ground decades ago," says Shipp.

The yearlong investigation yielded stories that resulted in an emergency order requiring gas utilities in Texas to replace the older compression-style couplings.
The story began with a Texas couple who burned to death when gas leaked out of a compression coupling under their home and exploded. Shipp uncovered "a mountain of evidence" that the gas company and the utility commission should have known of the dangers posed by the couplings. The couplings have only a rubber seal to hold the gas pipe in place, and Shipp says they have a tendency to pull apart.

Shipp ran about 10 stories on the couplings as new angles emerged during his investigation.
"My approach is that once I get on to a systemic issue that I know affects people's lives, I have an obligation and a duty to follow it through. I can't do one or two stories and then move onto something else," he says.
"Journalism is all about making a change, and you can't make the change until you beat people over the head with the facts. It's like a detective. You keep gathering the facts, because it takes so much to go to trial," he says.

Basically, the blame was put at the feet of the state commission that regulates the utilities.
Shipp says state regulators have been allowing the danger to exist for years, and allowing people to die.
"They never really did anything to remedy the situation, and the gas companies' own records showed they knew they had problems with the couplings, but they refused to do anything about it," he says. "Because we humiliated them in this series of stories, they had to order these things removed," he adds.

A subsequent investigation that aired this month looked at rubber gaskets used in another brand of coupling. Shipp found those couplings can fail, too, and have resulted in explosions and loss of life.
"These things are all over the country, but they are flawed, and some gas companies have started pulling them out of the ground," Shipp says.
However, other utilities have basically made a conscious decision to leave the couplings in the ground --- but the question he asks is, "At what price?"

Journalism and entertainment: An unethical alliance?

Another story with national implication's was Byron Harris' look at what he called "TV Justice" --- the relationship between law enforcement and journalism in reality TV.
He focused on the sting operation "To Catch a Predator," which is run by NBC's Dateline and Perverted Justice.
When the show went to Dallas it caught plenty of men who showed up at the sting location supposedly expecting to have sex with a minor. One man exposed was a prosecutor who later committed suicide.

"After they came to Dallas, several months passed, and we wondered what happened to those cases," Harris explains.
"We filed some open records requests, and we found they had not charged them, and only a few of the cases were good. As we got further into it, we realized that none of them would ever be charged," says Harris.

When the investigators watched the NBC program, the first thing they realized was that the detectives were wearing cameras.
"If the cops are wearing TV cameras, how can it be an impartial investigation? Who is whom here? Are the journalists the police and the police the journalists?" Harris asks. Harris found that some law enforcement officers were very concerned about this kind of relationship, believing that the local police department was being used by the TV show to produce salacious television.
"To me, this is an absolutely huge issue. This is a nationwide story," Harris stresses.
"It addresses what journalism is about, what television has become, and raises many important societal questions," he says.
Harris' investigation revealed problems with entrapment, police cooperation with the TV crew in scouting locations of possible Internet sex predators, and the fact that few of the prosecutions resulted in convictions. The story won a duPont award at the end of last year for this very reason.
"We weren't defending pedophiles in any way. We were asking what the role of television is," he adds.

All of WFAA's winning investigations involved "old fashioned, gum shoe reporting." It took many months to get the documents they needed.
"Don't give up," Harris urges.
"That is the enduring phrase for what we do. You must keep poking away at it and not put it in the grave. Both of my stories could have been in the grave many times," he says.

"You can't give up. You have to keep going," he stresses.

Long fight for public records access pays off

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable expenses by a state agency were exposed by WTAE-TV, Pittsburgh.
Instead of the money going to the needy families of college students, it was spent on trips to posh resorts and on bonuses for employees and board members --- many of whom are state legislators.

The Peabody judges cited the station's "relentless legal campaign to obtain public records of a state-run student loan program that netted evidence of financial misconduct and pushed the state to rewrite an antiquated right-to-know law."
The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) is responsible for overseeing the awarding and distribution of financial aid to the state's college students.
The station spent nearly two years fighting to obtain financial records that should have been open to start with.
"They put up a fight over releasing the records, and it was such a fight that we felt they protested too much," says News Director Bob Longo.

The Associated Press and Harrisburg Patriot-News also submitted requests for records a short time after WTAE did. The three news organizations joined forces to share legal expenses.
"We felt all along that it was a good story," says Longo.
Western Pennsylvania is primarily a blue collar, working class area, and abuses of tax dollars on the scale of the PHEAA abuses outraged viewers.

Following a hunch paid off

Investigative reporter Jim Parsons was looking into the use of state planes and he obtained copies of flight logs. He noticed the planes were often flying in and out of expensive resorts and that some of the trips were for PHEAA members.

He wondered why they were spending so much money on the trips.
"I submitted a request for public records under the state's Right to Know Act, and I asked for two years worth of expense vouchers," says Parsons.

It took nearly two years to get the answer.
"Instead of dealing with our requests for records, as is prescribed under the law, they filed suit in court in hopes of having the court say that they didn't have to release the records," says Parsons.
The PHEAA officials claimed that they were exempt from turning over the records because they were protecting "trade secrets."
"They were told repeatedly by every court we went in front of that these were public records and they had to give them up," he says. But the agency kept appealing, and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Blatant waste revealed

When the records were finally turned over, it became clear why the PHEAA leaders fought so hard to keep them secret.
"They spent $400,000 in public funds in court trying to prevent us from seeing it. Once the records were opened, it was very evident why they were fighting," he says.
"Staff was doing a lot of travelling, but travel by the board members was the really outrageous part," he says.
Sixteen of the 20 board members are state legislators.
"They and their spouses were travelling to resorts. Wives were getting pedicures, manicures, facials, and even falconry lessons! The husbands purchased $125 cigars, and spent thousands of dollars on a golf outing!" Parsons says.

Viewers were already upset about state legislators giving themselves a pay raise, and these excesses further fueled the emotions.
"Once the story hit TV, the newspaper and the wire, there was a groundswell of support for opening up government records. People felt the government was too secretive. In fact, Pennsylvania had one of the worst open records laws in the country," he says.

Persistence produced court victories

Making it difficult to get records is not unusual for the managers of a government agency with something to hide.

Parsons feels what made their story was not giving up when they hit a roadblock.
"It comes down to persistence. But you must pick your fights. You can't go to court for public records every time an agency says you can't have them --- even if you know that under the law you are entitled to the records. You must pick your battles," he says.

WTAE, the newspaper and AP split the $60,000 in legal fees. And, since they prevailed, the court awarded them attorney's fees. Parsons expects they'll get about $50,000 of it back.

Longo believes this kind of journalism is important to the industry's future.
He feels too much television news has become driven by a day-to-day, hour-to-hour approach that may sacrifice long term commitments to important stories.

Although the court fight took 18 months, Longo says it yielded boxes and boxes of documents that fueled six months worth of stories.

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