Stories about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan permeate national and local news and carry over into many beats.
To improve their coverage of veterans affairs, journalists need to understand the issues facing veterans and their families, including post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, long waits for medical care, shortages of mental health professionals, charity fraud and redeployment.
Here are six tips for improving your coverage and taking a more watchdog approach to your reporting.
Hold government agencies accountable
Veterans are entitled to a host of benefits, yet many veterans have to fight to get the care they need. Learn your way around the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA), which includes both the Veterans Benefits Administration and the Veterans Health Administration.
Identify key databases where you can dig up facts and figures, starting with the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics (here’s the 2010 report). Dig into “Monday Morning Workload Reports,” where you can learn about the growing backlog of veteran disability cases.
To build your story, talk to local veterans about how long they have waited for medical appointments, and try to uncover differences in benefits in different geographical areas.
Chris Adams of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has a great presentation, “A Soldier’s Next Battle,” about how to investigate the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Investigate relevant charities
Wherever there is a need, a nonprofit (or dozens of nonprofits) will jump in to meet it. Others will jump in to exploit it, milking donors and paying themselves lavishly while doing little or no good for the stated beneficiaries. Some confuse potential donors by using names similar to large, well-known legitimate organizations.
For starters, look at top officers’ salaries and investigate whether friends or family members of the founder are on the payroll. But don’t get hung up on salaries; in many F-rated organizations, salaries are not the problem.
Closely examine the amount spent on fundraising or paid to consultants, and compare these numbers with the amount used to benefit veterans. Learn the ins and outs of nonprofits, how to read a 990 form and what questions to ask in your investigation.
Start your investigation of veteran-focused charities with a look at this presentation on charity fraud. GuideStar’s website is a great resource for learning how to examine a charity’s financials. Begin with the “Understanding the IRS Form 990″ page.
Here’s a good series of stories on a fake Navy Veterans charity that Poynter’s Tampa Bay Times exposed last year.
Expose GI Bill fraud
For-profit educational institutions are eager to claim a share of GI Bill dollars. But many are not accredited, have high drop-out rates or low graduation rates, and have dismal job placement records among their graduates.
Contact universities in your area — both nonprofit and for-profit — and ask about these numbers for veterans who enroll. Several websites — run by marketing firms — target veterans, hoping to attract them and their government dollars to their client schools.
These websites look like official information sources about GI benefits and might fool many veterans (or journalists), but they are really just cleverly disguised ads for the marketers’ client schools. GIBill.com used to be one of these misleading sites and has since been turned over to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Check out the schools that the sites list or that come up in your search for a particular major or degree to find out who their clients are. Then talk with local veterans, educators and students about their experiences with the GI Bill or with those schools.
Understand and explain the effects of PTSD and traumatic brain injury
PTSD and traumatic brain injury affect the injured individual, the family — and anyone who works, lives or studies with an affected individual. How do families cope with their returning veterans? Why is it so hard for veterans to find and keep jobs? How does PTSD or brain injury affect a person’s ability to attend college? What can be done to help?
The effects can range from anxiety to depression to bursts of violent anger. Domestic violence and high suicide rates have been attributed to PTSD and brain injuries. Inability to focus or memory problems can make studying and working challenging for veterans who have no outward signs of a disability.
If you haven’t reported on them yet, familiarize yourself with PTSD and brain injury. Then search out stories of local veterans — or organizations assisting them. There’s practical assistance, such as refurbishing homes, as well as therapeutic assistance, such as using service dogs).
Remember the caregivers
The story of returning veterans extends beyond the individuals to their families and communities. Who is supporting the families during these often difficult adjustments? How do children adjust to the return of a parent that some young children barely know? How do families that have figured out how to “work” without a deployed parent retool themselves to allow Mom or Dad to take on a parenting role again?
And, for many families, who helps them cope with the darker side of depressed, disoriented, or even violent family members? Start your investigation by learning about VA benefits for caregivers, then expand your research to find out what community organizations in your area are doing to help — and what needs remain unmet.
Find listening posts
To find sources for any of the story ideas in this piece, or to generate additional ideas, find yourself a listening post. Look online for locally written blogs, meetups or Facebook groups that address veterans’ issues.
Or, stop by a local American Legion or VFW post. Be careful though; just as there are fraudulent veterans’ assistance charities, there are lots of organizations that call themselves veterans organizations but don’t measure up.
Check out the official rules for veterans organizations at the IRS Veterans Organizations’ website. For additional ideas and resources, check out the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. You can even explore the Veterans Database online.
Additional resources are available on Poynter NewsU’s Resources for Covering Veterans’ Issues page, an outgrowth of the “Battle on the Homefront,” Specialized Reporting Institute (SRI) seminar. NewsU also has a related Webinar that you can replay. The presentations mentioned in this article are also from the SRI.
