Investigations: Ideas for Covering the Quebec student demos

Check out Bilbo Poynter's new biweekly online column, Stories Undone, all about investigative stories in Canada on This Magazine's website.

His first column explores ideas for better in-depth coverage of the Quebec student demonstrations against Premier Jean Charest's proposed massive tuition fee hike.

Bilbo is executive director and co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (of which I have the privilege of being president of the board).

Investigations: How Obama Plays a Personal Role in Okaying Assassinations

U.S. President Barack Obama's unprecedented and gruesome role in approving the killing of every suspected Al Qaeda militant is investigated in detail in this interesting New York Times piece.

One of the revelations: Obama has the final say in each assassination at "nominations" meetings - held each week or so with over 100 national security staff to decide who will die next.

Also, when death counts from the huge number of military strikes are released to the public, any male of military age is automatically deemed to be a militant. And presto: Virtually no civilians are thus being killed in the drone attacks.

The assassination campaign has had another bonus for Obama, who was critical of the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba during his election campaign. No detainees!

Tools: 50 Cool Twitter Chats for Journos

Hook up with fellow journalists who share similar interests via journalism-related Twitter chats. These are Twitter-based discussions that happen regularly (often at a certain time once a week). Here is an interesting list of 50 good ones.

Awards: PWAC Writing Prizes Call for Entries

Canadian writers and editors take note: Entries are now open for the third annual writing awards of the Professional Writers Association of Canada. You don't have to be a PWAC member to submit your masterpiece. See here for more details.

Investigations 2.0: IPaidABribe.com

Just discovered this great site about corruption stories in India: IPaidABribe.com. Created by the Bangalore-based Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, it harnesses citizen participation to collect stories of corruption and attempted corruption, including details to give a broader picture of the problem and to help the group press for change.

Investigations: Consumer Group Finds Arsenic in Juices

U.S. watchdog group Consumer Reports is advising parents to limit their kids' juice consumption after this investigation found 10 percent of fruit juice samples from five brands exceeded federal drinking-water standards for arsenic. Most of the arsenic found was inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen.

Also, one in four samples exceeded the Food and Drug Administration's lead limit for bottled water. (No arsenic or lead ceilings exist for juice, so the group used the water ceilings as a guideline.) Scientific evidence is mounting to show that exposure to arsenic or lead even below the federal limits is a health risk, the group says.

Arsenic has entered the ground water in many areas from agricultural insecticides, poultry-feed additives, coal-fired power plant emissions and wood preservatives. The report also says arsenic is present in many foods, including baby food. The group also recommends eating organic chicken.

Investigations: Grim Conditions at Chinese Plant Behind Steve Jobs's Success

The late Steve Jobs was eulogized for building the world's biggest tech firm, but there's been less attention to the workers in China who helped Apple accomplish the feat. Here's an investigation published in The Telegraph of London last year of the grim conditions in the main Chinese plant building most of those nifty iPads.

Investigations: Organic Farming Tops Conventional, GM for Yield, Return and Energy Efficiency

Conventional wisdom about agriculture is turned on its head in a new study by the Rodale Institute, a Pennsylviania-based nonprofit that promotes organic farming. Organic yields are 31 percent higher than conventional yields in times of drought, the institute's study has found.

Organic yields are also higher than those of genetically modified "drought tolerant" crops. Also interesting: organic farms produce three times higher net return than conventional ones on average, with one organic crop yielding 30 times higher net return. Organic systems also use 45 percent less energy, the study said.

The institute says its study is the longest in duration comparing organic and conventional farming methods.

Da Biz: YouTube In Talks to Launch Investigative Programming

YouTube is getting into investigative journalism? Yes, you heard right. The world's third most popular website - and second most used search engine - is in discussions with the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting to launch YouTube Investigative, this report says. With 800 million monthly visitors - each spending half an hour on the site on average - that's a pretty nice audience.

YouTube is following the path of a growing number of newsrooms, which are reportedly contracting out their investigative stories to outfits like the CIR.

Investigations: Inside Quebec Construction's Organized Crime and Political Ties

Here's a fascinating look inside Quebec's notoriously corrupt construction industry, including its links with organized crime and political fundraisers. Radio-Canada has made public this 72-page report from Quebec's anti-corruption investigative squad, based on a year-and-a-half-long inquiry.

The report speaks of a "deeply rooted and clandestine universe of an unsuspected scope that is harmful to our society - in terms of security, the economy, justice and democracy."

Investigations: F-35 Wings to Last Just Five Years

Yet another setback for the massively expensive F-35 warplane - the most costly military program in history (full operating cost: an estimated $1 trillion). Already beset by delays, cost overruns and performance questions, two of the three models of the $100-million-plus planes have been found to have a major structural defect. The result is their wings have an operational life of only five years, according to this Wired report. That's a lot less than the expected 25 years.

Earlier reports had questioned the F-35's key attribute - its supposed stealthiness. This Wired story cites a study that found the jet is "demonstrably not a true stealth aircraft" and can't operate against Russia's latest air defence systems. An aviation expert said the F-35's stealthiness is undermined by its "very conventional-airplane-shaped lumps and bumps around its underside, not to mention the hideous wart that covers the gun on the F-35A."

Investigations: Suits to Target Rampant Medical Ghost-writing

CBC Radio explores the widespread practice of "medical ghost-writing" in this interesting report (available in audio or text form). That's when doctors and scientists put their name on papers that were actually written and researched with funds from pharmaceutical companies, whose contributions aren't acknowledged. The result: side-effects from medications can be downplayed - or omitted altogether, according to the report. Now, two lawyers are preparing to fight back with lawsuits alleging fraud.

Investigations: Texas Officials Covered up Radioactive Drinking Water

State officials in Texas covered up elevated levels of radioactivity in drinking water for years, even though it violated federal standards, according to this five-part investigation by KHOU-TV News. Even so-called "safe" levels of radiation in drinking water actually lead to cancer, the series reports.

That's also a common issue in Canada. There, the government's ceiling on radioactive material in drinking water is set at a level that leads to 511 lifetime cancers per million people - or 17,000 lifetime cancers for Canada's 33 million people, according to this story I did on the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in The Georgia Straight.

Resources: IRE Conference Audio and Tip Sheets Available

Streaming audio and tip sheets from the 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Orlando are now available at the IRE site. A great resource for newbies and vets of the business. The IRE's site is a trove of other great material worth exploring, including its journal, searchable story and tips database, forums and beat guides.

Investigations: Mouldy Homes for Haiti

Check out the Canadian Centre of Investigative Reporting's newly revamped website. The redesign coincides with the release of an interesting new CCIR-backed story investigating the troubled international efforts to help Haiti rebuild after 2010 devastating earthquake.

One rebuilding project, supported by Bill Clinton's humanitarian foundation, saddled Haitians with shoddily constructed, mould-ridden shelters, the story found. Air samples taken inside them contained carcinogens. The story was done in collaboration with The Nation magazine. (Disclosure: I'm the president of the CCIR's board.)

Awards: Congrats to Me!

Congratulations to me! I just won a Canadian Association of Journalists award for best investigative reporting in a Canadian magazine. Thanks, CAJ! The winningest story was this piece in Vancouver's Georgia Straight weekly on how Canada's food inspection system is failing to ensure the safety of meat, even after a tainted meat outbreak that killed 23 people.

I was also nominated for two National Magazine Awards for this investigation of the coming health impacts from climate change and how Canadian medical authorities and governments are doing little to prepare. The story reported that rising summer temperatures are expected to kill 15,330 to 27,150 Montrealers and cost up to $124 nationally in added health expenditures and lost productivity between 2010 and 2100, according to a federally funded study done last year.

Update: My climate change story shared in a gold prize for editorial packages from the NMAs.

Tools: Interviewing Tips from Q&A Guru Sawatsky

When you do interviews, do you typically ask closed- or open-ended questions? If you don't know what I'm talking about, trot on over to this great story about interviewing guru John Sawatsky. The story talks about how conventional interviewing techniques often don't work.

It includes some interesting anecdotes about well-known TV journalists falling flat in their interviews, generally because of closed-ended questions (ones that can be answered with a "yes" or "no"), rather than "what," "how" and "why." Seeing Sawatsky speak at a workshop a few years ago had a big influence on me. If you don't have a chance to see him yourself, check out one of his books.

Awards: Call for Entries for PWAC Writing Awards

The Professional Writers Association of Canada has put out its call for entries for its second annual writing awards. Non-fiction print and web stories in Canadian media are eligible. Award amounts have been increased to $750 value this year ($500 in cash plus a year's free PWAC membership to those eligible). Read all about it here. Also check out the editor of the year awards. (Disclosure: I'm co-chair of PWAC's nominations and awards committee.)

Awards: CAJ, NMA Deadlines Approach

Some reporting award deadlines are fast approaching in Canada. The deadline for the National Magazine Awards is tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 14. The Canadian Association of Journalists has just announced the deadline for its 2010 awards is Feb. 10.

Da Biz: News Nonprofits Hurting

Remember a year ago when everyone was predicting the imminent death of print media? The gloomy forecasts were made not least by newspaper moguls themselves (often looking for government handouts). Turns out the dailies are doing just fine now that the economy's back, while the bell is already tolling for many of the online nonprofit news sites that were supposed to take over the dailies' market. Many are closing, while withering competition is coming from the likes of Yahoo, which is expanding localized news coverage. Meanwhile, many of the few remaining nonprofits survive only because they are propped up by single rich families, as this interesting overview explains.

Tools: 2010 Online Hack Gift Guide

What kind of gift to get your online journalist friends? The Online Journalism Review has all the answers in its 2010 holiday gift guide. From smart phone to computer and still camera, the OJR has your buddy covered. Yeah, I know - do you really need all that sh@*? Frankly, I'm skeptical. It's basically tech porn, and I don't have any of that junk myself. But then again, I sit in my office all day in my slippers and rarely have to go anywhere, so what do I know! :)

Books: Whistleblower Details PR Campaign to Discredit Sicko

After Michael Moore came out with his film indicting the health industry, Sicko, the U.S. insurance biz was scared. Real scared. It developed a "very, very sophisticated" PR campaign to discredit Moore as a "Marxist" out to destroy the American Dream, says insurance whistleblower Wendell Potter, who played a key role in the efforts to attack the film. The campaign included sponsoring a front group supposedly representing consumers, which uncritical journalists quoted speaking out against Moore without reporting that the group was largely funded by health insurers.

Potter later became disillusioned and has written a book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. Read Potter's interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman here.

Investigations: Dentists Using More High-Radiation Devices

While doctors have mounted campaigns to limit radiation use on children and adolescents, dentists are going in the opposite direction, reports this New York Times investigation. Not only do most dentists still use outmoded X-ray equipment; they are also increasingly using devices called cone-beam CT scanners that emit hundreds of times more radiation than an airport scanner. They provide 3-D images of teeth and the skull and are widely used when kids get braces.

The device's makers often market the product with the help of dentists paid or sponsored by the companies, who the Times says have peddled misleading information.

Investigations: Who Killed Lebanon's Rafik Hariri?

Interesting CBC-TV investigation here on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

Tools: Blogger's Guide for Libel

So you've had a threatening legal letter over a blog post. What do you do? This interesting pamphlet from the UK group Sense About Science, which advocates for libel reform, gives some good tips. It applies to the UK, but some of the info could be instructive for bloggers elsewhere, especially in Commonwealth countries that might share Britain's difficult legal climate. Be sure to check the legislation and case law in your own country.

Books: Activists and Files Tell Story of FBI-Led "Surveillance Society"

Read the story of the FBI's intelligence activities on U.S. political activists in a new book that looks at the spying through the eyes of people under surveillance. The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties Since 1965 relies on first-hand accounts and government documents obtained through FOI requests and litigation to tell the tale of the new U.S. "surveillance society."

Books: New FOI Legal Guide

FOI users in the U.S. will be interested in a new book from the Electronic Privacy Information Center: Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, 2010. Highly useful guide for FOI-using journalists and litigators.

Investigations: Staff Blows Whistle on Whistle-Blower Protection Commish

Big kerfuffle over the sudden retirement of Canada's whistle-blower protection commissioner Christiane Ouimet amid an investigation of her office by Auditor General Sheila Fraser. Ouimet was apparently embroiled in an internal staff revolt after she found not one case of wrongdoing or reprisal in the entire 400,000-member federal civil service during her three years in office. I reported on complaints about Ouimet's office in this Montreal Gazette story in August.

The end for Ouimet came when her own staff finally blew the whistle on her. They complained about the working environment in her office and the lack of proactive investigations of whistle-blower complaints. Eighteen of 22 employees in her office quit in the past year, according to one report. Read more in this CBC item.

Da Biz: Why UK Investigative Journalism is on the Ropes

The woes of investigative journalism in the UK are explored in this interesting piece in The Independent. The issues will be familiar to sluggos in other countries.

Da Biz: "Journalism in the Crucible"

An interesting series of articles here from the American Journalism Review titled "Journalism in the Crucible" exploring the future of journalism and the rise of nonprofits doing investigative reporting.

Investigations: Drug Prohibition Leads to More Violence, Crime... and Drugs

Does the war on drugs work? Does it actually reduce drug-related social problems? Not so according to a comprehensive study from the Vancouver-based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. In fact, police crackdowns lead to more drug-related violence, drug offences and homicides, according to this study that the centre released in April.

The centre reviewed all available English-language research on drug and alcohol prohibition, including data going back to the Prohibition era. It found that prohibition efforts increased the profitability of illicit substances and thus fueled violence between crime gangs vying to control illegal markets and other forms of crime and corruption. One striking chart in the study shows a close relationship between the amount of money spent on prohibition enforcement and the U.S. homicide rate since 1900.

Despite the money spent, the supply of drugs hasn't been reduced by enforcement efforts, the study also said. Heroin, for example, is now 80 percent cheaper than it was in 1980, at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.

"Violence may be a natural consequence of drug prohibition when groups compete for massive profits without recourse to formal, non-violent negotiation and dispute resolution mechanisms," the study said.

Books: The New Muckrakers

Read about how some of the greats of U.S. investigative journalism did their work in The New Muckrakers, available from the group Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Documents: the CIA's Evidence-Based "Intelligence Interviewing" Techniques

Fascinating insights into techniques of interviewing reluctant sources are available in this 203-page study of "intelligence interviewing" produced by the U.S. Intelligence Science Board, which answers to the CIA director. The study, obtained by Federation of American Scientists secrecy blogger Steven Aftergood, is especially interesting because it purports to be based on the best evidence from social psychology, negotiation theory and analyses of professional interrogator cases in law enforcement, the military and intelligence. Included are two annotated case studies to illustrate techniques.

The study focuses on non-coercive interviewing techniques, which in the hands of skilled professionals are said to be capable of "educing" useful, accurate information from most reluctant detainees. The trick is basically pouring on the friendship. It's Barney meets the CIA. Interesting examples are given of how U.S. interrogators won over Japanese POWs during World War II by speaking with them respectfully about their culture, homeland, village and family.

Especially bizarre - and troubling - are examples of how Nazi Germany's star interrogator Hanns Scharff adroitly manoeuvered downed Allied pilots into giving up valuable intelligence information, often without even being aware they were doing so. His tricks included making it seem that he was the prisoner's greatest advocate and giving the impression that he already knew everything he was asking but simply needed to hear about it for the sake of bureaucratic formality. ("Hanns could probably get a confession of infidelity from a nun," one POW reportedly said of Scharff. After the war, the U.S. recruited Scharff, as it did with many German intelligence officers.)

The enemy of the interrogator, by the way, is silence - equivalent in journalism to a "no comment" and a hung-up phone. But as the study points out, few detainees succeed in using this strategy, too.

The study also concludes that "coercive interrogation" - involving violence, abuse and threats - is not only morally degrading to the detainee (well, duh), the torturer and the torturer's entire nation, but it is also of zero use. This is even true in the mythical "ticking time-bomb" case popularized by TV shows like 24 for the simple reason that such cases never occur in the way depicted. For example, if a terror suspect were detained who knew of an imminent attack, it's highly unlikely that law enforcement would have no other, additional sources of information with which to stop the attack and thus avoid the use of torture.

See background on the study in this article in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal.

Investigations: New Book on Mulroney-Airbus Scandal

Veteran CBC investigative producer Harvey Cashore is out with an interesting-sounding new book about former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney's Airbus affair, titled The Truth Shows Up: A Reporter's Fifteen-Year Odyssey Tracking Down the Truth About Mulroney, Schreiber and the Airbus Scandal. Check out this review by Cecil Rosner, another CBC vet (and advisory board member of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting). Cecil describes the book as a great narrative of investigative procedure. Disclosure: I've worked with both Harvey and Cecil. Looking forward to getting me a copy.

Investigations: WikiLeaks Raw Military Files Up for Public Study

Vast trove of Afghanistan-related internal U.S. military documents released by WikiLeaks here. The nonprofit has organized the files by category (e.g. from "assassination" to "unexploded ordinance"), region, date, severity, etc., including links explaining military jargon and Google maps locations. ProPublica has argued the files are "no Pentagon Papers" - the 1971 military leak that helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. But this analysis from Stratfor disagrees, suggesting WikiLeaks has published documents that are even more revealing, especially in what they tell us about Pakistan's support for the Taliban and the hopelessness of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan.

I think it's far too early to say the documents aren't significant - not just for their content but also the form in which they've been made available. The full 75,000-document release has yet to be studied thoroughly by more than a few reporters so far, and its full impacts will not be known for weeks or months. Or maybe, due to the sheer volume of files, the WikiLeaks release will overwhelm reporters and the public and fade - as often happens in our era of info overload. What's cool and different now, however, is we all have easy, searchable access to the digital raw files.

In their WikiLeaks form, we can all take a stab at trying to figure out what they mean, rather than a tiny handful of reporters or cognoscenti. Whether some commentators like it or not, this release is a signal event in the democratization of information in the digital era.