This morning, I had a wonderful conversation with Dan Kane, an investigative journalist from the News & Observer. We talked a lot about research, how he gets leads and contacting various public officials. First, Mr. Kane explained the importance of documents to me, saying that “documents can’t lie, people can”. He recommended trying to find documents that explain what’s going on in clear way, with concrete evidence. He also advised me to record everything when interviewing people so you have the information to refer back to verbatim for later. Second, we talked about how he finds topics to write an article on. He says he gets ideas from anonymous tips through social media, email or letters. An example of a tip that got him a huge story was when someone told him about the position of “house historian”, where someone was getting paid for a job and never coming into the NC legislature to do anything. After more research, he found that this woman was originally in charge of the page program(a program for high schoolers to learn more about the state legislature), but that she was housing the teens with her son who was a convicted felon with a history of drug use. Quietly, the NC speaker of the house moved her to a new position as to not cause any type of scandal. Another way that Mr. Kane finds stories is through what he likes to call “triggers”, when he notices something and figures there’s more than meets the eye. His four “triggers” are 1. money 2. risk 3. power and 4. secrecy. Finally, we talked about the importance of the balance between being aggressive and assertive when talking to public officials. He told a story of when he was communicating with the department of revenue after hearing they were keeping money from taxpayers who had accidentally overpaid. They refused to give him any information or relevant documents because it was supposedly illegal to share taxpayer information. However, after reading the statue he was sent, Mr. Kane pushed back and pointed out that this was only in the case of individual information and he wanted collective data. By standing his ground and remaining cool, he was able to push back without seeming angry or biased. He says that this is one of the most fulfilling parts of his career as a journalist because a lot of people got their money back due to his work. However, he also pointed out that a lot of journalism is frustrating because even with clear evidence, people may not want to make a change. For example, he and his team wrote up an article presenting concrete evidence that lack of supervision in prisons causes deaths. They used the story of a homeless woman who was arrested for “pandering” and died in jail because she didn’t have access to her medication, but then was buried before the state could perform an autopsy. However, because sheriffs have so much political power, nobody is making any changes or enforcing regulations on prisons, so Mr. Kane is not able to do anything about the problem. Most importantly, he told me that journalists are the eyes and ears of the people, so it’s essential that they always do their job because they’re what continues to keep the country a democracy by holding officials accountable.
