Latest / Question Everything / Badass Local Journalists on How to Fight Corruption

Transcript

Badass Local Journalists on How to Fight Corruption · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today on Question Everything from KCRW and Placement Theory, we
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: have four badass local journalists on the ways they're keeping
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: pressure on powerful people in towns and states across the country.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: What are local reporters doing on the ground that stops
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: politicians and the like from behaving badly? Makes them hesitate
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: for a second and say, you know, I was considering
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: doing something corrupt today, but now I'm going to think
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: twice about that.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: He paused.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: For longer than I've ever witnessed a pause in an interview.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: And I actually sat there very calm and was going
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: to let that pause just totally play out.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Stick around. So last week, we flew four local reporters
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: from all corners of the country, San Diego, Baltimore, Jackson, Mississippi,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and Austin, Texas, to drink. After hours at the wine
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: shop we take over from time to time, Bibber and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Bell in New York. And we're going to jump right
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: into that conversation. But just real quick before that, I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: want to share a fact I learned not long ago
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: that I found really helpful to have in mind as
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I was hanging out with these local journalists. And that
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: fact is when a local newspaper vanishes, that directly causes
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: corruption to go up in that area. Two academics recently
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: did a study where they were able to prove this.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: They looked at 65 communities that have lost their local
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: newspaper and used a statistical method that showed that it
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: was the loss of the newspaper specifically and not other
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: factors that led to public officials being more corrupt. When
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: people talk about the importance of local reporting, they tend
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to throw around these terms like accountability and watchdog journalism.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: It's all kind of high-minded and abstract.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: The U.S.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Has lost a third of its total newspapers in the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: last 20 years, more than 3,300 of them. And what
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted from this conversation in the wine store, besides
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: just good shop talk and war stories, is to get
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a concrete picture of what exactly local journalists are doing
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: day to day, big things and small, that has such
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a direct impact. So joining Question Everything executive producer Robin
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Simien and me at the bar.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Hello, hello.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: Hello.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: We have Tony Plohetsky from the Austin American Statesman and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the TV station KVUE in Texas. Lisa Halverstadt, who reports
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: on homelessness for the nonprofit outlet Voice of San Diego.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Elisa Zhu with the Baltimore Banner. And last but not least,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Anna Wolfe from Mississippi Today, also a nonprofit based in Jackson.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to ask you, what is your beat?
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Would you say you have a beat in Mississippi?
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Well, so right now, I just recently took over as
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: an editor of a new team covering Jackson. And that
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: just means that we're covering all of the beats that
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: exist just in the confines of the city of Jackson.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: But for years before that, I had kind of created
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: for myself the.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Poverty beat at Mississippi Today. And that spanned a lot
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: of things and intersected.
• 3:09
  Speaker 6: With a lot of other beats.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Two years ago, Anna won a Pulitzer Prize for a
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: series of stories she did, seven, showing how former Mississippi
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Governor Phil Bryant had used his office to redirect millions
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of dollars of welfare funds to his family and friends, including, interestingly,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to a drug company that former NFL quarterback Brett Favre
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: was involved in. Anna exposed that corruption. She fought off
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit by the former governor. The reporting she wanted
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to talk about tonight, though, was a series of stories
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: she's been covering recently, about how district attorneys in Mississippi
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: were charging women who used drugs while pregnant with serious
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: crimes like child endangerment, child abuse, and sometimes even aggravated
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: assault against an unborn child. The prosecutors were doing this
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: even when there was no discernible harm to the child.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: They would just somehow get notified that a child had
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: tested positive for drugs at birth.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: They go as far in testing the child's first bowel
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: movement which detects drug use as early as like four
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: months in the pregnancy, at which point a woman could
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: potentially not even know she was pregnant. So we did
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: kind of a statewide analysis of this and found dozens
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: of cases across the state.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: You know, this is serious. This is sensitive.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Like, it's hard to find someone that's willing to talk
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: candidly about this situation. And so we wrote our first
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: story mostly kind of centered on the sheriff's investigator and
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: his thought process around bringing these cases. And because we
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: reported that, a woman who was going through the same
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: thing found that story and reached out to us in
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: the middle of last year.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: What was her name?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Brandy Moore. Okay.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Do you remember when you first heard from Brandy? Can
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you tell that story?
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was in May of 2024, and
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: she had just been arrested. And I got this email,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: and I was so confused because she said that she
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: had a five-year-old.
• 5:09
  Speaker 7: Child.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: And she had just been arrested for, you know, something
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: that happened during her pregnancy five years earlier.
• 5:18
  Speaker 7: Whoa. Right.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And what was she wanting from you? What did she say?
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: She wanted to tell her story.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: And she had read the stories that we had done
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: previously and wanted, you know, I think for me to
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: help try to identify an explanation.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: For why this was happening.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: You know, her case was very similar to many of
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: the cases that I'd identified. And except for the fact
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: of how long it took for her to be arrested.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: I called her immediately. We set up some time to speak.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: She lived about an hour plus away from my house.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Went up there to interview her in a place I
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: had never been to before called Sebastopol, Mississippi. And she
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: just presented like so many of the people that I
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: interview in this job, just like hardworking mama of three,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: trying to do her best and take care of her
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: kids and, you know, in rough circumstances and not making
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: a lot of money and trying to support her kids.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And so what was her story from when she was pregnant?
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: The father of the child, after she found out she
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: was pregnant, didn't want anything to do with her. And
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: she just was in a really dark place. And she
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: had agreed to let her cousin who was a drug
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: user live with her. And she ended up using drugs
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: in her mind. I think she thinks of it as
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: like she wasn't addicted. She was considering having an abortion.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: And three to four months into her pregnancy, she went
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: to a revival at a church. And she felt the
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Spirit move through her. And after that moment was like, no,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: God wants me to have this baby. And I'm going.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: To kick the drugs. And she did.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: What drugs?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Because she's awesome. Meth. And, you know, she had her
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: little girl, Remy. who's five, close to six now.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: And in May of last year, she ended up in
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: a jail cell.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: What was she charged with?
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Aggravated assault. She was facing 20 years in prison.
• 7:15
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: And she has three kids.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And this was unique among cases you'd seen, or was it?
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Yes, because I had never seen a case where the
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: charge was aggravated assault. It was always child abuse or
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: child endangerment. Some of those charges can carry hefty sentences
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: as well, but 20 years is like the worst that
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: I've seen in this situation. And so my next step
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: was to have a conversation with the district attorney who
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: was bringing these cases.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And I met with him up in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: And we sat down and had a really nice conversation
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: about like why he was doing this, what his intentions were.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: And I was super genuine about just trying to level
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: with him and figure out like what was going on here.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Take me inside of that. First of all, what was
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: nice about the conversation?
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that he was very
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: adamant that his goal was to prevent women who are
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: pregnant from using drugs and any harm that that causes.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: And in his mind, if he can help a woman
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: get clean, that that will prevent it from happening again.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: And so instead of sending women to prison, his solution
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: was to charge them with a crime like this that
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: would compel them to go into drug court. get drug treatment,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: you know, all under the threat of going to prison, that,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe that's the only way that she will
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: become clean.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And this was like a theory of his or he
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: was basing this on some.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Kind of evidence or experience?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't think there was like any.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Like, metrics or... Okay.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: But it was sincere?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I just don't know if it's my job to
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: say that.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I think that it's my job to.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that it's nice to sit down
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: and have a conversation with someone who's willing to go
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: there with you and then listen to you. And when
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: you have a conversation that goes on that long and
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: you're both trying to kind of meet each other where
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: you are, you kind of end up at the same
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: location at the end.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So what were you saying to him, though?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I was saying things like, well.
• 9:25
  Speaker 8: I was.
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: Got it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, have you thought about the impacts of
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: your practices on reproductive rights? Have you thought about the
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: fact that this crime that you're charging these women with
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: can only be committed by a woman and that a
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: man could never be charged with this?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You said that to him?
• 9:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: Had he?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Had he thought about it?
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: When I asked him if he had thought about the
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: implications on reproductive rights... He paused for longer than I've
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: ever witnessed a pause.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: In an interview.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: And I actually sat there very calm and was going
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: to let that pause just totally play out.
• 10:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And he said, you know, that wasn't my intention, but
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I do see how it does. And he also said,
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: if something that we're doing isn't working... We intend to
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: correct it. So by the end of that conversation, I
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: was feeling pretty good. He told me, you know, that
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: it was never his intention to send any women to prison.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: He was only getting them into drug court so that
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: they could get clean. And, you know, that he literally
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: would never want a woman to go to prison for
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: this crime.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Like Brandy was facing prison?
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: She was facing 20 years in prison, but, you know,
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: there were plea agreements.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: That he expected to have.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So that was true then? Like in practice, they were being.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what I understood when I left his office
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: that day. And I went around to the three courthouses
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: in the, you know, surrounding three counties because their records
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: aren't online like everywhere else in the state. And was
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Xeroxing these, you know, court files. And I was doing
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: it so fast I wasn't even reading them.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Until I got home. You both are just nodding your
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: heads very, very fast.
• 11:13
  Speaker 9: Everybody's nodding here.
• 11:14
  Speaker 7: Yep, yep.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: That's what you do.
• 11:16
  Speaker 9: Got to get in in the court hours. Yeah, exactly.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: 11 to 4 or something.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Just driving as fast as I can to get it
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: all done in one day.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: This is not branding, to be clear.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: No, this is another one of the cases that he
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: told me that he had prosecuted.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I think it was 11.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Total cases that he gave me that I drove around
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: to copy the files for. And then I get home
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: and I start reading them. It's like pretty late by
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: the time I'm home and like sitting down and reading.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: I'm reading the first case. You know, I got like
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: the indictment. I've got the transcript from the, you know, hearing.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: And then I flipped the page and my heart just sank.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: And I went online and I looked up on the
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: NDOC inmate search, typed in her name, and there was
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: her mugshot.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: With a 20-year prison sentence.
• 12:10
  Speaker 8: Whoa.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And a release date of 2039.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So she was a current inmate.
• 12:15
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: How long had that woman been in jail?
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: Do you remember? Three years.
• 12:20
  Speaker 9: Wow.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I called him the next day and
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: we had a conversation. And I think it was two
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: days later that he called me back.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: The DA.
• 12:31
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: And I was like, hey, so, you know, we talked
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: about these cases, how they're handled. And I was like,
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: We just spoke. And you told me that you never
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: wanted to see a woman sent to prison for this offense.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: And there are four women currently incarcerated on sentences of
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: up to 20 years.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Four out of the 11 that he gave you?
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Almost all of them had failed out of drug court
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: and gone to prison at one time or another. You know, again,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: a long pause and told me that he tried to
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: look into it. On that same phone call, told me
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: that he was dropping the charges against Brandy. So fast forward,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: write the story in December. Within a month, all four
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: women are released from prison.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: Wow.
• 13:16
  Speaker 8: Whoa.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That's really cool. Wow.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Did you call Brandy to tell her?
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: So I did not call Brandy to tell her that
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: her charges had been dropped, even though I think I
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: was the one who found out. I wanted to let
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: the process play out. I didn't want to ruin anything.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: But I waited until the first instance that I knew
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: that it was all settled and that she knew, oh man,
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: we like cried on the phone, you know?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And I think that when.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: I called her to tell her about the four women
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: that were released, it was like double the emotion.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was pretty incredible.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: She told me that she felt like through this process,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: she found a, you know, a purpose in life. And
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: I think that's really special to, you know, go through
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: such hardship and then decide that you're going to take
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: the brave act of telling your story to a reporter
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: that she knew could result in a lot of scrutiny
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: towards herself.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And she chose to do it anyway.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: And to know that, like, the only reason that I
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: knew about those four women, the only reason they were
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: released is because Brandy came to me and was brave
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: enough to.
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: Tell her story.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Do you think the DA was lying or he didn't
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: know that the women had gone to prison? Do you
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: have any evidence, like, kind of pointing in either direction
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: on that one?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Your face. Well, it's because you're making an interesting case.
• 14:46
  Speaker 8: I know.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I actually think that it's that.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: A reporter who doesn't live in Mississippi and, you know,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: might have preconceived notions about, like, an official who would
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: take these actions— would just think he was full of shit.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And I just don't.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Why not?
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know why you would sit there and talk
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to me for that long.
• 15:09
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I will say from reading your story, that's the impression
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I got, is that you don't think he's full of shit.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: He sits with you. He talks. You give him information
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: that he's saying is new to him. So if you
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: take him at his word, he's taking it on and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: changing his policy. I mean, what more could you want, honestly,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: from like a polling official, really?
• 15:26
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: You know, in certain ways.
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: The correction was made.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker 9: Wow, and I'm having emotions as he's telling her story.
• 15:34
  Speaker 6: That was with his knee.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 15:37
  Speaker 8: I feel like so much happens, though, in those pregnant
• 15:39
  Speaker 8: pauses in interviews. You know that you've got something when
• 15:43
  Speaker 8: there's that pause and you have to restrain.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Yourself from interrupting. And then you just stare at them.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I'm really interested in this kind of like relationship, just
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the connection between you guys as reporters locally and then
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: just people like your neighbors, people who live nearby and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: just how Brandy like wielded you in that situation, you know,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: towards this outcome.
• 16:09
  Speaker 9: Person wielding you.
• 16:11
  Speaker 8: I can't help but think about Natalie.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: This is Lisa Halverstadt. She works for Voice of San Diego,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: where she's covered homelessness for a decade. She was named
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: San Diego's Journalist of the Year in 2024. Lisa's reporting
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: has literally saved lives. Back in 2017, there was a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: hepatitis A outbreak overtaking the city and especially the homeless population.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Many people had died. The city lacked an adequate number
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of handwashing stations for the homeless. So Lisa reported some
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: stories on it and got the problem fixed overnight, basically.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And the death toll in the city dropped. This was
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: before COVID, too. So just imagine if COVID had hit
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: without those handwashing locations. And then Lisa did this other story.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: about a woman named Natalie. Who's Natalie?
• 16:58
  Speaker 9: Natalie is, her name is Natalie Raschke.
• 17:00
  Speaker 8: She is a mom of four and she and her
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: husband were living in an RV and that RV ended
• 17:11
  Speaker 8: up getting towed. And then they became homeless in a
• 17:13
  Speaker 8: totally different way. And Natalie emailed me. I guess she
• 17:18
  Speaker 8: had heard me on a podcast, had been Googling around
• 17:22
  Speaker 8: a lot. And she literally says, like, she felt called to, like,
• 17:26
  Speaker 8: reach out to me. She sent me this picture of
• 17:30
  Speaker 8: her family and just said, like, people, yes, and said,
• 17:34
  Speaker 8: people need to see my family.
• 17:36
  Speaker 9: They need to see my kids.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And they need to see my family because?
• 17:41
  Speaker 9: Because this is not okay.
• 17:43
  Speaker 8: And she had been reaching out, emailing the mayor and saying,
• 17:47
  Speaker 8: you know, you guys confiscated my family's home.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: How many kids and what ages?
• 17:53
  Speaker 8: So I believe at the time it would have been 14, 12, 8.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: And 4.
• 18:00
  Speaker 9: When was this?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: This was in 2022.
• 18:04
  Speaker 8: And it was complicated because when the RV got towed,
• 18:08
  Speaker 8: it's completely disheveled. And the family snake literally goes missing
• 18:12
  Speaker 8: in this RV forever. And they were like pretty neat.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: There's a loose snake in the story.
• 18:17
  Speaker 8: Well, and I went into this RV at one point
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: and you best believe I was like, if that snake
• 18:21
  Speaker 8: even shows up, I might have.
• 18:23
  Speaker 9: To run out. You know, I will run out.
• 18:26
  Speaker 8: But Natalie reached out and just felt like, I need
• 18:32
  Speaker 8: somebody to tell this story.
• 18:34
  Speaker 9: Will you tell my story?
• 18:36
  Speaker 8: And we ended up following Natalie and her family for
• 18:39
  Speaker 8: a few months.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: They were perfect.
• 18:42
  Speaker 9: Bopping around when they could in hotels.
• 18:45
  Speaker 8: They had a small little van that they got that
• 18:47
  Speaker 8: they were sleeping in. How poverty and homelessness work is
• 18:51
  Speaker 8: that most people don't just land on the street. It's
• 18:54
  Speaker 8: a process. You know, people start by couch surfing. And
• 18:58
  Speaker 8: then a lot of times they have a car and
• 18:59
  Speaker 8: they're sleeping in that car. Then the car gets towed.
• 19:03
  Speaker 8: And then it becomes a balancing act when you have
• 19:05
  Speaker 8: a family of four. Like, okay, are we going to
• 19:07
  Speaker 8: pay for food for the kids? Or are we going
• 19:10
  Speaker 8: to get this RV back? And the kids are all
• 19:12
  Speaker 8: in school. And the RV has like, you know, it
• 19:16
  Speaker 8: costs a lot to gas up that thing. You know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 8: like it's a lot. And so they let me follow them.
• 19:24
  Speaker 8: And the story published. Initially, there was just this huge
• 19:29
  Speaker 8: outpouring when the story published. I got an email from,
• 19:32
  Speaker 8: you know, the top labor leaders in the state of California.
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: A city councilman reached out to me. He was the
• 19:38
  Speaker 8: council president at the time. And he said, I'd really
• 19:40
  Speaker 8: like to talk to Natalie. And so I connected the
• 19:43
  Speaker 8: two of them. And he actually had her come and
• 19:45
  Speaker 8: testify at city council. They were voting on safe parking lots.
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: for people living in vehicles.
• 19:52
  Speaker 9: And he wanted.
• 19:53
  Speaker 8: Natalie to talk about what families need. And then, you know,
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: because there was this outpouring, like powerful people were saying, okay, city,
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: what are you going to do? What are we going
• 20:03
  Speaker 8: to do for these people? And so they were put
• 20:05
  Speaker 8: up in a hotel fairly quickly after the story, and
• 20:11
  Speaker 8: they are now housed. Natalie and her family got housed
• 20:15
  Speaker 8: with an emergency housing voucher. Interestingly, though, there's a story
• 20:19
  Speaker 8: for me to now follow for Natalie. The housing agency
• 20:23
  Speaker 8: that helped Natalie's family get that voucher, now that funding
• 20:27
  Speaker 8: source for.
• 20:27
  Speaker 9: This is being cut off.
• 20:29
  Speaker 8: They thought they had about five years or so before
• 20:32
  Speaker 8: they would have to pay for that voucher on their own.
• 20:35
  Speaker 8: Now there's like a year before that voucher is going
• 20:40
  Speaker 8: to run out. And so Natalie's now advocating that somebody
• 20:44
  Speaker 8: pay attention. She goes to city council now and she
• 20:48
  Speaker 8: brings her kids and she gets up at that mic
• 20:50
  Speaker 8: and she says, this thing is going to affect my
• 20:52
  Speaker 8: family or here's what I think about programs for families
• 20:56
  Speaker 8: that live in vehicles.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Just the, nature of like giving them the platform and
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: the empowerment that that causes.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I just, it's.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: They found a voice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 21:09
  Speaker 8: I mean, it's still like that whole, honestly, I'm going
• 21:12
  Speaker 8: to cry because I think it's really important. And I'm
• 21:15
  Speaker 8: sure like all of us can relate to this is
• 21:18
  Speaker 8: that family got chosen. I wrote about that family. There
• 21:22
  Speaker 8: are lots of other families and I feel like a
• 21:24
  Speaker 8: little bit of guilt.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Have you ever talked to her about that decision to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: reach out to a reporter, to you? There's so much
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: distrust in the media. There's so much distrust in reporters.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm interested in the moments when people turn to
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: reporters and have a good experience.
• 21:40
  Speaker 8: Basically, what she said is she heard me on a podcast.
• 21:45
  Speaker 8: And she heard how, like, in her describing, like, how
• 21:50
  Speaker 8: genuine I was. Like, how much I cared. And I
• 21:53
  Speaker 8: think sometimes as journalists, like we're taught to like be
• 21:57
  Speaker 8: like robots.
• 21:58
  Speaker 9: And not care.
• 21:58
  Speaker 8: Like when Anna was talking about having the conversation with somebody,
• 22:01
  Speaker 8: like people might have preconceived notions about that DA, right?
• 22:05
  Speaker 9: Like the humanity is what made that interview.
• 22:09
  Speaker 8: The fact that you two were talking person to person
• 22:11
  Speaker 8: and he felt like you were looking each other in
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: the eye and it was genuine.
• 22:15
  Speaker 9: And, like, our sources, whether they're future or past.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: It also sounds like he was really listening to you.
• 22:19
  Speaker 9: Exactly.
• 22:20
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Because I was.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: Listening to him.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: You were listening.
• 22:22
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You weren't just there to get him.
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: You weren't just there to get him.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just a, like, trap.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: And I think it's probably helped that you reached out
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: to him early on in that process.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: This is Elisa Zhu, by the way, from the Baltimore Banner.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: And you're also going to hear Tony Plahetsky chiming in, too,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: from the Austin American-Statesman.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: This was sitting down to have, like, a genuine conversation,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: trying to understand what's going on. As opposed to later
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: on in the reporting, maybe after you found the court.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Cases where it is a little bit, he.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: Would be more on the defensive in that case, right?
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Or just like going with Brandy's story without like trying
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: to understand how we got here.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like that is a calculation that's sometimes tough.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It's like, do I gather more and gather more and
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: then go to the person responsible or do I go early?
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Always a calculation. Yeah, when do you guys make that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: calculation or do you have thoughts about that? Do you
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: have like best practices there?
• 23:11
  Speaker 6: Oh, I generally think early is better. I agree. I'm
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: always a fan for earlier is better.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm making this calculation, but I'm
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: not in a local setting, so I do think there
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: might be differences here. There's a couple things that I'm
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: thinking of that often weigh in the other direction of
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: holding off until later. It's like, I doubt this person's
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: even going to talk to me anyway. Maybe I'll get
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: one shot with them. I want to know as much
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: as I can before. Yes, yes. And there might be
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: situations where if they know early, they could scare other
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: people from talking that I need to talk to me.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: So you do have those calculations, too.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I think it matters, like, what kind of person you're
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: dealing with and what you know about their motivation.
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: And that's one of the great things about, frankly, local
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: reporting is that you know who these people are.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: You know who you were covering.
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: They can't hide as easily.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: They can't hide.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: But also, you've interacted with them previously.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: You know people.
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: Their truthfulness or not. Or if not, their ability to
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: spin or not. You know, you have sort of a
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: gauge and hopefully a pre-existing relationship with them.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Up next, one of the hardest ethical decisions I've ever
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: heard a reporter having to make. We'll be back with
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: that in a minute. Welcome back to Question Everything. We're
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: sitting in the wine shop with four local reporters from
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: around the country talking about the different times they've taken
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: the stories of people in their communities who don't have
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: means or access and then have used them to confront
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: people in charge, try to force some change. There's another
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer winner here, Elisa Zhu. Elisa works for the Baltimore Banner,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: where she and a small team of reporters did a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: groundbreaking series on the opioid crisis in Baltimore. They discovered
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: a staggering acceleration in deadly overdoses. which put Baltimore as
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the city with the most drug overdoses in the country.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Elisa and her team collaborated with the New York Times
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: on this, and they won the Pulitzer for it. And
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: while she was doing that reporting, Elisa started hearing talk
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: from sources, people who'd been in or worked in drug
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: treatment in the city, about this one particularly shadowy drug
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: treatment and housing provider called PHA Healthcare that was getting
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year from Medicaid.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: The very first thing I heard about PHA was that
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: there were videos of people who had overdosed, died of
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: overdoses in their housing, and those.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: Bodies being carried out.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: In PHA housing?
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: Correct. And I never found those videos.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: This is just something I heard through the grapevine. And
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: I was like, wow, that's kind of crazy. Like, I
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: got to learn more.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So people who are in a facility or a program
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: that's supposed to be helping them kick their addiction or
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: actually dying of overdoses in that housing.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Their official name was PHA Healthcare. But there's very little
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: information online under that.
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: They were basically ghosts.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: I was like, how can a company exist in the
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: year of our Lord, 2024, and we can't find any trace.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: Of them online?
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: What were you hearing about them?
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: We were just trying to talk to as many people
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: as we could.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: So it was my reporting partners and I Jess, in particular,
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: she was the photographer on the project. She would spend
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: a lot of time out on street corners just saying like, hey, like,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: we want.
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: To write about drug addiction and overdoses. Like, you want
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: to talk to us?
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: The folks that we're trying to reach aren't like regular
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: readers of the Times or of the Banner.
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: So your photographer is like standing out on the corner
• 26:42
  Speaker 7: just asking whoever she sees and being like, hey, we
• 26:47
  Speaker 7: do reports on overdose and drug addiction.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Do you want to.
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: Talk to us? Yeah, it kind of sounds crazy.
• 26:54
  Speaker 9: It does.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I think most people would say no.
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: So many people said no.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Like almost everyone said no. Sometimes people say, yeah, like
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: let's talk. And so once in a while you'll get
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: someone who says, yeah, let's do it. Eventually, we decided
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: to create like a voice mailbox where people could call
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: in instead of typing something out online and share.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: Their stories that way.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: We also promoted it with a partner broadcast station because
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: a lot of people love to watch the TV news,
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: but not so much reading the news.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: And that worked better.
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: That's such a good idea.
• 27:30
  Speaker 8: I know.
• 27:31
  Speaker 9: I'm like, I'm seriously going to go home and copy that.
• 27:34
  Speaker 9: It's so good.
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: It worked.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: But eventually, again, Jess, she was scrolling TikTok or just
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: like on social media for hours looking for folks who
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: have gone through treatment programs in Baltimore.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: And so she found a woman named Faith.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: And in the video, Faith said like, hey, I'm newly
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: in a recovery program.
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: But it's kind of lonely.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Like I want to find other women in recovery in Baltimore.
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: To talk to, to go through this experience with.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: And so just reached out, they started talking and Faith says, yeah,
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: actually I was in a program called PHA Healthcare and
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: there I overdosed six times over the course of 10 days.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: And nobody from that program thought to offer me help.
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: I almost died.
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: Whoa.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And that's the first like firsthand account you've got of this?
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: That was the first firsthand account where someone didn't ghost
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: us right away. And so I think Faith is just
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: like an extraordinarily brave and open person. And we tried
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: to stay in touch with her, but she would kind
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: of go off the map for months at a time
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: because she was going through cycles of relapse and recovery,
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: but she would always come back to social media. And
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: so that's how we were able to get in touch
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: with her again.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: And then, so then did she hook you up and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: connect you to other people who'd been in This recovery program, PHA?
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: She was kind of like a trusted messenger of sorts,
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: you know? She knew folks that had been through that
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: program with her, and she started putting us in touch.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: What were the most shocking things you were hearing that
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: had happened in this program?
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the number one most shocking thing, and
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: this came up really early in our conversations with Faith,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: is that she said, I heard that a baby died
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: in this program. And she said, I heard a mom
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: And a baby died. And coincidentally, the banner had written
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: just like a short sort of brief, like a breaking
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: news story.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: There were two bodies in an apartment. One was the mother.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: and then the other was the child who had starved.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Side by side.
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: Side by side.
• 29:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: And like the time period seemed to match up, but
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: we didn't have any other information besides that. So a
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: few months later, when we were able to get the
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: police report, that it confirmed this woman had been a
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: patient of PHA Healthcare. And Stephen Thomas himself had shown
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: up at the scene.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Just the head of that company, PHA Healthcare.
• 30:08
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: That was in the police report that he'd showed up.
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: He was named, yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: And that was the first connection that we had verifying
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: that the death of this mother and.
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: Her baby were part of the program.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Did you ask him about that? I sure did. Well,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: let's talk a little about that interview.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: It was a long conversation. He gave me a lot
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: of time.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: I got more specific with my questions as time went
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: on during the interview. And it was later in the
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: interview when I said, hey, you know, like, here are
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: some of the concerns that I've been hearing from people.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: One is that people are using drugs in their program
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: and they're not receiving any additional support and or there
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: are no consequences for openly using. Also, I heard that
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: a mother and her baby had died in your program.
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: And I was met with a lot of silence.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: I think it was one of those probably 30 seconds
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: of silence before, you know, he acknowledged it. He said
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: it was probably like the worst day of his life
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: when he found out that had happened. He said he
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: thought they had only been dead for a little bit
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: of time before the bodies were found. But The police
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: and the medical examiner's reports indicate that the mother had
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: died from cardiovascular disease unexpectedly.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Drug overdose? No, no, no.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: It was cardiovascular disease exacerbated by chronic drug use.
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: But it was sudden. Nobody expected it.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: And they were in kind of this like one bedroom
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: or studio apartment. And then probably two weeks had passed
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: before anyone thought to check on them. And by that time,
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: her 13-month-old child had died.
• 31:57
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: And it mattered to him that he thought it was
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: a little time because that means two weeks passed where
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: she's in this program, the baby is technically under the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: purview of this program, and no one from the program
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: showed up.
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: Right, yeah. He thought it was just a matter of, like,
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: a couple of days.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Were there any outcomes from doing that story?
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: During the last legislative session, some hearings, lawmakers said, hey,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: you know, we read this really horrific story about what's happening. Like,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: what are we doing as a state to make sure
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: this never happens again?
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: A lawmaker sponsored.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: A bill to get the Maryland Department of Health to
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: report about what they're doing to prevent another situation like
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: PHA health care.
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: That law got passed this past session.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: What's up with PHA?
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: The state had issued a cease and desist order back
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: in December, just three days after our story published. And
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: they said, you are no longer allowed to see any
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: more patients. We're cutting you off from Medicaid, essentially.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Does that mean they kicked all the people who were
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: in their housing out? What happened to all of them?
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: No, actually, PHA said, fine, we'll stop offering treatment, but
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: the clients can.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: Stay in our housing.
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: And so we've been trying to figure out since then, like,
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: what does this mean?
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: Have things really changed?
• 33:15
  Speaker 7: Got it.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Are they still just out there running this program or what?
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 33:20
  Speaker 9: Yes?
• 33:20
  Speaker 8: No? What?
• 33:21
  Speaker 9: She gestures.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're working on it.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: You're working on what?
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: We're working on an upcoming story.
• 33:30
  Speaker 9: We're trying to figure out. She's saying stay tuned.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: Stay tuned.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: This whole recording process on overdoses has really taught me
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: the follow-up. can be just as important as the main story.
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: And I think we can do that uniquely as local
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: reporters because we're in the communities and we're paying attention
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: to what's happening. We're not off chasing another big national story.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: So we can follow sort of the things that happen afterwards.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: And a big part of that follow-up reporting is Not
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: only reporting on the impact of our stories, but also
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: going to your, you know, elected officials and saying, hey, like,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: did you read this piece?
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: You know, this is horrible. This is outrageous. Like, what
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: do you think? What are you going to do about it?
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: And I think that really forces them to engage with
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: your reporting.
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: You don't want to just.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: Put your piece out there and expect people to read
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: it because, you know, who knows if they will or won't.
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: But I think you really have to go to them
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: and ask them What are you going to do to
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: solve this problem?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you guys all do that? Do you then
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: publish a story that says this was this way, this
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: changed for the better, and it was because there was
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: local reporting?
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I think we should more.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I think that it's, you know, the tradition is like
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: not to make yourself the story.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So it gets a little awkward when you're... It's.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Like, look at me. I did so great. I got
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: someone out of like a bind. Exactly.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Or like if we're, you know, impacting what happens, like
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: we're a character in the story. But I think that
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: helping people understand what our jobs are and how we,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: you know, in asking these questions can... produce positive outcomes
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: for folks, I think, you know, would probably help our
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: industry out a little bit.
• 35:26
  Speaker 9: Well, we're looking out for them is the bottom line.
• 35:29
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: That's the thing. We're acting on behalf of the public. Yes.
• 35:31
  Speaker 8: Like, when I'm doing a Public Records Act request and
• 35:34
  Speaker 8: I'm filing a lawsuit, I'm doing that because I want you,
• 35:37
  Speaker 8: Joe Public, to be able to get that information. Like,
• 35:40
  Speaker 8: it's your information.
• 35:41
  Speaker 9: It's not mine.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not that government official. Yeah, exactly.
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: You've done this You said 25 years? You've been at
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the statement in Austin? What has changed in local reporting?
• 35:55
  Speaker 6: I think in just communities across the country, including in Austin,
• 35:59
  Speaker 6: there are just less reporters, less boots on the ground
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: doing this kind of work. As a result of that,
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: people have less information overall about their communities and what's happening.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Tony Plahetsky has reported for the Austin American Statesman, the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: newspaper in Austin, for 25 years. For lots of those,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: he covered the police beat. He's a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: You might not realize how Tony's reporting has reached you.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: He was crucial in uncovering some of the most important
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and tragic news surrounding the school shooting at Robb Elementary
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. How far is Uvalde
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: from California? from Austin?
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: About two and a half hours.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Is that normally in your coverage area?
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: It's not. It became in our coverage area, of course,
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: after May 2022.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: But as soon as the shooting happened there, you went there? Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: I'll never forget that day. I was working from home.
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: And at that point, we were just getting earliest reports
• 37:02
  Speaker 6: about a shooting at an elementary school. And an editor
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: called and knew that I had sources on sort of
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: a statewide level and a statewide law enforcement level. I
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: think I looked on social media and found a confirmation
• 37:18
  Speaker 6: of maybe two injured. And I called a longtime trusted source,
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: and that person really braced me for what he was
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: about to say. And he said, at this point, we
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: are aware of like 14 children who have been killed.
• 37:38
  Speaker 6: We expect the number to go up. It absolutely took
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: my breath away because to have gone from, you know,
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: early reports of a couple of people injured, not even children,
• 37:48
  Speaker 6: the earliest reports, but to go to that level.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: And this is not publicly known. So you're like, this
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: is like that moment where you're the one who knows this.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: And we became the first to kind of publish that
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: and to say that out loud. And Within minutes, knowing that,
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: I knew this was going to very quickly become a
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: national tragedy. And I'm sure everyone will agree, as a journalist,
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: you go. That's just what happens. Got to the scene,
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: you know, outside Robb Elementary School that first night early on, frankly,
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: before the national media had descended. And so for those
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: first few days... I was a breaking news reporter, you know,
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: going to press conferences and doing community reaction. And I
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: remember my first stop was the town square. And I
• 38:45
  Speaker 6: just remember there were people there who were praying. I
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: think they were singing. It was in the earliest of
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: hours when word was really still just kind of seeping
• 38:58
  Speaker 6: out into the community and people were trying to make
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: sense of it, something that was just unimaginable. Really, it
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: was toward the end of that first week when we
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: started getting those early indications that the law enforcement response
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: had not gone as described by officials and that it
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: had gone horribly awry. I certainly in no way went
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: the thinking this is going to now become this huge
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: story of one of the nation's most flawed law enforcement responses.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: From your perspective, what were the first clues or inklings
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you got that there are questions to ask about the police?
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: It was from the town. It was from the people
• 39:47
  Speaker 6: in Uvalde who had either been in the parking lot
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: of the school or had friends or family members who
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: had been in the parking lot of that school. Keep
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: in mind where there were the earliest reports that there
• 40:00
  Speaker 6: may be a gunman at the school. Parents went there
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: and they wanted to like try to get to their
• 40:05
  Speaker 6: kids or retrieve their kids.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: I totally remember this.
• 40:08
  Speaker 8: Do you?
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: I just really, I can like, like it was yesterday.
• 40:09
  Speaker 6: There were these frankly horrific interactions between parents. The police
• 40:15
  Speaker 6: and parents.
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: And parents, I remember vividly seeing this one father on
• 40:20
  Speaker 7: TV just.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Saying, like, I really, really want to go. Like, trying
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: so hard to go inside and literally just being held back.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: They were utterly, utterly distraught.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: All I want to do is go inside.
• 40:29
  Speaker 6: Utterly distraught.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, those early reports were really.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: The cops were keeping them out.
• 40:34
  Speaker 6: Yes, they were. As a result of that. people were
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: saying something was not right. Like it felt like it
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: took forever. Why were we standing in the parking lot
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: for an hour? What was happening? And so by the
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: end of that first week, it really had become apparent
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: that it had not gone the way that authorities originally described. Originally,
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: everyone at the state level Even the federal level were
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: describing this as a heroic police response. Law enforcement, the
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: governor of Texas, all said in unison in a press conference,
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: they told the world that the bravery and courage of
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: responding law enforcement officers had prevented more fatalities inside that
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: elementary school, that more children would have been killed, they
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: would have been murdered, had police not intervened and stopped
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: the gunman. And just sort of the things we were
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: hearing on the street did not match that narrative at all.
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: A turning point, though, came about three weeks after the
• 41:48
  Speaker 6: shooting when a longtime source invited me to watch a
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: hallway video from inside the school. And I'll never forget
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: that day because... The agreement was I could watch the video,
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: I could describe it publicly, but the source said, I'm
• 42:09
  Speaker 6: not going to give you a copy of the video.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Did this source give you a headline, like, and this
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: is what you're going to see?
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: What were you told?
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: You're going to see a bunch of highly armored cops
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: standing around for an hour.
• 42:22
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 42:24
  Speaker 6: So I watched the video with the source on a
• 42:27
  Speaker 6: computer in real time.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: At their house.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: At a location.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: But that's so hard. Are you like furiously taking notes?
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: Furiously taking, well, ultimately I was taking notes. I think
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: for the first, like the first round of viewing, I
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: was just trying to take in what I was, it
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: was so shocking. 77 minutes. What I did say to
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: that person, and this was sort of negotiated in the
• 42:57
  Speaker 6: moment was, can I at least take a picture of
• 43:00
  Speaker 6: your computer on my cell phone? He agreed. And that
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: became sort of the first image from inside Rob Element.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: You were able to publish that?
• 43:10
  Speaker 6: We were able to publish that.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: And what was in the image?
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: It showed a group of highly armored cops inside the
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: hallway with ballistic shields, assault rifles, just standing there.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Outside the classroom.
• 43:28
  Speaker 6: Outside the classroom.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: How long until you published that from when you got it?
• 43:31
  Speaker 6: Immediately.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Was there audio with the video?
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: There was audio with the video.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, you could hear gunshots and you... 100%.
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: Oh my God. But seeing that, I think compelled me
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: further to kind of have this belief that the public
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: was deserving of seeing that video the entire footage because
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: unlike many other stories that we do, there's often not video.
• 44:07
  Speaker 6: Or if there is video, it can be argued that, well,
• 44:11
  Speaker 6: if you'd only seen this from this perspective or that perspective.
• 44:15
  Speaker 6: I mean, we live in an age where everybody has video,
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: but sometimes even with that, the video doesn't tell the
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: totality of a story or the full circumstances. But there
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: was something about that video that that was so vivid
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: and so haunting. And so then I embarked on a
• 44:33
  Speaker 6: couple of more weeks of trying to actually obtain a
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: copy of the video.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: I remember there was a video that I watched of
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: that scene where the children screaming had been removed from
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: the audio.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember that.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: We put that note on the video.
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: What was that conversation like?
• 44:55
  Speaker 6: Well, first of all, this was an instance where there
• 44:58
  Speaker 6: were so many journalistically ethical landmines. We were literally trying
• 45:03
  Speaker 6: to figure out, do you air the gunfire? Do you
• 45:06
  Speaker 6: not air the gunfire? You know, you could hear very
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: faintly screaming, do you leave that in the published video?
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: And there were a lot of conversations and a lot
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: of decisions that went into that in a relatively short
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: amount of time. I was able to get the video
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: on a Sunday night we published on a Tuesday afternoon.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: For people who haven't thought about this in a while,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: what are the arguments for including those sounds and not?
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: We ultimately did include the sound of gunfire. One of
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: the things that I think that many people sort of
• 45:45
  Speaker 6: at the table discussing this said is, is that they
• 45:50
  Speaker 6: truly did not fully understand until they heard that what
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: an assault rifle sounds like. And the sound of an
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: assault rifle in an elementary school, it just really brought
• 46:07
  Speaker 6: it home.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And then juxtaposed with the images of cops milling around, basically.
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: But also.
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: The story starts with the gunfire. And so I think
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: to mute that or to edit it out really does
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: not capture the totality of what happened that day. And
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: then the faint sound of screams, the idea was if
• 46:37
  Speaker 6: a person lost a child, lost a loved one that day,
• 46:41
  Speaker 6: would they possibly be able to identify their voice? And
• 46:46
  Speaker 6: we did not want to include that.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: So you put a note? We did.
• 46:51
  Speaker 6: It just said that the sound of screaming has been edited.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: What ultimately was the truth that you found?
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: What reality was is that the earliest responding officers made
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: some attempt to intervene with the gunman. He shot at them.
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: They retreated, and more than an hour passed before they
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: ultimately reached the door. And in that intervening hour, dozens
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: of heavily armored, highly skilled police officers filled that hallway
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: and stood there waiting.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like you were uniquely positioned being a
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: local reporter to be able to get that video in
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: that way? 100%.
• 47:36
  Speaker 6: I think that the ability to have sources who are
• 47:41
  Speaker 6: willing to show it to me, give it to me,
• 47:45
  Speaker 6: was absolutely the result of 20 plus years of reporting
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: in Texas that made them feel as though they could
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: trust me and that we would do the right thing.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: It's the lesson of that story.
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: I think the lesson of that story is always question
• 48:07
  Speaker 6: the official narrative. On a reporting level, too, listen to
• 48:11
  Speaker 6: people in the community. They know. They know what is
• 48:15
  Speaker 6: going on. They know what happened. Listen to them. And
• 48:21
  Speaker 6: then just sort of from a journalistic operational procedure, too,
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: Get the video, get the documents, get the recordings, get
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: the records, get everything. Ask for everything.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: I guess I just hear these stories and it's such
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: an argument for local news. Do you ever find yourselves
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: making the argument for local news to people in your areas,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: like in your cities and towns?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: All the time.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: What do you say?
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: The biggest argument in my mind for local news is
• 48:53
  Speaker 6: the work itself. We help kind of educate the public
• 48:59
  Speaker 6: on the importance of local journalism by doing stories that
• 49:02
  Speaker 6: matter to them, that resonate with them, that they can
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: connect to, and that can help shape and frame their
• 49:11
  Speaker 6: opinion about the value of local news.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. There's something fundamentally
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: different just about doing local reporting. Like you're just part
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: of the ecosystem in just such a more direct way,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: you know, in such an on-the-ground way. It's just really
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: cool to hear about, you know, just day to day.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: I think there is nothing more meaningful and fun and
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: pure than local journalism. It's just like all of these
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: big journalism questions distilled down to.
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: How do I interact with this person who is my neighbor? Yeah.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: And then tell my other neighbors about them.
• 49:46
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: I love being a local journalist because my job is
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: to learn interesting, meaningful, impactful things about my community. And
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: the hope is by learning it and then putting it
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: in the world that it will also enrich my neighbor's
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: lives the way that it has mine. Yeah.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys. Question Everything is a production of Placement
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Theory and KCRW. This, by the way, is our last
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: episode for the summer. We're going to be taking a
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: little break and then picking back up with our regular
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: schedule in September. If you haven't yet, please follow the
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: show on Apple or Spotify or your podcast app of
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: choice just so you're ready when we come back And
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: also rate and review us highly, I hope, while you're there.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I know it's annoying. I keep asking, but it just
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: really helps people learn about us. We're probably going to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: drop a few surprises in the feed for you in
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: July and August. And I don't know if this is
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: also a good time to maybe catch up on any
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: episodes you might have missed. Maybe our other episodes at
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the wine shop. There's one with Hollywood directors. Another that
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: was one of my favorites was with a bunch of
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: reporters who cover billionaires or the series on Jeremy Lafredo's
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: arrest in Israel. Also, I'll be hanging out on Substack
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: during the break. We just moved our newsletter there, and
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: I'll be weighing in and asking you to weigh in
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: on questions that come up around journalism, reporting, truth, the news,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: free speech. You can sign up at kcrw.com slash question everything,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: or just search for question everything or me on Substack.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: This week in our newsletter, I'm going to share more
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: about that study I mentioned, which proved that local newspapers
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: prevent corruption. There are some pretty fascinating and also a
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: little confusing findings in there. and also some of the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: awesome reporting all our guests have done. For instance, that
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: follow-up story about PHA healthcare that Elisa Zhu from Baltimore
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: was all coy about. What does that mean?
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: She's gestured.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're working on it.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: It just came out this week. It has some of
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the answers I wanted that she wasn't ready to divulge.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: So we'll talk about that. Today's episode was produced by
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Zach St. Louis and edited by Robin Simeon. Robin and
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: I are Question Everything's executive producers. Sophie Kazis and Emily
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Malterre also make the program, along with contributing editors Jen
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Kinney and Neil Drumming. This episode was fact-checked by Annika
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Robbins and sound designed by Brendan Baker. Our music is
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: by Matt McKinley. Thank you to Biburn Bell Wine Shop
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and the staff there. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seifel,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Tejal Aljamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. I'm Brian Reed.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Follow me on Instagram at brihreed, R-E-E-D, and see you
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: in a bit.