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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
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  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
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  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.
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  Speaker 4: And I actually sat there very calm and was going
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  Speaker 4: to let that pause just totally play out.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Stick around. As I mentioned last week, some of our
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: team is taking a little breather before the fall starts
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and things get really busy with the midterms and everything else.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And so we're sharing a few episodes that you may
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: not have caught if you're new to our show, ones
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that we think are special. This episode first ran in
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: June of 2025. Here it is. So last week, we
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: flew four local reporters from all corners of the country,
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  Speaker 1: San Diego, Baltimore, Jackson, Mississippi, and Austin, Texas, to drink
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: after hours at the wine shop we take over from
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  Speaker 1: time to time, Bibber and Bell in New York. And
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  Speaker 1: we're going to jump right into that conversation. But just
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: real quick before that, I want to share a fact
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  Speaker 1: I learned not long ago. that I found really helpful
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to have in mind as I was hanging out with
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  Speaker 1: these local journalists. And that fact is, when a local
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  Speaker 1: newspaper vanishes, that directly causes corruption to go up in
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  Speaker 1: that area. Two academics recently did a study where they
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  Speaker 1: were able to prove this. They looked at 65 communities
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  Speaker 1: that have lost their local newspaper and used a statistical
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  Speaker 1: method that showed that it was the loss of the
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  Speaker 1: newspaper specifically and not other factors that led to public
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  Speaker 1: officials being more corrupt. When people talk about the importance
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  Speaker 1: of local reporting, they tend to throw around these terms
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  Speaker 1: like accountability and watchdog journalism. It's all kind of high-minded
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  Speaker 1: and abstract. The U.S. has lost a third of its
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  Speaker 1: total newspapers in the last 20 years, more than 3,300
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  Speaker 1: of them. And what I wanted from this conversation in
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  Speaker 1: the wine store, besides just good shop talk and war stories,
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  Speaker 1: is to get a concrete picture of what exactly local
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  Speaker 1: journalists are doing day to day, big things and small,
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  Speaker 1: that has such a direct impact. So, joining Question Everything
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  Speaker 1: executive producer Robin Simming and me at the bar.
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  Speaker 5: Hello, hello.
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  Speaker 1: We have Tony Plohetsky.
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  Speaker 6: Hey, Tony.
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  Speaker 4: Nice to see you.
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  Speaker 1: From the Austin American-Statesman and the TV station KVUE in Texas.
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  Speaker 7: It's funny to meet you in person. I'm listening because
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  Speaker 7: I listen to the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Are you Lisa?
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  Speaker 8: I am.
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  Speaker 1: Nice to meet you. Lisa Halberstadt, who reports on homelessness
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  Speaker 1: for the nonprofit outlet Voice of San Diego. Hi, Alisa
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  Speaker 1: and Brian. Alisa Zhu with the Baltimore Banner. And last
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  Speaker 1: but not least, Anna Wolf. from Mississippi Today, also a
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  Speaker 1: nonprofit based in Jackson. And I wanted to ask you, like,
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  Speaker 1: what is your beat? Would you say you have a
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  Speaker 1: beat in Mississippi?
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  Speaker 4: Well, so right now, I just recently took over as
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  Speaker 4: an editor of a new team covering Jackson.
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  Speaker 3: And that just means.
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  Speaker 4: That we're covering all of the beats that exist just
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  Speaker 4: in the confines of the city of Jackson.
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  Speaker 3: But for years before that, I.
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  Speaker 4: Had kind of created for myself the poverty beat at
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  Speaker 4: Mississippi Today. And that spanned a lot of things and
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  Speaker 4: intersected with a lot of other beats.
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  Speaker 1: Two years ago, Anna won a Pulitzer Prize for a
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  Speaker 1: series of stories she did, seven, showing how former Mississippi
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  Speaker 1: Governor Phil Bryant had used his office to redirect millions
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  Speaker 1: of dollars of welfare funds to his family and friends, including, interestingly,
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  Speaker 1: to a drug company that former NFL quarterback Brett Favre
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  Speaker 1: was involved in. and exposed that corruption, and has been
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  Speaker 1: fighting off a lawsuit by the former governor. The reporting
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  Speaker 1: she wanted to talk about tonight, though, was a series
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  Speaker 1: of stories she's been covering recently about how district attorneys
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  Speaker 1: in Mississippi were charging women who used drugs while pregnant
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  Speaker 1: with serious crimes like child endangerment, child abuse, and sometimes
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  Speaker 1: even aggravated assault against an unborn child. The prosecutors were
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  Speaker 1: doing this even when there was no discernible harm to
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  Speaker 1: the child. They would just somehow get notified that that
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  Speaker 1: a child had tested positive for drugs at birth.
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  Speaker 4: They go as far in testing the child's first bowel movement,
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  Speaker 4: which detects drug use as early as, like, four months
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  Speaker 4: in the pregnancy, at which point a woman could potentially
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  Speaker 4: not even know she was pregnant.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 4: So we did kind of a statewide analysis of this
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  Speaker 4: and found dozens of cases.
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  Speaker 3: Across the state. You know, this is serious. This is sensitive.
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  Speaker 9: Like.
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  Speaker 4: it's hard to find someone that's willing to talk candidly
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  Speaker 4: about this situation. And so we wrote our first story
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  Speaker 4: mostly kind of centered on the sheriff's investigator and his
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  Speaker 4: thought process around bringing these cases. And because we reported that,
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  Speaker 4: a woman who was going through the same thing found
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  Speaker 4: that story and reached out to us in.
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  Speaker 3: Like the middle of last year.
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  Speaker 1: What was her name?
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  Speaker 3: Brandy Moore.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. So do you remember when you first heard from Brandy?
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  Speaker 1: Can you tell that story?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was in May of 2024 and
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  Speaker 4: she had just been arrested. And I got this email
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  Speaker 4: and I was so confused because she said that she
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  Speaker 4: had a five-year-old child and she had just been arrested
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  Speaker 4: for something that happened during her pregnancy five years earlier.
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  Speaker 10: Whoa.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And what was she wanting from you? What did she say?
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  Speaker 3: She wanted to.
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  Speaker 4: Tell her story and she had read the stories that
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  Speaker 4: we had done previously and wanted, you know, I think
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  Speaker 4: for me to help try to identify an explanation for
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  Speaker 4: why this was happening. You know, her case was very
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  Speaker 4: similar to many of the cases that I'd identified, except
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  Speaker 4: for the fact of how long it took for her
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  Speaker 4: to be arrested. I called her immediately. We set up
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  Speaker 4: some time to speak. She lived about an hour plus
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  Speaker 4: away from my house. went up there to interview her
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  Speaker 4: in a place I had never been to before called Sebastopol, Mississippi.
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  Speaker 3: You know, and she just presented like so.
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  Speaker 4: Many of the people that I interview in this job,
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  Speaker 4: just like hardworking mama of three, trying to do her
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  Speaker 4: best and take care of her kids and, you know,
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  Speaker 4: in rough circumstances and not making a lot of money
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  Speaker 4: and trying to support her kids.
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  Speaker 1: And so what was her story from when she was pregnant?
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  Speaker 4: The father of the child, after she found out she
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  Speaker 4: was pregnant, didn't want anything to do with her. And
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  Speaker 4: she just was in a really dark place. And she
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  Speaker 4: had agreed to let her cousin, who was a drug user,
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  Speaker 4: live with her. And she ended up using drugs in
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  Speaker 4: her mind. I think she thinks of it as like
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  Speaker 4: she wasn't addicted. She was considering having an abortion. And
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  Speaker 4: three to four months into her pregnancy, she went to
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  Speaker 4: a revival at a church in And she felt the
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  Speaker 4: spirit move through her. And after that moment was like, no,
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  Speaker 4: God wants me to have this baby. And I'm going
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  Speaker 4: to kick the drugs.
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  Speaker 3: And she did.
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  Speaker 1: What drugs?
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  Speaker 3: Because she's awesome. Meth.
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  Speaker 4: And, you know, she had her little girl, Remy, who's five,
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  Speaker 4: close to six now.
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  Speaker 3: And in May of last year, she ended up in
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  Speaker 3: a jail cell.
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  Speaker 1: What was she charged with?
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  Speaker 3: Aggravated assault. She was facing 20 years in prison.
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  Speaker 1: And she has three kids.
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  Speaker 11: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And this was unique among cases you'd seen.
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  Speaker 4: Or was it? Yes, because I had never seen a
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  Speaker 4: case where the charge was aggravated assault.
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  Speaker 3: It was always child abuse or child endangerment.
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  Speaker 4: Some of those charges can carry hefty sentences as well.
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  Speaker 4: But 20 years is like the worst that I've seen
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  Speaker 4: in this situation. And so my next step was to
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  Speaker 4: have a conversation with the district attorney who was bringing
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  Speaker 4: these cases in.
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  Speaker 3: And I met with him up in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
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  Speaker 4: And we sat down and had a really nice conversation
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  Speaker 4: about why he was doing this, what his intentions were.
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  Speaker 4: And I was super genuine about just trying to level
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  Speaker 4: with him and figure out what was going on here.
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  Speaker 1: Take me inside of that. First of all, what was
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  Speaker 1: nice about the conversation?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that he was very
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  Speaker 4: adamant that his goal was to prevent women who are
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  Speaker 4: pregnant from using drugs.
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  Speaker 3: And any harm that that causes.
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  Speaker 4: And in his mind, if he can help a woman
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  Speaker 4: get clean, that that will prevent it from happening again.
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  Speaker 4: And so instead of sending women to prison, his solution
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  Speaker 4: was to charge them with a crime like this that
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  Speaker 4: would compel them to go into drug court, get drug treatment,
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  Speaker 4: you know, all under the threat of going to prison. That,
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  Speaker 4: you know, maybe that's the only way that she will
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  Speaker 4: become clean.
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  Speaker 1: And this was like a theory of his or he
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  Speaker 1: was basing this on some kind.
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  Speaker 3: Of evidence or experience?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't think there.
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  Speaker 3: Was like any metrics.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. But it was sincere?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I just don't know if it's my job to
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  Speaker 3: say that.
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  Speaker 1: I guess I'm taking that from your nice characterization.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I think that it's nice to sit down
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  Speaker 4: and have a conversation with someone who's willing to Like
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  Speaker 4: go there with you and then listen to you. And,
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  Speaker 4: you know, when you have a conversation that like goes
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  Speaker 4: on that long and you're both trying to kind of
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  Speaker 4: meet each other where you are, like you kind of
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  Speaker 4: end up at the.
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  Speaker 3: Same location at the end.
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  Speaker 1: So what were you saying to him though?
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  Speaker 3: I was saying things like, well....
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  Speaker 1: I was one.
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  Speaker 8: Got it.
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  Speaker 1: Well, you know, have you thought about the impacts of
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  Speaker 1: your practices on reproductive rights?
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  Speaker 4: Have you thought about the fact that this crime that
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  Speaker 4: you're charging these women with can only be committed by
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  Speaker 4: a woman and that a man could never be charged
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  Speaker 4: with this?
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  Speaker 1: You said that to him?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Had he? Had he thought about it?
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  Speaker 4: When I asked him if he had thought about the
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  Speaker 4: implications on reproductive rights, he paused for longer than I've ever.
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  Speaker 4: Witnessed a pause in an interview and I actually sat
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  Speaker 4: there very calm and was going to let that pause
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  Speaker 4: just totally play out. Yeah. And he said, you know,
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  Speaker 4: that wasn't my intention, but I do see how it does.
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  Speaker 4: And he also said, if something that we're doing isn't working,
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  Speaker 4: we intend to correct it. So by the end of
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  Speaker 4: that conversation, I was feeling pretty good. He told me,
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  Speaker 4: you know, that he, it was never his intention to
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  Speaker 4: send any women to prison. He was only getting them
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  Speaker 4: into drug court so that they could get clean. And,
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  Speaker 4: you know, that he literally would never want a woman
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  Speaker 4: to go to prison for this crime.
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  Speaker 1: Like Brandy was facing prison?
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  Speaker 4: She was facing 20 years in prison, but, you know,
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  Speaker 4: there were plea agreements.
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  Speaker 3: That he expected to have.
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  Speaker 1: So that was true then? Like in practice they were being?
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  Speaker 4: Well, that's what I understood when I left his office
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  Speaker 4: that day.
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  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: And I went around to the three courthouses in the,
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  Speaker 4: you know, surrounding three counties because their records aren't online
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  Speaker 4: like everywhere else in the state. And was Xeroxing these,
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  Speaker 4: you know, court files. And I was doing it so
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  Speaker 4: fast I wasn't even reading them.
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  Speaker 3: Until I got home. You both are just nodding your
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  Speaker 3: heads very, very fast.
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  Speaker 5: Everybody's nodding here.
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  Speaker 1: Yep, yep.
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  Speaker 3: That's what you do.
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  Speaker 7: Got to get in in the court hours. Yeah, exactly.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: 11 to 4 or something.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: Just like driving as fast as I can to like
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  Speaker 4: get it all done in one day.
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  Speaker 3: And before I do anything.
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  Speaker 1: This is not branding to be clear.
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  Speaker 5: This is like another one.
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  Speaker 4: No, this is another one of the cases that he
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  Speaker 4: told me that he had prosecuted.
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  Speaker 3: I think it was 11.
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  Speaker 4: Total cases that he gave me that I drove around
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  Speaker 4: to copy the files for. And then I get home
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  Speaker 4: and I start reading them. It's like pretty late by
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  Speaker 4: the time I'm home and like sitting down and reading.
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  Speaker 4: I'm reading the first case. You know, I got like
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  Speaker 4: the indictment. I've got the transcript from the, you know, hearing.
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  Speaker 4: And then I flipped the page and my heart just sank.
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  Speaker 4: And I went online and I looked up on the
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  Speaker 4: NDOC inmate search, typed in her name, and there was
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  Speaker 4: her mugshot.
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  Speaker 3: With a 20-year prison sentence. Whoa. And a release date
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  Speaker 3: of 2039.
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  Speaker 1: So she was a current inmate.
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  Speaker 6: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: How long has that woman been in jail? Do you remember?
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  Speaker 3: Three years.
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  Speaker 11: Wow.
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  Speaker 4: And, you know, I called him the next day and
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  Speaker 4: we had a conversation. And I think it was two
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  Speaker 4: days later that he called me back.
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  Speaker 1: The DA.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And I was like, hey, so, you know, we talked
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  Speaker 4: about these cases, how they're handled. And I was like,
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  Speaker 4: We just spoke. And you told me that you never
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: wanted to see a woman sent to prison for this offense.
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  Speaker 4: And there are four women currently incarcerated on sentences of
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  Speaker 4: up to 20 years.
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  Speaker 1: Four out of the 11 that he gave you?
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  Speaker 4: Almost all of them had failed out of drug court
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  Speaker 4: and gone to prison at one time or another. You know, again,
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  Speaker 4: a long pause and told me that he tried to
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  Speaker 4: look into it. On that same phone call, told me
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  Speaker 4: that he was dropping the charges against Brandy. So fast forward,
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  Speaker 4: write the story in December. Within a month, all four
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  Speaker 4: women are released from prison.
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  Speaker 3: Wow.
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  Speaker 7: Wow.
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: Whoa.
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  Speaker 3: That's really cool.
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  Speaker 11: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: Did you call Brandy to tell her?
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  Speaker 4: So I did not call Brandy to tell her that
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: her charges had been dropped, even though I think I
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: was the one who found out. I wanted to let
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: the process play out. I didn't want to ruin anything.
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  Speaker 4: But I waited until the first instance that I knew
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  Speaker 4: that it was all settled and that she knew, oh man,
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: we like cried on the phone, you know? And I
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: think that when I called her to tell her about
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: the four women that were released, it was like double
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: the emotion. I mean, it was pretty incredible. She told
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: me that she felt like through this process, she found a,
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  Speaker 4: you know, a purpose in life and I think that's
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: really special to, you know, go through such hardship and
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: then decide that you're going to take the brave act
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: of telling your story to a reporter that she knew
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: could result in a lot of scrutiny towards herself, and
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: she chose to do it anyway. And to know that, like,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: the only reason that I knew about those four women,
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: the only reason they were released, is because Brandy came
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  Speaker 4: to me and was brave.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Enough to tell her story.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Do you think the DA was... Lying or he didn't
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: know that the women had gone to prison? Do you
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: have any evidence like kind of pointing in either direction
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: on that one?
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: You're faked.
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: Well, it's because you're making an interesting case.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: I actually think that it's that.
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  Speaker 4: A reporter who doesn't live in Mississippi and, you know,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: might have preconceived notions about like an official who would
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: take these actions would just think he was full of shit.
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  Speaker 3: And I just don't.
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  Speaker 1: Why not?
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  Speaker 3: I don't know why you would sit there and talk
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  Speaker 3: to me for that long.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I will say from reading your story, that's the impression
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I got is that you don't think he's full of shit.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: He sits with you. He talks. You give him information
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that he's saying is new to him. So if you
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: take him at his word, he's taking it on and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: changing his policy. I mean, what more could you want, honestly,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: from like a public official, really?
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: You know, in certain ways.
• 15:48
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: The correction was made.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: Wow, and I'm having emotions.
• 15:53
  Speaker 10: As she's telling her story.
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  Speaker 8: I feel like so much happens, though, in those pregnant
• 16:00
  Speaker 8: pauses in interviews. You know that you've got something when
• 16:04
  Speaker 8: there's that pause and you have to restrain.
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  Speaker 7: Yourself from interrupting.
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  Speaker 3: And then you just stare at them.
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  Speaker 1: I'm really interested in this kind of like relationship, just
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the connection between you guys as reporters locally and then
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: just people like your neighbors, people who live nearby and
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: just how Brandy like wielded you in that situation, you know,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: towards this outcome.
• 16:29
  Speaker 8: Person wielding you. I can't help but think about Natalie.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: This is Lisa Halberstadt. She works for Voice of San Diego,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: where she's covered homelessness for a decade. She was named
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: San Diego's Journalist of the Year in 2024. Lisa's reporting
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: has literally saved lives. Back in 2017, there was a
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: hepatitis A outbreak overtaking the city and especially the homeless population.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Many people had died. The city lacked an adequate number
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: of handwashing stations for the homeless. So Lisa reported some
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: stories on it and got the problem fixed overnight, basically.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And the death toll in the city dropped. This was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: before COVID, too. So just imagine if COVID had hit
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: without those handwashing locations. And then Lisa did this other story.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: about a woman named Natalie. Who's Natalie?
• 17:18
  Speaker 8: Natalie is, her name is Natalie Raschke. She is a
• 17:22
  Speaker 8: mom of four and she and her husband were living
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: in an RV and that RV ended up getting towed.
• 17:32
  Speaker 7: And then they became homeless in a totally different way.
• 17:35
  Speaker 8: And Natalie emailed me. I guess she had heard me
• 17:39
  Speaker 8: on a podcast, had been Googling around a lot. And
• 17:44
  Speaker 8: she literally says, like, she felt called to, like, reach
• 17:47
  Speaker 8: out to me. She sent me this picture of her
• 17:51
  Speaker 8: family and just said, like, people, yes, and said, people
• 17:54
  Speaker 8: need to see my family.
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: They need to see my kids.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And they need to see my family because?
• 18:01
  Speaker 7: Because this is not okay.
• 18:04
  Speaker 8: And she had been reaching out, emailing the mayor and saying,
• 18:07
  Speaker 8: you know, you guys confiscated my family's home.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: How many kids and what ages?
• 18:14
  Speaker 7: So I believe at the time it would have been 14, 12, 8,
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: and 4? When was this? This was in 2022.
• 18:25
  Speaker 8: And it was complicated because when the RV got towed,
• 18:29
  Speaker 8: it's completely disheveled. And the family snake literally goes missing
• 18:32
  Speaker 8: in this RV. And they were, like, pretty neat.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I hate snakes. There's a loose snake in this RV.
• 18:37
  Speaker 8: Well, and I went into this RV at one point,
• 18:40
  Speaker 8: and you best believe I was like, if that snake
• 18:41
  Speaker 8: even shows up, I might have.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: To run out, you know?
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: I will run out.
• 18:46
  Speaker 8: But Natalie reached out and just felt like, I need
• 18:52
  Speaker 8: somebody to tell this story. Will you tell my story?
• 18:57
  Speaker 8: And we ended up following Natalie and her family for
• 18:59
  Speaker 8: a few months. They were bopping around when they could
• 19:03
  Speaker 8: in hotels. They had a small little van that they
• 19:07
  Speaker 8: got that they were sleeping in. How poverty and homelessness
• 19:11
  Speaker 8: work is that most people don't just land on the street.
• 19:14
  Speaker 7: It's a process.
• 19:15
  Speaker 8: You know, people start by couch surfing. And then a
• 19:18
  Speaker 8: lot of times they have a car and they're sleeping
• 19:20
  Speaker 8: in that car. Then the car gets towed. And then
• 19:24
  Speaker 8: it becomes a balancing act when you have a family
• 19:26
  Speaker 8: of four. Like, okay, are we going to pay for
• 19:28
  Speaker 8: food for the kids? Or are we going to get
• 19:30
  Speaker 8: this RV back? And the kids are all in school.
• 19:34
  Speaker 8: And the RV has like, you know, it costs a
• 19:37
  Speaker 8: lot to gas up that thing. You know, like it's
• 19:39
  Speaker 8: a lot. And so they let me follow them. And
• 19:45
  Speaker 8: the story published. Initially, there was just this huge impact.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: Outpouring.
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: When the story published, I got an email from, you know,
• 19:53
  Speaker 8: the top labor leaders in the state of California. A
• 19:56
  Speaker 8: city councilman reached out to me. He was the council
• 19:58
  Speaker 8: president at the time. And he said, I'd really like
• 20:01
  Speaker 8: to talk to Natalie. And so I connected the two
• 20:04
  Speaker 8: of them and he actually had her come and testify
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: at city council. They were voting on safe parking lots
• 20:10
  Speaker 8: for people living in vehicles. And he wanted Natalie to
• 20:13
  Speaker 8: talk about what families need. And then, you know, because
• 20:18
  Speaker 8: there was this outpouring, like powerful people were saying, okay, city,
• 20:22
  Speaker 8: what are you going to do?
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: What are we going to do for these people? And
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: so they were put up.
• 20:27
  Speaker 8: In a hotel fairly quickly after the story, and they
• 20:32
  Speaker 8: are now housed. Natalie and her family got housed with
• 20:36
  Speaker 8: an emergency housing voucher. Interestingly, though, there's a story for
• 20:40
  Speaker 8: me to now follow for Natalie. The housing agency that
• 20:43
  Speaker 8: helped Natalie's family get that voucher, now that funding source
• 20:47
  Speaker 8: for this is being cut off. They thought they had
• 20:50
  Speaker 8: about five years or so before they would have to
• 20:53
  Speaker 8: pay for that voucher on their own. Now, there's like
• 20:57
  Speaker 8: a year before that voucher is going to run out.
• 21:01
  Speaker 8: And so Natalie's now advocating that somebody pay attention. She
• 21:06
  Speaker 8: goes to city council now and she brings her kids
• 21:09
  Speaker 8: and she gets up at that mic and she says,
• 21:11
  Speaker 8: this thing is going to affect my family or here's
• 21:13
  Speaker 8: what I think about programs for families that live in vehicles.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Just the nature of like giving them the platform and
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: the empowerment that that causes.
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: I just, it's, They found a voice.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 8: I mean, it's still like that whole, honestly, I'm going
• 21:32
  Speaker 8: to cry because I think it's really important. And I'm
• 21:35
  Speaker 8: sure like all of us can relate to this, is
• 21:38
  Speaker 8: that family got chosen. I wrote about that family. There
• 21:42
  Speaker 8: are lots of other families. And I feel like a
• 21:45
  Speaker 8: little bit of guilt.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Have you ever talked to her about that decision to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: reach out to a reporter, to you? There's so much
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: distrust in the media. There's so much distrust in reporters.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And I'm interested... in the moments when people turn to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: reporters and have a good experience.
• 22:00
  Speaker 8: Basically, what she said is she heard me on a podcast.
• 22:05
  Speaker 8: And she heard how, like, in her describing, like, how
• 22:10
  Speaker 8: genuine I was.
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: Like, how much I cared.
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: And I think sometimes as journalists, like, we're taught to, like,
• 22:17
  Speaker 8: be like robots and not care. Like, when Anna was
• 22:20
  Speaker 8: talking about having the conversation with somebody, like, people might
• 22:22
  Speaker 8: have preconceived notions about.
• 22:24
  Speaker 7: That DA, right?
• 22:25
  Speaker 8: Like.
• 22:26
  Speaker 7: The humanity is what made that interview.
• 22:29
  Speaker 8: The fact that you two were talking person to person
• 22:32
  Speaker 8: and he felt like you were looking each.
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: Other in the eye and it was genuine.
• 22:36
  Speaker 8: And like our sources, whether they're future or past.
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: Exactly.
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Because I was.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Listening to him.
• 22:43
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: You weren't just there to get him.
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: You weren't just there to get him.
• 22:46
  Speaker 7: It wasn't just a trap.
• 22:48
  Speaker 9: And I think it's probably helped that you reached out
• 22:50
  Speaker 9: to him early on in that process.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: This is Elisa Zhu, by the way, from the Baltimore
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Banner Foundation. And you're also going to hear Tony Plahetsky
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: chiming in too from the Austin American Statesman.
• 22:59
  Speaker 9: This was sitting down to have like a genuine conversation,
• 23:02
  Speaker 9: trying to understand what's going on, as opposed to later
• 23:05
  Speaker 9: on in the reporting, maybe after you found the.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Court cases where it is a little bit, he would
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: be more on the defensive in that case, right?
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: Or just like going with Brandy's story without like trying
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: to understand how we got here.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like that is a calculation that's sometimes tough.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It's like, Do I gather more and gather more and
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: then go to the person responsible or do I go early?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Always a calculation. Yeah, when do you guys make that calculation?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Do you have thoughts about that? Do you have like
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: best practices there?
• 23:31
  Speaker 10: Oh, I generally think early is better.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: I'm always a fan for earlier is better.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm making this calculation, but I'm
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: not in a local setting, so I do think there
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: might be differences here. There's a couple things that I'm
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: thinking of that often weigh in the other direction of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: like holding off till later. It's like, I doubt this
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: person's even going to talk to me anyway. Maybe I'll
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: get one shot with them. I want to know as
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: much as I can before.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And there might be situations where if they know early,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: they could scare other people from talking that I need
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to talk to me. Yeah. So you do have those
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: calculations too.
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: I think it matters what kind of person you're dealing
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: with and what you know about their motivation.
• 24:10
  Speaker 10: And that's one of the great things about, frankly, local
• 24:13
  Speaker 10: reporting is that you know who these people are.
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: You know who you were covering.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: They can't hide as easily. They can't hide.
• 24:19
  Speaker 10: But also- You've interacted with them previously. You know their
• 24:24
  Speaker 10: truthfulness or not.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: You know their ability to spin or not.
• 24:28
  Speaker 10: You know, you have sort of a gauge and hopefully
• 24:32
  Speaker 10: a preexisting relationship with them.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Up next, one of the hardest ethical decisions I've ever
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: heard a reporter having to make. We'll be back with
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that in a minute. Welcome back to Question Everything. We're
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: sitting in the wine shop with four local reporters from
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: around the country talking about the different times they've taken
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the stories of people in their communities who don't have
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: means or access and then have used them to confront
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: people in charge, try to force some change. There's another
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer winner here, Elisa Zhu. Elisa works for the Baltimore Banner,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: where she and a small team of reporters did a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: groundbreaking series on the opioid crisis in Baltimore. They discovered
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a staggering acceleration in deadly overdoses, which put Baltimore as
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the city with the most drug overdoses in the country.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Elisa and her team collaborated with the New York Times
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: on this, and they won the Pulitzer for it. And
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: while she was doing that reporting, Elisa started hearing talk
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: from sources, people who'd been in or worked in drug
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: treatment in the city, about this one particularly shadowy drug
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: treatment and housing provider called PHA Healthcare that was getting
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year from Medicaid.
• 25:51
  Speaker 9: The very first thing I heard about PHA was that
• 25:56
  Speaker 9: there were videos of people who had overdosed, died of
• 26:00
  Speaker 9: overdoses in their housing and those.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Bodies being carried out.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: In PHA housing?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 26:06
  Speaker 9: And I never found those videos. This is just something
• 26:09
  Speaker 9: I heard through the grapevine. And I was like, wow,
• 26:11
  Speaker 9: that's kind of crazy. Like, I got to learn more.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: So people who are in a facility or a program
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that's supposed to be helping them kick their addiction or
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: actually dying of overdoses in that housing.
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 26:22
  Speaker 9: Their official name was PHA Healthcare. But there's very little
• 26:26
  Speaker 9: information online under that.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: They were basically ghosts.
• 26:29
  Speaker 9: I was like, how can a company exist in the
• 26:32
  Speaker 9: year of our Lord, 2024, and we can't find any
• 26:35
  Speaker 9: trace of them online?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: What were you hearing about them?
• 26:37
  Speaker 9: We were just trying to talk to as many people
• 26:40
  Speaker 9: as we could. So it was my reporting partners and
• 26:43
  Speaker 9: I Jess, in particular, she was the photographer on the project.
• 26:47
  Speaker 9: She would spend a lot of time out on street
• 26:49
  Speaker 9: corners just saying like, hey, like.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: We want to write about drug addiction and overdoses. Like,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: you want to talk to us?
• 26:55
  Speaker 9: The folks that we're trying to reach aren't like regular
• 26:57
  Speaker 9: readers of the Times or of the Banner.
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: So your photographer is like standing out on the corner
• 27:03
  Speaker 6: just asking whoever she sees and being like, hey.
• 27:07
  Speaker 7: We do reports on overdose and drug addiction.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Do you want to talk to us?
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of sounds crazy.
• 27:14
  Speaker 7: It does.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: I think most people would say no.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: So many people said no. Like almost everyone said no.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Sometimes people say, yeah, like let's talk.
• 27:24
  Speaker 9: And so once in a while you'll get someone who says, yeah,
• 27:27
  Speaker 9: let's do it. Eventually, we decided to create like a
• 27:31
  Speaker 9: voice mailbox where people could call in instead of typing
• 27:36
  Speaker 9: something out online and share their stories that way. We
• 27:39
  Speaker 9: also promoted it with a partner broadcast station because a lot.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Of people love to watch the TV news, but not
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: so much reading the news.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And that worked better.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: That's such a good idea.
• 27:50
  Speaker 8: I know.
• 27:51
  Speaker 7: I'm like, I'm seriously going to.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Go home and copy that.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: It's so good.
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: It worked.
• 27:55
  Speaker 9: But eventually, again, Jess, she was scrolling TikTok or just
• 28:02
  Speaker 9: like on social media for hours looking for folks who
• 28:05
  Speaker 9: have gone through treatment programs in Baltimore. And so she
• 28:09
  Speaker 9: found a woman named Faith.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: And in the video, Faith said like, hey.
• 28:15
  Speaker 9: I'm newly in a recovery program. But it's kind of lonely. Like,
• 28:19
  Speaker 9: I want to find other women in recovery in Baltimore
• 28:22
  Speaker 9: to talk to, to go through this experience with. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 9: so Jess reached out. They started talking. And Faith says, yeah, actually,
• 28:29
  Speaker 9: I was in a program called PHA Healthcare. And there
• 28:33
  Speaker 9: I overdosed six times over the course of 10 days.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: And nobody from that program thought to offer me help.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: I almost died.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And that's the first, like, firsthand account you've got of this?
• 28:45
  Speaker 9: That was the first firsthand account where... someone didn't ghost
• 28:49
  Speaker 9: us right away. And so I think Faith is just
• 28:54
  Speaker 9: like an extraordinarily brave and open person. And we tried
• 28:59
  Speaker 9: to stay in touch with her, but she would kind
• 29:01
  Speaker 9: of go off the map for months at a time
• 29:03
  Speaker 9: because she was going through cycles of relapse and recovery,
• 29:08
  Speaker 9: but she would always come back to social media. And
• 29:10
  Speaker 9: so that's how we were able to get in touch
• 29:12
  Speaker 9: with her again.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And then, so then did she hook you up and
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: connect you to other people who'd been in This recovery program, PHA?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She was kind of like a trusted messenger of sorts,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 29:23
  Speaker 9: She knew folks that had been through that program with her,
• 29:27
  Speaker 9: and she started putting us in touch.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: What were the most shocking things you were hearing that
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: had happened in this program?
• 29:33
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, the number one most shocking thing, and
• 29:35
  Speaker 9: this came up really early in our conversations with Faith,
• 29:38
  Speaker 9: is that she said, I I heard that a baby
• 29:42
  Speaker 9: died in this program. And she said, I heard a
• 29:46
  Speaker 9: mom and a baby died. And coincidentally, the banner had
• 29:53
  Speaker 9: written just like a short sort of brief, like a
• 29:56
  Speaker 9: breaking news story.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: There were two bodies in an apartment.
• 29:59
  Speaker 6: Oh, wow.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: One was the mother, and then the other was the
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: child who had starved. Okay.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Side by side.
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: Side by side. Yeah.
• 30:07
  Speaker 9: And, like, the time period seemed to match up, but
• 30:10
  Speaker 9: we didn't have any other information besides that. So a
• 30:14
  Speaker 9: few months later, when we were able to get the
• 30:16
  Speaker 9: police report, that it confirmed this woman had been a
• 30:21
  Speaker 9: patient of PHA health care, and Stephen Thomas himself had
• 30:25
  Speaker 9: shown up at the scene.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: This is the head of that company, PHA Healthcare.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: That was in the police report that he'd showed up.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: He was named, yeah.
• 30:31
  Speaker 9: And that was the first connection that we had verifying
• 30:34
  Speaker 9: that the death of this mother and her baby were
• 30:38
  Speaker 9: part of the program.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Did you ask him about that? I sure did.
• 30:43
  Speaker 6: Well, let's talk a little about that interview.
• 30:46
  Speaker 9: It was a long conversation. He gave me a lot
• 30:49
  Speaker 9: of time. I got more specific with my questions as
• 30:53
  Speaker 9: time went on.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: During the interview.
• 30:56
  Speaker 9: And it was later in the interview when I said, hey,
• 31:01
  Speaker 9: you know, like, here are some of the concerns that
• 31:03
  Speaker 9: I've been hearing from people. One is that people are
• 31:08
  Speaker 9: using drugs in your program and they're not receiving any
• 31:11
  Speaker 9: additional support and or there are no consequences for openly using. Also,
• 31:17
  Speaker 9: I heard that a mother and her baby had died
• 31:21
  Speaker 9: in your program.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: And I was met with a lot of silence.
• 31:25
  Speaker 9: I think it was one of those probably 30 seconds
• 31:29
  Speaker 9: of silence before, you know, he acknowledged it. He said
• 31:32
  Speaker 9: it was probably like the worst day of his life
• 31:36
  Speaker 9: when he found out.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: That had happened.
• 31:38
  Speaker 9: He said he thought they had only been dead for
• 31:42
  Speaker 9: a little bit of time before the bodies were found.
• 31:46
  Speaker 9: But the police and the medical examiner's reports indicate that
• 31:50
  Speaker 9: the mother had died from a cardiovascular disease unexpectedly.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Drug overdose? No, no, no.
• 31:56
  Speaker 9: It was cardiovascular disease exacerbated by chronic drug use.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: But it was sudden. Nobody expected it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 9: And they were in kind of this like one bedroom
• 32:07
  Speaker 9: or studio apartment.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: And then probably two.
• 32:10
  Speaker 9: Weeks had passed before anyone thought to check on them.
• 32:14
  Speaker 9: And by that time, her 13-month-old child had died.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: And it mattered to him that he thought it was
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a little time because that means two weeks passed where
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: she's in this program, the baby is technically under the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: purview of this program, and no one from the program
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: showed up.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He thought it was just a matter of like a.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Couple of days.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Were there any outcomes from doing that story?
• 32:38
  Speaker 9: During the last legislative session, some hearings, lawmakers said, hey,
• 32:42
  Speaker 9: you know, we read this really horrific story about what's happening. Like,
• 32:46
  Speaker 9: What are we doing as a state to make sure
• 32:49
  Speaker 9: this never happens again? A lawmaker sponsored a bill to
• 32:54
  Speaker 9: get the Maryland Department of Health to report about what
• 32:57
  Speaker 9: they're doing to prevent another situation like PHA health care.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: That law got passed this past session.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: What's up with PHA?
• 33:05
  Speaker 9: The state had issued a cease and desist order back
• 33:09
  Speaker 9: in December, just three days after our story published. And
• 33:13
  Speaker 9: they said, you are no longer allowed to see any
• 33:15
  Speaker 9: more patients. We're cutting you off from Medicaid, essentially.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Does that mean they kicked all the people who were
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: in their housing out? What happened to all of them?
• 33:23
  Speaker 9: No, actually, PHA said, fine, we'll stop offering treatment, but
• 33:27
  Speaker 9: the clients can stay in our housing. And so we've
• 33:31
  Speaker 9: been trying to figure out since then, like, what does
• 33:33
  Speaker 9: this mean?
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Have things really changed?
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: Got it.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Are they still just out there running this program or?
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Yes?
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: Yes?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: No?
• 33:41
  Speaker 10: What?
• 33:41
  Speaker 7: She gestures.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're working on it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: You're working on what?
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: We're working on an upcoming story.
• 33:50
  Speaker 7: We're trying to figure out. She's saying stay tuned.
• 33:54
  Speaker 9: Stay tuned. This whole recording process on overdoses has really
• 34:03
  Speaker 9: taught me the follow-up. can be just as important as
• 34:08
  Speaker 9: the main story. And I think we can do that
• 34:11
  Speaker 9: uniquely as local reporters because we're in the communities and
• 34:14
  Speaker 9: we're paying attention to what's happening. We're not off chasing
• 34:18
  Speaker 9: another big national story. So we can follow sort of
• 34:24
  Speaker 9: the things that happen afterwards. And a big part of
• 34:30
  Speaker 9: that follow-up reporting is not only reporting on the impact
• 34:33
  Speaker 9: of our stories.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: But also.
• 34:35
  Speaker 9: Going to your elected officials and saying, hey, did you
• 34:39
  Speaker 9: read this piece?
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: This is horrible. This is outrageous. What do you think?
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do about it?
• 34:47
  Speaker 9: And I think that really forces them to engage with
• 34:50
  Speaker 9: your reporting.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: You don't want to just put your piece out there and.
• 34:54
  Speaker 9: Expect people to read it because who knows if they
• 34:57
  Speaker 9: will or won't. But I think you really have to
• 34:59
  Speaker 9: go to them and ask them, what are you going
• 35:02
  Speaker 9: to do to solve this problem?
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you guys all do that? Do you then
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: publish a story that says, this was this way, this
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: changed for the better, and it was because there was
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: local reporting?
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: I think we should more.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: I think that it's, you know, the tradition is, like,
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: not to make yourself the story.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: So it gets a little awkward when you're... It's.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Like, look at me. I did so great. I got
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: someone out of, like, a bind. Exactly.
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: Or, like, if we're, you know, impacting what happens, like,
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: we're a character in the story. But I think with
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: a helping people understand what our jobs are and how we,
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: you know, in asking these questions can produce positive outcomes
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: for folks, I think, you know, would probably help our
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: industry out a little bit.
• 35:47
  Speaker 7: Well, we're looking out for them is the bottom line.
• 35:49
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: That's the thing. We're acting on behalf of the public.
• 35:52
  Speaker 8: When I'm doing a Public Records Act request and I'm
• 35:55
  Speaker 8: filing a lawsuit, I'm doing that because I want you,
• 35:57
  Speaker 8: Joe Public, to be able to get that information. Like,
• 36:00
  Speaker 8: it's your information.
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: It's not mine.
• 36:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're a civilian press corps. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You've
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: done this, you said 25 years?
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: You've been at the statement in Austin? What has changed,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: like in local reporting?
• 36:15
  Speaker 10: I think in just communities across the country, including in Austin,
• 36:20
  Speaker 10: there are just less reporters, less boots on the ground
• 36:24
  Speaker 10: doing this kind of work.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: As a result of that, People have less.
• 36:30
  Speaker 10: Information overall about their communities and what's happening.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Tony Plohetsky has reported for the Austin American Statesman, the
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: newspaper in Austin, for 25 years. For lots of those,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: he covered the police beat. He's a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: You might not realize how Tony's reporting has reached you.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: He was crucial in uncovering some of the most important
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and tragic news surrounding the school shooting at Robb Elementary
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. How far is Uvalde
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: from Austin?
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: About two and a half hours.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Is that normally in your coverage area?
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: It's not.
• 37:06
  Speaker 10: It became in our coverage area, of course, after May 2022.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But as soon as the shooting happened there, you went there? Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: I'll never forget that day. I was working from home.
• 37:19
  Speaker 10: And at that point, we were just getting earliest reports
• 37:23
  Speaker 10: about a shooting at an elementary school. And an editor
• 37:27
  Speaker 10: called and knew that I had sources on sort of
• 37:31
  Speaker 10: a statewide level and a statewide law enforcement level. I
• 37:34
  Speaker 10: think I looked on social media and found a confirmation
• 37:38
  Speaker 10: of maybe two injured. And I called a longtime trusted source.
• 37:46
  Speaker 10: And that person really braced me for what he was
• 37:51
  Speaker 10: about to say. And he said, at this point, we
• 37:53
  Speaker 10: are aware of like 14 children who have been killed.
• 37:58
  Speaker 10: We expect the number to go up. It absolutely took
• 38:02
  Speaker 10: my breath away because to have gone from, you know,
• 38:05
  Speaker 10: early reports of a couple of people injured, not even children,
• 38:08
  Speaker 10: the earliest reports, but to go to that level.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: And this is not publicly known. So you're like, this
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: is like that moment where you're the one who knows this.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:17
  Speaker 10: And we became the first to kind of publish that
• 38:22
  Speaker 10: and to say that out loud. And Within minutes, knowing that,
• 38:27
  Speaker 10: I knew this was going to very quickly become a
• 38:31
  Speaker 10: national tragedy. And I'm sure everyone will agree, as a journalist,
• 38:37
  Speaker 10: you go. That's just what happens. Got to the scene,
• 38:42
  Speaker 10: you know, outside Robb Elementary School that first night early on, frankly,
• 38:47
  Speaker 10: before the national media had descended.
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: And so for those first few days.
• 38:53
  Speaker 10: I was a breaking news reporter, you know, going to
• 38:56
  Speaker 10: press conferences and doing community reaction.
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: And I remember my first stop was the town square.
• 39:04
  Speaker 10: And I just remember there were people there who were praying.
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: I think they were singing. It was in the earliest
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: of hours when word was really.
• 39:16
  Speaker 10: Still just kind of seeping out into the community and
• 39:20
  Speaker 10: people were trying to make sense of it, something that
• 39:25
  Speaker 10: was just unimaginable.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: Really, it was toward... the end of that.
• 39:31
  Speaker 10: First week when we started getting those early indications that
• 39:37
  Speaker 10: the law enforcement response had not gone as described by
• 39:43
  Speaker 10: officials and that.
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: It had gone horribly awry.
• 39:47
  Speaker 10: I certainly in no way went there thinking this is
• 39:51
  Speaker 10: going to now become this huge story of one of
• 39:55
  Speaker 10: the nation's most flawed law enforcement responses.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: From your perspective, what were the first clues or inklings
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: you got that, like, there are questions to ask about
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the police?
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: It was from the town.
• 40:06
  Speaker 10: It was from the people in Uvalde who had either
• 40:11
  Speaker 10: been in the parking lot of the school or had
• 40:14
  Speaker 10: friends or family members who had been in the parking
• 40:16
  Speaker 10: lot of that school. Keep in mind, there were the
• 40:19
  Speaker 10: earliest reports that there may be a gunman at the school.
• 40:22
  Speaker 10: Parents went there, and they wanted to, like, try to
• 40:24
  Speaker 10: get to their kids or retrieve their kids.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: I totally remember this. Do you? I just really, I can, like, like.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: It was yesterday.
• 40:30
  Speaker 10: There were these, frankly, horrific interactions between the police and parents.
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: And parents, I remember, like, I remember just, like, vividly
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: seeing this one father on TV just saying, like, I.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Really, really want to go goat. like trying so hard
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: to go inside and literally just being held back.
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: They were utterly, utterly distraught.
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: All I want to do is go inside.
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: Utterly distraught.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, those early reports were really.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: The cops were keeping them out. Yes, they were.
• 40:55
  Speaker 10: As a result of that, people were saying something just,
• 40:59
  Speaker 10: something was not right. Like it felt like it took forever.
• 41:02
  Speaker 10: Why were we standing in the parking lot for an hour?
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: What was happening?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: By the.
• 41:10
  Speaker 10: End of that first week, it really had become apparent
• 41:14
  Speaker 10: that it had not gone the way that authorities originally described. Originally,
• 41:21
  Speaker 10: everyone at the state level, even the federal level, were describing.
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: This as a heroic police response.
• 41:30
  Speaker 10: Law enforcement, the governor of Texas, all said in unison
• 41:35
  Speaker 10: in a press conference, they told the world that The
• 41:40
  Speaker 10: bravery and courage of responding law enforcement officers had prevented
• 41:46
  Speaker 10: more fatalities inside that elementary school, that more children would
• 41:51
  Speaker 10: have been killed, they would have been murdered, had police
• 41:54
  Speaker 10: not intervened and stopped the gunman. And just sort of
• 41:59
  Speaker 10: the things we were hearing on the street did not
• 42:02
  Speaker 10: match that narrative at all. A turning point, though, came
• 42:07
  Speaker 10: about three weeks after the shootings. when a longtime source
• 42:13
  Speaker 10: invited me to watch a hallway video from.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: Inside the school.
• 42:19
  Speaker 10: And I'll never forget that day because the agreement was
• 42:24
  Speaker 10: I could watch the video, I could describe it publicly,
• 42:28
  Speaker 10: but the source said, I'm not going to.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Give you a copy of the video.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Did this source give you a headline, like, and this
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: is what you're going to see? Oh, yeah. What were
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: you told?
• 42:38
  Speaker 10: You're going to see a bunch of highly armored cops
• 42:41
  Speaker 10: standing around for an hour.
• 42:42
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 42:44
  Speaker 10: So I watched the video with the source on a
• 42:47
  Speaker 10: computer in real time.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: At their house?
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: At a location.
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: And then I disclosed the location.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: But that's so hard. Are you, like, furiously taking notes?
• 43:00
  Speaker 10: Furiously taking– well– Ultimately, I was taking notes. I think
• 43:03
  Speaker 10: for the first round of viewing, I was just trying
• 43:08
  Speaker 10: to take in what I was.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: How long was it? It was so shocking. 77 minutes.
• 43:13
  Speaker 10: What I did say to that person, and this was
• 43:16
  Speaker 10: sort of negotiated in the moment, can I at least
• 43:19
  Speaker 10: take a picture of your computer on my cell phone?
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: He agreed, and.
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: That became sort of the first image from an inside
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: Rob element.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: You were able to publish that?
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: We were able to publish that.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: And what was in the image?
• 43:34
  Speaker 10: It showed a group of highly armored cops inside the
• 43:40
  Speaker 10: hallway with ballistic shields, assault rifles, just standing there.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Outside the classroom?
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: Outside the classroom.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: How long till you published that from when you got it?
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: Immediately.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Was there audio with the video?
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: There was audio with the video.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, you could hear gunshots and you... 100%.
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: Oh my God.
• 44:02
  Speaker 10: But seeing that, I think compelled me further to kind
• 44:08
  Speaker 10: of have this belief that the public was deserving of
• 44:16
  Speaker 10: seeing that video the entire footage. Because unlike many other
• 44:23
  Speaker 10: stories that we do, there's often not video. Or if
• 44:27
  Speaker 10: there is video, it can be argued that, well, if
• 44:31
  Speaker 10: you'd only seen this from this perspective or that perspective.
• 44:35
  Speaker 10: I mean, we live in an age where everybody has video,
• 44:37
  Speaker 10: but sometimes even with that, the video doesn't tell the totality.
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: Of a story or the full circumstances.
• 44:45
  Speaker 10: But there was something about that video that was so
• 44:48
  Speaker 10: vivid and so haunting. And so then I embarked on
• 44:53
  Speaker 10: a couple of more weeks of trying to actually obtain
• 44:56
  Speaker 10: a copy of the video.
• 44:58
  Speaker 9: I remember there was a video that I watched of
• 45:02
  Speaker 9: that scene where the children screaming had been removed from
• 45:09
  Speaker 9: the audio.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that.
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: We put that note on the video.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: What was that conversation like?
• 45:16
  Speaker 10: Well, first of all, this was an instance where there
• 45:18
  Speaker 10: were so many journalistically ethical landmines. We were literally trying
• 45:23
  Speaker 10: to figure out, do you air the gunfire? Do you
• 45:26
  Speaker 10: not air the gunfire? You know, you could hear very
• 45:30
  Speaker 10: faintly screaming, do you leave that in the published video?
• 45:35
  Speaker 10: And there were a lot of conversations and a lot
• 45:38
  Speaker 10: of decisions that went into that in a relatively short
• 45:42
  Speaker 10: amount of time. I was able to get the video
• 45:44
  Speaker 10: on a Sunday night.
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: We published on a Tuesday afternoon.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: For people who haven't thought about this in a while,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: what are the arguments for including those sounds and not?
• 45:56
  Speaker 10: We ultimately did include the sound of gunfire. One of
• 46:02
  Speaker 10: the things that I think that many people sort of
• 46:06
  Speaker 10: at the table discussing this said is, is that they
• 46:11
  Speaker 10: truly did not fully understand until they heard that what
• 46:17
  Speaker 10: an assault rifle sounds like.
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: And the sound of an assault rifle in an.
• 46:24
  Speaker 10: Elementary school, it just really brought it home.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: And then juxtaposed with the images of cops milling around, basically.
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: But also....
• 46:37
  Speaker 10: The story starts with the gunfire. And so I think
• 46:42
  Speaker 10: to mute that or to edit it out really does
• 46:48
  Speaker 10: not capture the totality of what happened that day. And
• 46:52
  Speaker 10: then the faint sound of screams, the idea was if
• 46:58
  Speaker 10: a person lost a child, lost a loved one that day,
• 47:01
  Speaker 10: would they possibly be able to identify their voice?
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: And we did not want to include that.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: So you put a note? We did.
• 47:11
  Speaker 10: It just said that the sound of screaming has been edited.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: What ultimately was the truth that you found?
• 47:22
  Speaker 10: What reality was is that the earliest responding officers made
• 47:27
  Speaker 10: some attempt to intervene with the gunman.
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: He shot at them.
• 47:33
  Speaker 10: They retreated, and more than an hour passed before they
• 47:37
  Speaker 10: ultimately reached the door. And in that intervening hour, dozens
• 47:42
  Speaker 10: of heavily armored, highly skilled police officers filled that hallway
• 47:49
  Speaker 10: and stood there waiting.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like you were uniquely positioned being a
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: local reporter to be able to get that video in
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that way? 100%.
• 47:56
  Speaker 10: I think that the ability to have sources who are
• 48:02
  Speaker 10: willing to show it to me, give it to me,
• 48:06
  Speaker 10: was absolutely the result of 20 plus years of reporting
• 48:12
  Speaker 10: in Texas that made them feel as though they could
• 48:17
  Speaker 10: trust me and that.
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: We would do the right thing.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: It's the lesson of that story.
• 48:22
  Speaker 10: I think the lesson of that story is always question
• 48:27
  Speaker 10: the official narrative. On a reporting level, too, listen to people.
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: In the community. They know. They know what is going on.
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: They know what happened. Listen to them.
• 48:41
  Speaker 10: And then just sort of from a journalistic operational procedure, too,
• 48:47
  Speaker 10: Get the video, get the documents, get the recordings, get
• 48:50
  Speaker 10: the records, get everything.
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: Ask for everything.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: I guess I just hear these stories and it's such
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: an argument for local news. Do you ever find yourselves
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: making the argument for local news to people in your areas,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: like in your cities and towns?
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: All the time.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: What do you say?
• 49:11
  Speaker 10: The biggest argument in my mind for local news is
• 49:14
  Speaker 10: the work itself.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: We help kind of educate.
• 49:18
  Speaker 11: The public on the importance of local journalism by doing
• 49:22
  Speaker 11: stories that matter to them, that resonate with them, that
• 49:25
  Speaker 11: they can connect to, and that can help shape and
• 49:30
  Speaker 11: frame their opinion about the value of local news.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. There's something fundamentally
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: different just about doing local reporting. Like you're just part
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: of the ecosystem in just such a more direct way,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: you know, in such an on-the-ground way. It's just really
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: cool to hear about, you know, just day to day.
• 49:48
  Speaker 9: I think there is nothing more meaningful and fun and
• 49:51
  Speaker 9: pure than local journalism. It's just like all of these
• 49:55
  Speaker 9: big journalism questions distill down to how do I interact
• 50:01
  Speaker 9: with this person who is my neighbor?
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: And then tell my other neighbors about them.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:09
  Speaker 9: I love being a local journalist because my job is
• 50:12
  Speaker 9: to learn interesting, meaningful, impactful things about my community. And
• 50:18
  Speaker 9: the hope is by learning it and then putting it
• 50:22
  Speaker 9: in the world that it will also enrich my neighbors'
• 50:26
  Speaker 9: lives the way that it has mine.
• 50:28
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys. Thanks for listening to Question Everything. This
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: episode first ran in the summer of 2025. It was
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: produced by Zach St. Louis and edited by Robin Simeon.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Robin and I are Question Everything's executive producers. Sophie Kazis
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and Emily Malterre also worked on this episode. along with
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: contributing editors Jen Kinney and Neil Drumming and associate producer
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins and
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: sound designed by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McKinley.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you to the staff at Bibber & Bell Wine Shop.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Tejla Jamera, Natalie Hill,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. Thanks for listening.