ProPublica: Media & Technology

Jumping the Gunman

2009-11-12T14:11:12-05:00

The recent reporting on Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, is a classic run-and-gun investigative story in which dozens of reporters badger officials to disclose a new fact (which gets you on page one) or two new facts (which is enough to snag the coveted lead-of-the-paper slot on a slow day). This wolf-pack approach to reporting almost invariably produces stories that lack context, which is hardly surprising.

After all, reporters are telling a complex story by unveiling the key aspects as they learn them. It’s roughly akin to taking scenes from say, the three "Godfather" movies and spitting out them out as YouTube videos in random order. Good luck to anyone trying to follow the plot.

On the Hasan story, one of the earliest newsbreaks seems, at least so far, to be among the least clear.

About a year ago, U.S. intelligence intercepted messages sent by Hasan to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam in Yemen. A task force of counterterrorism officials reviewed those messages, determined they were benign —consistent with work-related research Hasan was doing — and never contacted anyone in the military familiar with Hasan’s record in the military.

Newspapers, Web sites and TV all gave huge play to the story. But what was anyone expecting the government to do about someone who exchanged e-mails or text messages with a known bad guy? Seize his legally obtained gun? Remove him from his job? Arrest him as a material witness to a crime not yet committed?

Last night, NPR provided some context in an exclusive story on "All Things Considered." Daniel Zwerdling reported that Hasan’s supervisors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had become increasingly worried that their young resident was losing touch with reality and might be psychotic and a danger to himself or others. They weighed firing Hasan, decided that would be too difficult, and sent him off to Fort Hood without a formal mental health evaluation.

Now, the intercepted messages story has more meaning.

Remember the contacts between Hasan and the Yemeni cleric? They are reported to have occurred in December 2008, which appears to be the same time as Walter Reed doctors were wondering whether Hasan might be capable of what NPR termed "fratricide."

The terrorism task force that reviewed the potential threat posed by Hasan looked at his personnel files. But they never knew of the doctors’ concerns, because as, The New York Times reported today, the doctors didn’t add them to his file.

Had the Federal Bureau of Investigation spoken to his supervisors – an idea that raises a host of civil liberties and privacy questions – the assessment of the danger he posed might have been different. But the available facts suggest that no one knew the full picture, which meant no one could start "connecting the dots.’’

The reader faces a similar challenge as the Hasan story unfolds in the coming months.

Here’s something to keep in mind: It is a long-established rule for reporting that the first accounts of any military action are frequently wrong. A corollary: The initial reports in a run-and-gun investigative story seldom age well. Remember the hero female cop who shot Hasan? Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. And the purported view of Walter Reed officials that Hasan might be a threat? Shortly after the NPR story aired, the Washington Post asserted the possibility that Hasan might be "delusional" was never taken seriously and addressed by his supervisors only "in passing.’’

Stay tuned.

Stephen Engelberg is managing editor of ProPublica.

How Are You Using ChangeTracker?

2009-03-10T07:54:12-05:00

by Brian Boyer, ProPublica -

A few weeks back, we launched ChangeTracker, a tool that keeps an eye on White House Web sites and sends alerts when a page changes. We've used it to find a few interesting changes to whitehouse.gov, but we're hoping to hear what you've done with it.

The day ChangeTracker launched, we also wrote up instructions on how you could duplicate it, in the hope that you would set up change trackers to watch other Web sites. This seems to have been a success -- we can see via our logs folks have copied our code more than 50 times.

But we can't see what sites they've chosen to track. (That point was driven home when we found out that our own, industrious Paul Kiel had set up a tracker without telling anyone.) So while we've been tickled pink by the success, we realized that we should probably ask:

How are you using ChangeTracker?

We'd love to highlight interesting uses.

Hope to hear from you soon.

P.S. If you’re new to ChangeTracker, please do give it a try.

White House Updates Bush’s Biography: Less Prosperity, More BBQ

2009-03-06T17:04:36-05:00

by Brian Boyer, ProPublica -

ChangeTracker, our handy tool that watches for changes on White House Web sites, noticed wide changes to the whitehouse.gov biography of George W. Bush.

References to Bush creating "prosperity" through "an ownership society" are stripped in the new version, and praise of the No Child Left Behind Act has been softened.

We contacted the White House for comment, and a spokesman told us that the version of the biography currently on Whitehouse.gov is actually not new, but an old one written at the end of the Bush administration.

Our research says otherwise. The biography preserved in the National Archives is a near-perfect match for the old version, suggesting that the version now on Whitehouse.gov is, indeed, new. (Peter Bray, founder of Versionista, the system that drives ChangeTracker, just wrote a piece in Slate about the changes.)

Other changes were less political.

Feline fanciers might be upset by the unceremonious deletion of the family cat, India "Willie" Bush, who passed in January. But, the addition that the president and first lady "met at a friend's backyard barbeque" is certain to satisfy Texans.

So, what do you think? Are the victors rewriting history, or is this just a tempest in a Twitter?

Investigative Highlights From the (Closing) Rocky Mountain News

2009-02-27T16:30:53-05:00

by Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica -

Colorado’s oldest newspaper published its last edition today. So we're taking a bit of space to recognize some of the fine investigative work the Rocky Mountain News has done over the years.

A July 2008 investigation by the newspaper found that although tens of thousands of nuclear arms workers applied for government compensation after being exposed to radiation or other toxins, most have never seen a dime.

A 2005 series explored how University of Colorado-Boulder ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill ignited a major controversy when he called the victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attack "Little Eichmanns." After calls for his firing, he was also accused of plagiarism and misrepresenting himself as having American Indian heritage.

In 2003, reporters investigated investment companies owned by Denver billionaire and Qwest founder Phil Anschutz that put money into numerous telecommunications companies that sought or did business with Qwest. Those companies often saw their stock shoot up after initial public offerings on the news that they might get contracts with Qwest, which was known as the "kingmaker" of telecom companies.

Hundreds of investigations by Rocky reporters over the years have shown corruption, misspending of public funds and systems that were not working the way they should have been.

Today the newspaper published what some are calling its own obituary. It would have celebrated its 150th birthday on April 23.

ChangeTracker: What Else Should We Track?

2009-02-25T14:29:25-05:00

by Brian Boyer, ProPublica -

Last week, we launched ChangeTracker, an application that flags changes to whitehouse.gov, recovery.gov and financialstability.gov.

Since then, we’ve spotted a few interesting updates, but so far most changes have been relatively unsurprising. It’s time to widen the net and track Web sites that are more than just public relations vehicles for the administration.

So, we’d like your help! Where else ought the watchful eye of the tracker look?

Would you like to be informed when Facebook’s or Google’s license agreements change? Maybe a regulatory agency or an NGO would be of interest?

Please comment, e-mail or tweet your ideas!

(Also, have you copied ChangeTracker? The plumbing is freely available and dead-easy to use. If you’re using it, we’d love to know what you’re tracking.)

Critics Say U.S. Radio Program for Darfur Goes Soft on Sudan

2009-02-02T14:53:23-05:00

by Sheri Fink, ProPublica -

It was an inspired idea -- bring independent radio programming to one of the most isolated, war-scarred regions of the world, providing millions of displaced Darfuris with news about the political, military and humanitarian responses to their plight.

Funded with a million dollars from the U.S. State Department, Radio Afia Darfur, a half-hour shortwave radio program, is beamed three times a day into war-torn Darfur, Sudan, and refugee-packed eastern Chad.

"The idea was to accurately report what was going on," former Special Envoy for Darfur Andrew Natsios, who left his post before the program was launched, told ProPublica. "Both the government and the rebels were manipulating the people by lying to them and withholding information."

But critics charge that the program -- meant to provide displaced people in Sudan with "accurate and objective information about their country" -- is instead broadcasting in a language most of its target audience doesn't understand and has watered-down criticisms of Sudanese officials (whom the U.S. government holds responsible for genocide in Darfur). An outspoken Darfuri-American news reader who repeatedly challenged the program's non-Darfuri editors has also been fired.

After questions from Congress, the federal agency charged with overseeing the broadcasts, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, began reviewing the allegations.

The program's defenders counter that actions taken to preserve balance are being perceived by Darfur human rights activists as bias. "Conflicts within the communities that are in conflict can spill over in terms of conflicts within the broadcasting," Letitia King, director of public affairs for the International Broadcasting Bureau, a part of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, told ProPublica.

Radio Afia's first broadcast was on Sept. 29, 2008. The news was and continues to be delivered in standard Arabic, which differs significantly from the local version of Arabic spoken in Darfur, according to James Dickins, a professor of Arabic at the University of Salford, England, who specializes in Sudanese dialects.

"You're talking about really different languages," he told ProPublica. "Standard Arabic isn't understandable really if you're not educated, and since most people [there] are not educated, they can't understand.”

Three Darfur-born employees of Radio Afia tried to impress on their employers that standard Arabic was not only incomprehensible to the program's intended audience, it was also offensive because it was associated with the people who were killing them.

The "language issue is very sensitive," they wrote (PDF) in a draft of an October 2008 letter to the president of the network that produces the program. "The majority of Darfuris in the IDP camps -- the victims -- suspect any broadcasting in the language or accent of the central Government or the Janjaweed tribes."

By contrast, another independent news program created for Sudan by the United Nations includes programming in "simple" Arabic. A radio program for Darfur launched by the Dutch media organization Press Now translates the news into both the local version of Arabic and three non-Arabic languages spoken by the main tribes displaced by the violence.

"Given the grant amount and urgency to begin broadcasts, there was neither the resources nor the time to support broadcasting in three languages," the BBG's King told ProPublica in an e-mail. King said that the use of local reporters and local interviews means that large portions of the program include voices speaking in the Darfuri dialect.

Radio Afia originates from the studios of Springfield, Va.-based Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc., which is also overseen by the BBG and focuses on communicating with the Middle East, not Africa. (A ProPublica investigation last summer detailed the failings of AlHurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic TV station, which is also managed by MBN.)

Radio Afia's two news editors, longtime veterans of the Voice of America, are both Sudanese, but they are not from Darfur.

Former Radio Afia news reader Mohamed Suleiman -- one of the three Darfur-born news readers -- told ProPublica he repeatedly clashed with his Sudanese editors when they argued that events in Darfur did not amount to genocide and when they asked him to focus his interviews with camp residents on their food and medical needs rather than on reports of government harassment and violence. (The Broadcasting Board of Governors, through King, refused ProPublica's request to interview the editors.)

In December, Suleiman's employment was terminated. "I am very confrontational," Suleiman told ProPublica. "Anything I see wrong I just voice it."

A U.S. government official, who requested anonymity because she is not authorized to speak on behalf of the program, said that Suleiman was an activist on behalf of his suffering community. "We can't allow ourselves to be hijacked by people regardless of how right they may be," she said. "That's not what news is.”

If Suleiman, an engineer by training with little traditional journalistic experience, was seen as an activist (he wrote commentary on the Darfur conflict for years), that raises the question of why he was hired to work at Radio Afia in the first place.

The journalistic code of ethics governing the broadcasts requires that opposing views be presented, and that journalists' personal opinions or judgments be left out of factual reporting.

Suleiman's firing has led to a volley of protests from other activists. "He's a trusted colleague," said Sam Bell, director of advocacy for the Genocide Intervention Network. "It seems that information [on Afia Darfur] is being corrupted in precisely the same ways that the Sudanese government is filtering information."

Several congressional representatives have also become involved. On Jan. 15, U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf formally requested (PDF) that the Broadcasting Board of Governors investigate Suleiman's firing, writing to the board's executive director, Jeff Trimble, that "it would be deeply troubling if there were any evidence of manipulation of content on the air."

Letitia King, the BBG spokeswoman, told ProPublica in an e-mail that "the Board is carefully reviewing the issues recently raised concerning Radio Afia and understands the tremendous importance of fulfilling our journalistic mission to provide accurate and balanced news and information."

With an uptick in violence in Darfur over recent days, there is one point on which most of those involved seemed to agree: Getting news to Darfuri civilians is more important than ever.

Where Things Stand: Alhurra

2008-12-24T10:39:09-05:00

by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica -

Editor’s note: As part of our year-end coverage, we’re checking in on the latest on each of our in-depth stories.

Alhurra means "The Free One" in Arabic, but since it first began broadcasting from Springfield, Va., to the Middle East, it has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $500 million. That's why ProPublica teamed up with CBS' "60 Minutes" this summer to take a deeper look at the U.S. government's satellite network. Set up in 2004, Alhurra was supposed to showcase a positive image of U.S. policies to the Arab world.

What did we find? Serious staff problems, financial mismanagement and long-standing concerns inside the U.S. government and Congress regarding Alhurra's content. Moreover, in five years of broadcasting despite a rapidly expanding budget, Alhurra has failed to win an audience. According to the University of Maryland's 2008 opinion poll (PDF) in the Middle East, Alhurra has no more than a 2 percent audience share.

Relying on insider accounts, State Department e-mail and government reports, we uncovered a string of broadcasting missteps. Contrary to the assurances network executives gave Congress, Alhurra's parent company did not fire a reporter who told viewers on air there was no proof that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis.

Alhurra also used taxpayer funds to pay former Bush and Clinton administration officials, lobbyists and high-profile Washington journalists to appear on the network as commentators.

Several reporters who took money from Alhurra later said they would stop the practice and their employers said staff would be expressly forbidden from accepting government funds.

While we were at work on the series, a number of Alhurra employees in the Baghdad bureau resigned, including the bureau chief who claimed serious financial irregularities inside the Iraqi operation. Senior Alhurra managers never visited or audited the bureau.

Those stories led to congressional inquiries in the House and Senate. The State Department's inspector general has also begun an investigation into the financial dealings of Alhurra's parent company; the government-owned Middle East Broadcasting Network. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) has called for new oversight hearings on Alhurra. The office of Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) has said he too is interested in new hearings.

This month, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, under pressure from Congress, finally made public a 70-page report on Alhurra. Commissioned by the government and written by the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy, the report calls Alhurra a failure and concludes it suffers from weak journalism and poor programming.

The Bush Administration's public diplomacy efforts have long drawn criticism from Democrats. President-elect Obama is contemplating major changes. "I think we've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular," Obama said earlier this month.

Obama chose the dean of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, Ernest J. Wilson III, to lead the transition team for the BBG and other U.S. public diplomacy efforts inside the State Department.

Senate Panel Seeks to Reinstate Voice of America Cuts

2008-07-24T13:35:00-05:00

by Paul Kiel, ProPublica -

Earlier this month, we reported that the Voice of America (VOA) was planning to cut seven radio language services. The cuts came partly as a result of the administration's emphasis on broadcasting to the Muslim world. ProPublica has published two reports on turmoil and waste at Alhurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic television news channel.

Now the Senate panel that oversees its funding has recommended reinstating funding for the affected services -- though the move seems unlikely to prevent the cuts. (Gridlock in Congress has delayed action on most, if not all, spending bills for 2009 until the next administration.) The committee also suggests trimming $8.4 million from the administration's $112.4 million budget request for the Middle East Broadcast Networks, the parent company to Alhurra.

The cuts are planned to take effect Sept. 30. David Carle, a spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, said that "the committee does not support zeroing out these programs," but that its spending bill "will not become law for some time yet."

The committee specifically raised concern about VOA's plans to cut its radio and TV services to Russia, "where freedom of speech remains restricted and broadcasting is still necessary." The VOA also plans to cut radio broadcasts in Ukrainian, Serbian, Hindi, Macedonian, Bosnian and Georgian.

Tim Shamble, the union representative for VOA employees, said that it would be "very difficult" to get the services up and running again after being shut down. "If you're off the air for any period of time, you lose your audience."

Letter From Alhurra’s Parent Company—And Our Response

2008-07-22T10:59:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky, ProPublica -

The Middle East Broadcasting Network, parent company to Alhurra, has sent us a response to our investigation of the U.S.-government funded Arabic channel. Here is their letter -- and our response.

Update: The complete 2004 cable from the U.S. diplomats in Cairo is now posted.

Update: Paper Responds to Alhurra Payment Story

2008-07-21T14:03:00-05:00

by Paul Kiel, ProPublica -

A number of weeks ago, we published a story about payments made by Alhurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic news channel, to guest commentators on the network. Among the paid commentators were Washington journalists, including Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner. The story focused on the potential appearance of a conflict of interest for journalists accepting payments from a government-funded organization.

Neither Sammon, nor the Examiner, initially responded to our requests for comment. But as we note in an update to the story, the paper responded today with a comment from executive editor Stephen Smith: "we expect members of our staff to not accept remuneration for activities that would in any way compromise their work or even create an appearance of a conflict of interest.

"We've only had one case in which one of our reporters accepted an honorarium that we thought might create an appearance of a conflict and we immediately directed the reporter to not accept honoraria of that nature."

The paper did not identify the reporter.

Sammon received $2,000 in honoraria from Alhurra for two appearances. Three days before his first appearance, he published a brief interview with Alhurra employee Julie Zann.

Matthew Townsend contributed to this story.