Tips, records, interviews with air marshals led to scoop
Jana Winter hadn't officially started work at The Boston Globe when she made a late-night phone call to her editor several weeks ago.
Imagine if the Transportation Safety Administration and federal air marshals had a secret program that tailed ordinary travelers — people not on any watchlist or flagged for any other reason, she said. The move is of questionable legal status and may be keeping air marshals from more vital work protecting travelers and airlines. Some of the people the air marshals snooped on turned out to be a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, a fellow federal law enforcement officer and a businesswoman who happened to travel once through the Middle East.
Winter, who had written for The Intercept, Foreign Policy and The Daily Beast, "was over the moon" about this idea, says investigative editor Brendan McCarthy. He was, too.
She was supposed to work on an entirely different project as a Spotlight investigative fellow, which is a one-year position funded by the producer of the movie "Spotlight." Instead, Winter and a team of editors, social media experts, audience specialists, developers and app makers created a story on the enhanced surveillance program, published over the weekend.
McCarthy breaks down the story this way: Winter understands national security and the TSA and is a "spectacular documents reporter." Her deep network of sources understood the program, called Quiet Skies. And Winter spoke with federal air marshals. Some considered the program a waste of time, monitoring whether people slept on the plane, went to the bathroom or got a rental car.
The TSA denied the existence of the program until the story broke — and had nationwide impact. Then the agency released a statement acknowledging Quiet Skies and saying it began in March. Lawmakers raised questions, and the TSA agreed Monday to brief them later this week. Winter has been busy with followups and queries from Globe readers, other news outlets and travelers across the country.
“Many people have asked, ‘How do I know if I’m being surveilled?’ It’s a great question, and one we don’t have an answer to, and one we have put to the TSA,” McCarthy said.
It's worth noting that the Globe may not have gotten the story without the creative financing to get a grant for an investigative fellow. Grants, donor-supported positions and crowdfunded spots have been ways that newsrooms have been able to extend their coverage.
Winter will eventually transition to her original project, McCarthy says, but she's off to the fastest start in the three years of the Spotlight fellowship program. Has Quiet Skies affected you? Here is the Boston Globe map of some of the airports in which air marshals are working:
Quick hits
INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN: Facebook has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages, engaging in political activity ahead of November’s midterm elections, The New York Times reports. The campaign is on both Facebook and Instagram, the company says.
ONE VICTORY: In a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones, who runs the conspiracy site Infowars, Jones finally acknowledged that a child was killed in the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Houston attorney Mark Bankston called it “an important step … but not the last,” the Austin American-Statesman reported. Jones, who had long denied the killing of 20 kids in Newtown and stirred doubts among his readers and viewers, faces five defamation suits.
‘FEAR’: Bob Woodward’s publisher announced that a “harrowing” look at life inside the Trump White House would be published as a book on Sept. 11. Woodward’s 19th book, with an unsettling cover, takes its title from a comment from then-candidate Trump in 2016. “Real power is,” Trump told Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, “I don’t even want to use the word: ‘fear.’ ”
COVERING IMMIGRATION: Context, historical background, questioning of press releases, non-crisis coverage and the voices of those most affected help make immigration coverage soar, says PRI’s Angilee Shah. It’s not easy, given the complexities of immigration courts and policies. “People expect there to be a paper trail, the way there often is in criminal justice…” Shah tells Chloe Reichel of Journalist’s Resource. “It’s really important to understand that a paper trail is much harder to find.” Here’s Shah’s Google doc of 73 key immigration data sources.
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB AWARDS: The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Roll Call and Denver's KDVR took top prizes. Here is the list of awards, which will be handed out at a dinner Aug. 30.
TWEET OF THE DAY: From Jill Jorgensen, city hall bureau chief of the shrunken New York Daily News. Here, the readers have their say about the layoffs last week of half the newsroom:
On Poynter.org
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Snopes managing editor fired — and says she doesn’t know why. By Daniel Funke.
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CBS keeps Moonves, for now. By Al Tompkins.
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The Colorado Sun also rises. By Taylor Blatchford.
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Have a great Wednesday.
