Reuters and its GM scoop

Earlier this month, Reuters exclusively reported that at least 74 people have died in General Motors cars in accidents with some key similarities to those that GM has linked to 13 deaths involving defective ignition switches.

The scoop was the result of a Reuters analysis of government fatal-crash data, which also showed that such accidents also occurred at a higher rate in the GM cars than in top competitors’ models.

Paul Lienert, the Detroit bureau chief for Reuters, discussed on a Reuters website how the story developed:

Q. How did you score this exclusive?

A. Ryan McNeill and I, with the help of Washington Bureau Chief Marilyn Thompson, put the GM crash deaths story together the old-fashioned way: Lots of late nights and plenty of shoe leather. The Reuters team has been turning out a steady stream of exclusives and solid reporting on the GM story since it broke in February. I started putting together a private database of crash victims soon after that, but Ryan made the big breakthrough when he started digging deeply into a key government database, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which is a state-by-state survey of crash deaths supplied by local law enforcement agencies.

Q. What types of reporting/sourcing were involved?

A. Much of our research involved poring through government databases — not just FARS, but the Early Warning Reporting database, which is a quarterly compendium of vehicle crash deaths and injuries provided by vehicle manufacturers. We looked through literally thousands of consumer complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That was the core of our work. After we analyzed the data, we shared our findings and methodology with General Motors, NHTSA and several outside experts, including the non-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which has years of expertise in analyzing vehicle crashes and safety.

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