With recent congressional scrutiny on NPR and the broader public media system, many people are asking how and why NPR news stories come to be. The NPR investigative reporting unit is a small group of journalists, and their stories often take a long time to report. The work is unique. It's rare that another newsroom will report on the same issues.
We wondered how the investigative journalists at NPR decide which stories to pursue.
Over the years, the investigations team has uncovered deadly conditions in a federal prison (prompting its shutdown), identified public officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, and examined and revealed how distorted some of the country's historical markers are. Some in NPR's audience, like U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, voice their appreciation of the revelatory information brought forth from an NPR investigation. And at the Public Editor's Office, we occasionally hear from audience members who want NPR to investigate a story or topic further.
For this installment of the News Literacy Edition of the NPR Public Editor newsletter, we explore how NPR investigations are born, and what sets them apart from other investigative journalism. We talked to a reporter, a correspondent, a producer specializing in data and the chief investigations editor to get a peek into the process. — Amaris Castillo
Every investigation starts with an idea or a question. "A story can come from a million different sources," Tom Dreisbach, a correspondent on NPR's investigations team, told us. He said it can come from following a beat closely for a long time, a tip from an audience member or a social media post that sparks a question.
With this kind of fluidity, deciding when to invest reporting resources is tricky, according to Robert Little, chief investigations editor. Correspondents find and develop investigative story ideas. As the boss, Little said he will occasionally assign ideas or broad topics. "If we know what the story is, it's not really an investigation," he added. "We're looking for important unanswered questions and trying to figure out how we can answer them."
The team has a simple three-part test, which is applied to any story idea:
- Is the idea original? Little said his team pursues stories that no one else is doing, which removes many ideas from the table. Before he joined NPR's investigations team, Dreisbach was a producer and editor for NPR's Embedded, where he investigated how changes to prescription painkillers contributed to an HIV outbreak in Indiana. Similar questions guide Dreisbach when deciding what to investigate next: "Has anyone else done this story before? Are we breaking some new ground here?"
- Is it possible? "If we have an unanswered question and we want to try to put together a reporting strategy, we have to be realistic about whether we can answer the unanswered question," Little explained. "Can we get original data? Can we get original sources who will give us information?"
- Does it matter? According to Little, this question is key. "It's essential that we only do stories that are really worth it," he said. "That resonate in the public and with our audience, and have potential to make a difference."
When beat reporting turns into an investigation
In May, NPR published an investigation by Dreisbach that identified three Trump White House officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists. They included a man described by federal prosecutors as a "Nazi sympathizer," and a prominent Holocaust denier. The journalist said he got this idea from his deep beat reporting on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol.
"When we started covering Jan. 6, we knew it was a really important event — this massive attack on the U.S. Capitol became the largest criminal investigation in federal history," Dreisbach recalled.
Little said that, as a team and as a network, the decision was made four years ago at NPR to focus on Jan. 6 and learn everything they could about what happened at the the U.S. Capitol that day. He said NPR covered it as breaking news, but recognized that it was an important historical news event, and an opportunity to dig a little deeper.
Even with numerous news reports, videos, photographic evidence and witness testimonies of Jan. 6, Americans remain divided over how that day should be remembered. Because of this, Dreisbach says that establishing the facts seemed more important than ever. During the Capitol riot, there were reports of antisemitic rhetoric and symbols.
His investigation, which aired on All Things Considered, noted President Donald Trump's promise to fight antisemitism and then identified three administration officials with past ties to antisemitic extremists. Dreisbach interviewed a freelance journalist, Amanda Moore, who, while watching a rally in Detroit last summer, recognized Paul Ingrassia, a young lawyer and pro-Trump activist. Dreisbach reported that Ingrassia supported the Patriot Freedom Project, which advocates for people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Ingrassia was later nominated to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a government ethics office, despite his ties to multiple antisemitic extremists.
Dreisbach said even though this investigation took about a week and a half to piece together, he already had a lot of background knowledge because of his beat reporting. In other circumstances, it could have taken much longer to report.
Additionally, NPR has made a concerted effort to track every federal criminal case stemming from that day's events, resulting in a publicly available database. "We're really committed to maintaining this database to make sure that this history doesn't get lost," Dreisbach said.
Little said Dreisbach's investigation into Trump appointees with ties to antisemitism is an example of an NPR reporter who has developed an area of expertise. He said NPR recreated the events of Jan. 6 in a way that many other news organizations hadn't. And Dreisbach, he said, has led the effort. Little said other reporters on his team have also done deep reporting into other areas, like correspondent Sacha Pfeiffer on the U.S. naval base and military prison at Guantánamo Bay, correspondent Joseph Shapiro on disability issues and correspondent Laura Sullivan with a recent collaboration with PBS Frontline on the country's vulnerability to climate change-related storms.
Revealing a deeper narrative through audio recordings
In January 2025, Nick McMillan and Chiara Eisner of NPR's investigations team detailed through scanner traffic between first responders how Los Angeles firefighters lost water early into the Palisades fire and other fires that followed. They transcribed and analyzed more than 2,000 hours of communications from 13 audio feeds streaming LA City and County first responder communications channels. A month later, their original investigation revealed how power lines operated by Southern California Edison sparked new blazes as firefighters were trying to put out other fires. A third related investigation is forthcoming.
Eisner and McMillan shared how this series of investigations came to be. "Since Nick and I have been on this team at NPR, we have both really made it a goal of ours to do investigations where we use audio as evidence — not just do investigations and then put those investigations on the air," Eisner said. "Just like The New York Times does visual investigations, because our medium is radio, we have this unique opportunity to develop a specialty in analyzing audio evidence." She added, "And there is a lot of it out there."
When the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed in March 2024, the duo got their first shot at tapping into emergency services audio recordings. Along with Caitlin Thompson and within days of the collapse, they published an investigation about the exchanges between first responders from multiple agencies, most of which had not been published by any other news outlet.
After that story aired, McMillan continued to refine his method for analyzing large amounts of audio data. Then, the fires in LA broke out, giving them an opportunity to test out the new methodology.
"There were a lot of questions about how those fires started and why they kept going, and why certain communities were more affected than others, and we didn't see anyone using this sort of audio evidence to answer those questions," Eisner recalled. "And so we saw an opportunity there, and we started reporting on it."
McMillan, a producer who specializes in data, said that, while working on the bridge collapse story, he stumbled upon Broadcastify.com, a website that streams live audio for public safety, aircraft, rail and marine-related communications. For the first investigation using the scanner traffic during the LA fires, the company gave McMillan what's called an API Key, which meant he could write his own program to download all the audio they needed for their investigation.
"There was no defined methodology for how to do this. We were making it ourselves, but I thought it worked really well," Eisner said. "Nick created a system that transcribed the audio, which we didn't have in the first iteration of the project."
Eisner said they also collaborated with reporters at member stations in Los Angeles. "While there weren't member station reporters who were part of our reporting team, so to speak, we were constantly talking with them," she said. "And that's been a great part of the process too. For this third story that we're doing, I think that collaboration, I'm hoping, will increase."
According to Little, the investigations team tries to involve member stations where it's appropriate. "The member station network is what makes NPR, NPR, and a national network. I mean, it's one of our greatest strengths," he said. "It really is an incredible resource that we have, so we try to leverage that. I don't know if I've ever lived up to that opportunity."
Eisner said she relies on her own criteria before starting an investigation: Is there a reason people should care now? Is harm being done? Is the suffering serious? In this case, she said, the answer was clear.
"It was obvious that there was a unique amount of harm being done," she said. "There were lives being lost. There were a lot of innocent people who were losing their homes."
NPR's investigative team works to unearth stories that may otherwise go unnoticed. Their work promotes accountability, answers difficult questions, and brings new information into public view. Investigative stories are a small part of NPR's overall output, with a big impact. — Amaris Castillo
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute
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