| Founder(s) | Charles Lewis |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3) |
| Founded | March 1989 |
| Location | Washington DC |
| Key people | Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Chairperson |
| Focus | Investigative Journalism |
| Method | Foundation and Member Supported |
| Motto | Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest |
| Website | www.iwatchnews.org |
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world. The Center's mission is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. Located in Washington, DC, the Center for Public Integrity has conducted investigations into many topics; the environment, public health, public accountability, federal and state lobbying, war profiteering, and financial disclosure, all of which have a public integrity component.
In 1997, the Center launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists(ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity that globally extends the Center’s watchdog style of journalism in the public interest by marshaling the talents of the world’s leading investigative reporters.
The Center releases its reports via its web site, press releases, and news advisories to all forms of media; broadcast, print, online, and blogs, throughout the U.S. and around the globe. The Center's 2004, "The Buying of the President" book was on the New York Times bestseller list for three months[1] after its January 2004 publication. The Center also collects and organizes the public records it gathers into online databases so that other reporters and the public have access to the information. In 2006, Slate media critic Jack Shafer described the Center as having "broken as many stories as almost any big-city daily in the last couple of decades".[2]
The Center receives funding from a large variety of foundations, philanthropic, and private donors. The Center does not accept anonymous donations, government grants and does not lobby, promote or endorse any legislation, policy, political party, or organization.
Contents |
In an essay marking the 10th anniversary of the Center's founding, Lewis wrote:
Initially the idea of having "investigative reporting" in the name appealed to me. But the landscape was crowded with groups having those words in their names: the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) in Missouri, the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington. It was not just that figuring out a way to include investigative and reporting in a memorable name without repeating all the other memorable names was going to be a problem. The whole reputation of investigative reporters was not exactly at its highest point at the time. Was this really how I wanted this group to be identified? So I asked a friend who was not a journalist, "What should this be called?" We tried to come up with the central theme to our discussions and we realized that the theme was integrity. And then we refined that theme to public integrity. I went to my new Board members and suggested the name. We knew that it sounded a little pompous. A little pretentious. A little strange. But it ended up being a very useful name because when anything arose remotely involving ethics, or impropriety anywhere, any time, in any field of endeavor, we would get the call.[3]
The Center was founded in March 1989 by Charles Lewis after an 11-year career as a television reporter that included a stint as correspondent Mike Wallace's producer for the CBS News program 60 Minutes.[3] Frustrated by his sense that the current system failed to adequately investigate corruption in Washington, Lewis quit his job at CBS and founded the Center. At the time, he wrote:
In recent years, a disturbing paradox has increasingly gnawed at me: America's best and brightest reporters, working for the most respected national news organizations, too often do not investigate the country's most important stories. ... While about 4,000 accredited reporters work today in Washington, not much muckraking is actually going on. There needs to be a group of respected journalists in Washington who on a regular basis are doing insightful investigative studies of the systematic problems hampering government and the political process.[4]
After starting out with headquarters in his home in Northern Virginia, Lewis began by securing funding and garnering support from a variety of a prominent public figures—early advisers included Arthur Schlesinger Jr., James MacGregor Burns, James David Barber, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Father Theodore Hesburgh, Bill Kovach and Hodding Carter III.[1]
In May 1990, Lewis used the money he had raised and his house as collateral to open an 1,800-square-foot (170 m2) office in Washington at 1910 K Street, N.W..[3] In its first year, the Center's budget was $200,000.[1] By the 1992 elections, Lewis had added three full-time staffers. The Center continued to grow over the years, relocating to 1634 I Street, N.W. in 1994, and by 2006 it employed more than three dozen employees. Its offices are now located at 910 17th Street, N.W.
In 1996 the Center launched its first Web site, but did not begin to publish reports online until 1999.[1]
Lewis served as director until January 2005. At the time of his departure, the Center claimed to have published 14 books and more than 250 investigative reports[5] and have a working staff of 40 full-time workers based in Washington partnering with a network of writers and editors in more than 25 countries.[1] Years later, Lewis said he decided to leave his position at the Center because "he didn't want it to become 'an institution that was Chuck's Excellent Adventure.[6]'"
The departure surprised and upset philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, who had partially funded the Center's activities.[7]
In December 2004, the Center's board of directors choose a successor, television journalist Roberta Baskin. Baskin came to the Center after directing consumer investigations for ABC News's 20/20 and serving as Washington correspondent for PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers.[8]
After the handover from the founder and long-time director Lewis, many of the Center's senior staff also left the organization.[1]
In September 2005, the Center announced that it had discovered a pattern of plagiarism in the past work of staff writer Robert Moore for the Center's 2002 book Capitol Offenders. The Center responded by hiring a copy editor to review all of Moore's work, issuing a revised version of Capitol Offenders, sending letters of apology to all of the reporters whose work was plagiarized, authoring a new corrections policy and returning an award the book received from Investigative Reporters and Editors.[9][10] Moore went on to work for a political consulting firm that specializes in opposition research.[11][12] In March 2007, Moore told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the Center's official version "is not accurate in telling the full story of why I left the center," but did not elaborate.[12]
In early 2006, The National Journal reported that Center staffer Bob Williams alleged he was fired for raising concerns about a no-bid consulting contract then-Managing Director Wendell Rawls received from the Tennessee Valley Authority, "where an old friend served as chairman[13] ." Williams told a reporter he was asked to leave shortly after challenging Rawls to "step outside" in response to Rawls impugning his masculinity.[6] Baskin and Rawls declined to comment on Williams' accusations about his departure, but both disputed his contention that Rawls' contract was an example of cronyism and later contested the story's account of a "heated" confrontation at a staff meeting.[14] Writing in 2008, Baskin alleged that Williams "physically threatened" Rawls at the meeting in question[10] and said that "Williams was angry and hurt about having to leave and cannot possibly be viewed as a credible source...[10]"
Baskin held the position until May 24, 2006,[15] when Rawls stepped in to serve as acting director. Writing in 2007, Lewis would describe the Center's output during Baskin's tenure as "generally unremarkable," lacking "the pop" of work from his tenure, and also report that fundraising for 2005 and 2006 amounted to only half the total Lewis raised during 2004, his final year.[1][6]
Baskin would later express surprise at Lewis' criticism while making a veiled referenced to the "high" salary he continued to earn after his retirement.[10]
In December 2006, Rawls was succeeded by William E. Buzenberg, a vice president at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio.[16]
Buzenberg was first interviewed for the position in 2004 during the hiring process that ultimately lead to the selection of his predecessor, Roberta Baskin.[6]
With traditional newsrooms shrinking and budgets for in-depth investigative reporting being cut in 2009, The Center for Public Integrity was dramatically boosting its productivity and visibility, with daily reporting on its PaperTrail blog in addition to major investigations. The Center’s report, Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?, looking at the roots of the global financial crisis, was featured in numerous media outlets, leading Columbia Journalism Review to ask, “Why hasn’t a newspaper or magazine done this?” More than 100 newspapers, magazines, wire services and web sites cited the Center’s report, The Climate Change Lobby Explosion, an analysis of Senate disclosure records showing the number of lobbyists on global warming had grown more than 300 percent in just five years, and that Washington now boasts more than four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress. Tobacco Underground, an ongoing project tracing the global trade in smuggled cigarettes, produced by the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was honored with the prestigious Renner Award for Crime Reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Online International Reporting.
According to a report by Lewis, "the number of full-time staff was reduced by one-third" in early 2007.[1] By December 2007, the number of full-time staff had dropped to 25, down from a high of 40.[6] At the time, Buzenberg said "It's a great, great place, but I will not mislead you... [Lewis] quite frankly left the center in great shape financially, but when you have a visionary who leaves, how do you continue? 'With difficulty' is the answer.[6]"
Baskin publicly disputed Buzenberg's claims in a letter to the American Journalism Review where she wrote:
Contrary to the statement from current Executive Director Bill Buzenberg, the center was not left "in great shape financially" by my predecessor. Much of the money raised during the year prior to my tenure was used to offset budget overruns on several previous projects. I replaced our director of development and made fundraising my number one priority, much as Buzenberg has done. As a rookie fundraiser, I take pride in the fact that I was able to raise millions of dollars.[10]
In 2008, Lewis reflected on the transition period following his resignation and said:
I regret what happened to my staff and the condition of the Center. It’s no secret it had a less than enviable few years. But that’s one of the reasons I thought it was important to leave. I had founded it and run it for 15 years, and at some point the founder does have to leave the building. Leaving at the 20-year mark, or 25-year mark, or 30-year mark wouldn’t have made such a transition easier; in fact, it would have made it even more difficult. There is something called the Founder Syndrome, and one of the problems is that the transition period is difficult because people think of the organization in terms of one person. I was trying to make it something beyond “Chuck’s Excellent Adventure” — less about me and more about the idea of having a watchdog entity in the nation’s capital doing investigative work. I don’t regret it, I think it was important that I left, but I do feel badly about the hardship it brought to people I think the world of. On a personal and human level, I feel bad for those folks and have spent dozens of hours helping people work through things. What do I think of things currently? It’s been a bumpy time. Bill Buzenberg is the third director since I left, but they have turned an important corner, and it’s back, and will continue to do important work. I’m doing everything I can discreetly to help them from outside the organization.[17]
In 2010, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund merged into CPI.
The Center's work has been honored by journalism awards from PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Capital Reporters and Editors, the National Press Foundation, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and others.[19] A full listing may be found here.[20]
Created in 1997, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists network includes 92 leading investigative reporters and editors in 48 countries. The group has collaborated on numerous online and printed reports on corporate crime, arms trafficking, terrorism, U.S. military policy and human rights issues. Global Integrity, another international project, was launched in 2001 to systematically track and report on openness, accountability and the rule of law in various countries.
The Center for Public Integrity is supported by individual contributions and grants awarded by charitable foundations. A list of the Center's funders may be found on its official Web site. Donations are tax-deductible. The Center ceased accepting contributions from corporations and labor unions in 1996.[3] In its first year, the Center's budget was reported to be $200,000.[1]
| 2002[24] | 2003[25] | 2004[23] | 2005[21] | 2006[22] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Program Services | $3,211,035 | $3,431,602 | $3,436,047 | $3,156,524 | $3,310,376 |
| Management | $158,635 | $647,919 | $781,966 | $814,311 | $856,808 |
| Fundraising | $312,476 | $283,785 | $327,890 | $429,868 | $569,753 |
| Expenses | $3,682,146 | $4,363,306 | $4,545,903 | $4,400,703 | $4,736,637 |
| Revenue | $2,934,193 | $4,314,611 | $6,494,199 | $3,138,139 | $3,207,695 |
| Excess or Deficit | ($747,953) | ($48,695) | $1,948,296 | ($1,262,564) | ($1,528,942) |
"The Center for Public Integrity has rescued investigative journalism from the margins and showed us how important this kind of reporting is to the health of democracy.[3] Bill Moyers
An indispensable truth-teller in a treacherous time.[3] Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
What has long impressed me about the Center in particular is its combination of realistic militance and fine scholarship.[3] James MacGregor Burns
In a political culture without apparent guiding principles, in a time when those who own our great media conglomerates stress markets above journalism, the Center for Public Integrity has offered an increasingly potent antidote.[3] Hodding Carter III
Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people’s faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. [The Center's] ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.[3] Walter Cronkite
In Washington, D.C., a city that is home to a surplus of committees and organizations with names that suggest they are pursuing worthy causes on behalf of all Americans — when in fact they are not — there is one group that lives up to its name: The Center for Public Integrity. ... The Center has no axe to grind, except to look out for the best interests of all citizens. In so doing, it has turned out one thought-provoking, fact-filled, nonpartisan study after another on the major issues of the day — all required reading for those who are committed to good and honest government.[3] Donald Barlett and James Steele
No one should be in doubt as to the value of the work of the Center for Public Integrity or the suffering that it causes. For much modern political and economic life and also, alas, for much media expression, nothing is so inconvenient, so unwelcome and often so powerful as the cold truth. This, the CPI for our pleasure and for our benefit provides.[3] John Kenneth Galbraith
Both a Los Angeles Times news story and a New York Times editorial referred to the Center as a "liberal group."[26][27]
Criticism of the Center frequently addresses the source of its financial support.[28][29][30][31][32][33] Despite its claims to be a nonpartisan news organization and profession of the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics,[34] the Center has been accused of bias towards left-wing political causes because it has accepted money from organizations and individuals that favor liberal policies and/or actively oppose right-wing political causes.
In a 2007 essay, the Center's founder Charles Lewis offered this about the Center's fundraising habits:
The issue of perceived financial “purity” and exactly from whom the Center should seek and accept money from has been an introspective feature of nearly every board meeting since 1989. Eventually, beginning in 1995, for example, we stopped raising funds from companies and labor unions because of their direct economic interests in influencing public policy; the nonpartisan Center has never accepted money from government, advocacy organizations, paid advertising or anonymous donors.[1]
The Center has been criticized for accepting large funds from George Soros, a politically active billionaire and critic of the Bush administration.[28][31][32][33] The Web site of one of Soros' organizations, the Open Society Institute, discloses four grants to the Center, all made before his entry into the 2004 presidential contest. They are:
The first two grants funded what eventually became the "Harmful Error" report, which was headed by Steve Weinberg. Weinberg is a professional journalist and former director of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
The telecommunications grant supported the launch of the Center's ongoing "Well Connected" project. According to the Center's site, other funding for that endeavor has been provided by The Ford Foundation.[39] The project has won an Online News Association award for enterprise reporting[40] and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in Online Journalism.[19]
According to its Web site, the Global Access project—now known as Global Integrity—seeks to "collect and disseminate trustworthy, credible, comprehensive and timely data and information on governance and corruption trends around the world." It publishes the Global Integrity Index, "an annual ranking of 50-100 diverse countries in more than 290 indicators of openness, governance, and anti-corruption mechanisms.[41]"
Despite their previous connections, the Center documented Soros' political donations during the 2004 political elections as a part of its "Silent Partners" project, which won an Online Journalism Association award for its reporting on the "527" groups that bypassed campaign finance disclosure regulations to funnel millions of dollars to both candidates.[19]
A 1999 report in the Seattle Times raised questions about the ethical behavior of PBS journalist Bill Moyers by documenting examples of his work that featured sources whose organizations have been funded by the Schumann Foundation, a philanthropic group he heads. Among the recipients of Schumann grants featured in Moyers' journalism has been the Center's founder Charles Lewis.
In 2004, Moyers and the Center were further criticized by Cliff Kinkaid of Accuracy in Media,[32] who emphasized that Moyers has also served on the board of the Open Society Institute,[42] a foundation started by a George Soros that has itself also funded projects at the Center.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in March 2005, commentator John Fund accused the Center of being a member of what he termed the "campaign finance lobby.[43]" Citing a speech by Sean Treglia, former program manager at Pew Charitable Trusts, Fund argued that a "stealth campaign" by "eight liberal foundations" fomented a false sense of public demand for new restrictions on the financing of public campaigns.[43] In the course of his essay, Fund singled out the Center as a front group pushing Pew's agenda.
Reporters are used to attempts to hoodwink officials into thinking an issue is genuinely popular, and they frequently expose them. But when "good government" groups like the Center for Public Integrity engage in the same tactics, journalists usually ignore it.[43]
The Center's Bill Allison responded to criticisms arising from Tregalia's speech by emphasizing that Pew's contributions to the Center's work on campaign finance have always been forthrightly disclosed.[44] In a published argument with blogger Ryan Sager, Allison also disputed the notion that the Center's work amounted to advocacy:
...The purpose of our grants is to do things like code hundreds of thousands of public records, put them in a database and post them on our Web site so anyone can use them. The amount of money we've gotten to push campaign finance reform is $0.[45]
In another essay on the Center's Web site, Allison challenged the Center's critics, and Fund specifically.
[Fund] doesn't cite a single instance in which the Center has attempted to "hoodwink" government officials (or anyone else, for that matter) into thinking campaign finance is a genuinely popular issue, because he can't. We simply don't operate that way. We don't do public relations campaigns. We don't lobby Congress. We don't petition the Federal Election Commission. We don't pretend we have legions of individuals contributing money to support our work. Our paid membership amounts to around six thousand people; we'd certainly be happy to have more.
We do put out factual information about a number of issues that interest us, one of which is campaign finance. And at least some of the public is interested in reading what we report. The Buying of the President 2004 was a New York Times bestselling book, and our 1996 report "Fat Cat Hotel," showing that the Clinton White House was renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign contributors, became a topic in the press, on Sunday morning talk shows, even in the monologues of late night comedians. The Center's founder and former executive director, Charles Lewis, also got to appear twice on the Comedy Central program The Daily Show. But that's the closest we've come to any sort of popularity; and how any of that could hoodwink anyone is a bit of a mystery.
And as for Mr. Fund, back in the days when campaign finance issues were of concern to him, he sought us out to lend authority to his writings on John Huang and quoted us in an Oct. 29, 1996, column on the subject. Is it Mr. Fund's view that when he wrote about various DNC campaign finance violations, he was trying to hoodwink federal officials into thinking that people cared about the issue[46]?
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| Board of Directors[48] | Advisory Board[49] | Management[50] |
|---|---|---|
|
Bill Buzenberg |
James MacGregor Burns |
Bill Buzenberg Ellen McPeake David E. Kaplan (author) Armando Zumaya Gordon Witkin |
Beyond the Hill: A Directory of Congress from 1984 to 1993. University Press of America. 1995. ISBN 081919820X.
The Buying of the President. Avon Books. 1996. ISBN 0380784203.
Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health. Carol Publishing Corporation. 1997. ISBN 1559723858.
The Buying of the Congress: How Special Interests Have Stolen Your Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Avon Books. 1998. ISBN 0380975963.
Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species. Public Affairs. 1999. ISBN 1586483749.
The Buying of the President 2000. Harper Perennial. 2000. ISBN 0380795191.
Citizen Muckraking: Stories and Tools for Defeating the Goliaths of Our Day. 2000. ISBN 1567511880.
The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions, and What You Can Do About It. William Morrow & Company. 2001. ISBN 038097682X.
Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our States. 2002. ISBN 1882583140.
Harmful Error. 2003. ISBN 1882583183.
The Water Barons: How a Few Powerful Companies are Privatizing Our Water. 2003.
The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Challengers--and What They Expect in Return. Harper Paperbacks. 2004. ISBN 0060548533.
The Corruption Notebooks. 2004. ISBN 1882583191.
Networks of Influence: The Political Power of the Communications Industry. Center for Public Integrity. 2005. ISBN 1882583205.
City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina. Louisiana State University Press. 2007. ISBN 0807132845.