In 2024, a Dallas Express investigative story revealing that Congresswoman Kay Granger had missed 52% of her votes that year and was residing full-time in an assisted living facility went viral globally after being shared by Elon Musk and other major political influencers on X.
This story culminated in a major scoop confirmed by Granger’s son and eventually other sources, making headlines across every major global news outlet – print, digital, and television.
The story created a national conversation on the need for Congressional term limits, particularly in light of Joe Biden’s cognitive issues, Diane Feinstein’s mental condition prior to her death, and questions about Mitch McConnell’s mental capacity and health.
The fact that “new media” Dallas Express investigated and broke the story has also drawn attention to how the larger Capitol Hill press corps failed to report on Granger’s situation and absence, despite her prominence in Congress.
DX’s journalistic approach, which included persistent inquiries and proactive engagement with local sources, allowed the outlet to uncover the truth in an era where larger media entities sometimes overlook or ignore significant narratives, reported POLITICO.
POLITICO interviewed DX’s CEO Chris Putnam to uncover more of the story while also questioning the efficacy and influence of today’s legacy media:
In 2023, a small website called The Dallas Express picked up a startling allegation: Texas Rep. Kay Granger, one of the most powerful GOP members of Congress, was struggling with dementia.
The publication “actually got a tip from a senior staffer in her office that she was having issues,” said Chris Putnam, the Express’ CEO. “They got the date and location for her visiting the Brain Institute and had a reporter there and got eyes on her. They didn’t get a photograph of her.”
There wasn’t enough to go on. But the next year, the idea was still around, even though Granger had stepped down from chairing the Appropriations Committee and wasn’t running again. When the publication was unable to reach the Fort Worth Republican for a story, Putnam said, “I checked roll call, and I saw that she hadn’t cast a vote since early July.”
What followed, according to Putnam, was basic journalistic shoe-leather. He dispatched a reporter to Granger’s district office and found the place all but abandoned — something confirmed by a call to the property manager. “I started making some calls personally to some of the folks that I know in the area,” he said. “And sure enough, we were tipped off about where she was.”
The tip: For months, she’d been living in an assisted-living facility in Texas that also includes memory care. A reporter was sent to the facility. “We fully expected them to just basically escort him out,” Putnam said. “But no, they sent a representative out and they acknowledged it.”
The story broke in December, shortly before Granger’s long-planned retirement, and was confirmed several days later by Granger’s son, who acknowledged “dementia issues” in a Dallas Morning News interview. As the news ricocheted around the political world, a Texas website with an editorial staff of 10 was credited with a massive scoop — while the Capitol Hill press corps was pilloried for supposedly taking its eye off the ball.
Given that the U.S. Capitol is one of the few buildings in America where the reporting corps hasn’t been totally devastated, it was a confounding miss. Granger wasn’t a nobody. She’d been in office for over a quarter-century, and had been the top Republican on the Appropriations committee until last April. Her face was familiar both to her colleagues and the reporters who roam outside the House chamber. Curiosity might also have been triggered by the fact that she’d voluntarily stepped aside from a plum position that most members of Congress would have to have pried from their hands.
There were also at least some opportunities for journalists to find out what was happening. Granger may have been absent from votes, but she briefly returned to the Hill for a retirement salute to her last November, well into the period where her son acknowledged “dementia issues” and just a month before the Express story broke.
At the chummy event, speakers included House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, as well as Democrats Rosa DeLauro and Nita Lowey. Nobody mentioned anything awry when Granger, still an elected official, reappeared not for an important vote but for a laudatory send-off. During the tribute, Granger sat and looked on as her official portrait as a former Appropriations Committee chair was unveiled before a large audience of congressional colleagues and staffers.
Or, as reporters call them, “sources.”
And it’s not like the proximate issue was unknown. Between Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein, the conversation about elderly and possibly impaired politicians was already roiling Washington, which ought to have pricked up people’s radar.
But even without the details of cognitive health — which are dicey to report on because even impaired people have good days, because political allies are often in denial, and because actual doctors won’t talk — it seemed odd: Just how did a 2,000-member strong press corps allow a well-known lawmaker to vanish from the scene for months? It’s the kind of omission that fuels the endemic distrust toward Washington and the news media.
In the movie version, the whole thing would play like a David-and-Goliath journalism story. While the entitled congressional press corps twiddles its thumbs in Washington, a plucky local news site bravely digs up an outrage that powerful insiders have kept from the public. Cue the Oscars!
In fact, the story of how the congressional media missed the story and the obscure hometown site broke the news is a bit more complicated than that. The Dallas Express is not exactly your central casting team of underdog hometown nobodies: It’s a website run by Putnam, a politically wired conservative who once ran a primary campaign against Granger from the right. For another thing, Hill reporters are nobody’s idea of lazy Beltway swells. It’s an impossibly competitive 24-hour battle for scoops without much time for thumb-twiddling.
Instead of a fable about idealistic outsiders beating entitled insiders, the story of this failure is also about what kind of outlets cover the Hill now, what kind have receded, and how this dynamic shapes the political conversation.
The basic change: Politics- or policy-centric outlets with a national focus have established major footholds. But there’s been a hollowing out of the hometown outlets who once sent reporters to Washington with orders to watchdog their local lawmaker, whether or not that lawmaker was a big shot.
“Our number used to be in the hundreds,” said Nick Grube, the Washington correspondent for Honolulu Civil Beat and the president of the Regional Reporters Association, which represents Beltway reporters for local outlets around the country. “Now we’re in the dozens.”