Oct 11
2016
Spinning around…
Posted 9 years ago
Oct 11
2016
Oct 10
2016
Oct 6
2016
In this episode of Investigative Postcast, Margaret Sullivan talks with Jim Heaney about the current state of the press and her work as media columnist with The Washington Post. Sullivan, who previously served as editor in chief of The Buffalo News and public editor of New York Times, also discussed the state of investigative reporting, which will be the topic of her keynote address at a gala dinner Oct. 19 hosted by Investigative Post, a nonprofit investigative reporting center based in Buffalo, N.Y. (Order your tickets here.) “Local investigative reporting is threatened throughout the country and really needs to be[...]
Oct 5
2016
Oct 4
2016
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz stopped short of requiring his health department to mandate tap water sampling in homes where children are already diagnosed with high lead levels, but he did say that “maybe we do need to take additional steps, such as testing the water.” He said testing drinking water for lead might make sense in the event county health inspectors fail to find any lead paint problems in the home. His remarks come a little over a month after Investigative Post reported that disparity, ‘cheating’ and potential conflicts plague Buffalo’s sampling program for lead in drinking water. While[...]
Sep 30
2016
Most people familiar with water quality problems in Buffalo were not surprised Thursday night when city officials issued a warning that a “harmful blue-green algae bloom” surfaced in Hoyt Lake at Delaware Park. Instead, they were surprised that it took this long for one of these blooms to appear in Buffalo. “Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time until we started to see harmful algal blooms in Western New York’s waters,” said Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper Executive Director Jill Jedlicka. After all, Hoyt Lake and its neighbor Scajaquada Creek for decades have been cesspools of disease and fecal bacteria that[...]
Sep 29
2016
In this week’s episode of Investigative Postcast, Dan Telvock talks water quality with Erie County Legislator Pat Burke. Burke says the region has a history of bad environmental decisions. “Before we can even fix the obvious problems that exist now, we just have to stop doing dumb things,” said Burke, who introduced legislation that recently banned in Erie County the sale of products containing microbeads. “A lot of people would debate how influential the legislature can be in general, and I think me and some others have proven that it can be, and it can make a difference,” he said.[...]
Sep 28
2016
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Tuesday acknowledged the role reporters played in bringing possible corruption in the Buffalo Billion program to his attention and underscored the importance of investigative reporting in cleaning up state government. Bharara told an audience attending an event sponsored by City & State New York that he launched his probe after the problems were first pointed out in the local press. “That case got started because journalists in Buffalo and elsewhere started to write that there were shenanigans they believe that were going on with the bidding of contracts in Buffalo,” Bharara said. “And you know what we[...]