Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity

Founded	March 1989
Founder	Charles Lewis
Type	501(c)(3)
Tax ID no.	54-1512177
Focus	Investigative Journalism
Location	Washington DC
Method	Foundation and Member Supported
Key people	Peter Bale (CEO)
Website	www.publicintegrity.org

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first." With over 50 staff members, CPI is one of the largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative centers in America. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

CPI has been described as an independent, nonpartisan and progressive watchdog group. In their February 16 and 17, 1996 reports on then U.S. presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan's ties to a white supremacy supporter, one journalist from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times editorial referred to the CPI as a "liberal group."

CPI releases its reports via its web site to media outlets throughout the U.S. and around the globe. In 2004, CPI's The Buying of the President book was on the New York Times bestseller list for three months.

History

1989–2004

CPI was founded in March 1989 by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes. According to a magazine profile, Lewis was motivated to start CPI because he had become "disenchanted by what he considered the sorry state of American investigative reporting and the sorrier state of American government."

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 D.C. In its first year, the CPI's budget was $200,000. In 1996, CPI launched its first website, although CPI did not begin to publish reports online until 1999.

In 2001, Global Integrity, an international project, was launched to systematically track and report on openness, accountability and the rule of law in various countries. It has since been incorporated independently.

2005–2007

Lewis served as CPI's director until January 2005. As of his departure, CPI had published 14 books and more than 250 investigative reports. In 2005, CPI had a staff of 40 full-time Washington-based reporters who partnered with a network of writers and editors in more than 25 countries. Years later, Lewis said he decided to leave his position at CPI because "he didn't want it to become 'an institution that was Chuck's Excellent Adventure." Lewis' departure surprised and upset philanthropists Herb and Marion Sandler, who had partially funded the CPI's activities.

In December 2004, CPI's board of directors chose television journalist Roberta Baskin as Lewis's successor. Baskin came to CPI after directing consumer investigations for ABC News's 20/20 and serving as Washington correspondent for PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers. Lewis wrote that "most of the Center’s carefully assembled, very talented, senior staff had quit by the fall of 2005."

In September 2005, CPI announced that it had discovered a pattern of plagiarism in the past work of staff writer Robert Moore for CPI's 2002 book Capitol Offenders. CPI 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 reporters whose work was plagiarized, authoring a new corrections policy, and returning an award the book received from Investigative Reporters and Editors. Moore went on to work for a political consulting firm that specializes in opposition research. 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.

Baskin led the organization until May 24, 2006.

2007–present

In 2007, Rawls was succeeded by William Buzenberg, a vice president at American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio. Buzenberg was first interviewed for the position in 2004 during the hiring process that ultimately led to the selection of his predecessor, Roberta Baskin.

According to a report by Lewis, "the number of full-time staff was reduced by one-third" in early 2007. By December 2007, the number of full-time staff had dropped to 25, down from a high of 40. 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."

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."

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...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."

In 2010, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund merged into the CPI, and eight Huffington Post journalists moved to CPI.

In 2011, CPI eliminated 10 staff positions in order to compensate for a $2 million budget shortfall. Buzenberg and other senior staffers also took salary cuts. CPI board chairman Bruce Finzen said the budget would be “reduced between $2 and $3 million, more like $2.5 million. The budget for next year will be in the 6 to 7 million range.” As of 2012, there were over 50 staffers at CPI, making it one of the largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative centers in the country.

In April 2011, with support from the Knight Foundation, CPI launched iWatchnews.org as its main investigative reporting website. In August 2012, CPI stopped using iWatchnews.org and returned to its original domain.

Buzenberg stepped down from CPI at the end of 2014, at which time Peter Bale was named CEO.

Organizational structure

Funding

A list of CPI's donors may be found on the organization's official website. CPI's annual reports are also available on the organization's website. CPI ceased accepting contributions from corporations and labor unions in 1996. In its first year, CPI's budget was reported to be $200,000. In 2010, CPI had $9,264,997 in revenue and $7,708,349 in expenses.

CPI reports receiving foundation support from a number of foundations, including the Sunlight Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Barbra Streisand Foundation reports that it has funded CPI.

In July 2014, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation donated $2.8 million to CPI to launch a new project focused on state campaign finance. According to the International Business Times, "as CPI was negotiating the Arnold grant, Arnold’s name was absent from a CPI report on pension politics." Arnold has spent at least $10 million on a campaign to roll back pension benefits for public workers.

Board of directors

CPI's board of directors includes Peter Bale, Ninan Chacko, Bruce A. Finzen, Arianna Huffington, Richard M. Lobo, Craig Newmark, Gilbert Omenn, Dan Emmett, Matthew Granade, Jennifer 8. Lee, James A. Kiernan, Steve Kroft, Hendrik-Jan Laseur, Susan Loewenberg, Bevis Longsteth, Olivia Ma, Scott Siegler, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, and Matt Thompson. Past board directors include Christine Amanpour, Sheila Coronel, and Molly Bingham.

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) logo

In 1997, CPI launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an international network that includes 165 investigative reporters in over 65 countries. Gerard Ryle is the director of ICIJ. Its website publishes The Global Muckraker. ICIJ is focused on issues such as "cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power". In 2013, the consortium reported having 160 member journalists from 60 countries. The ICIJ brings together teams of international journalists for different investigations (over 80 for Offshore leaks). It organizes the bi-annual Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. ICIJ staff members include Michael Hudson, while the Advisory Committee in 2013 included Bill Kovach, Phillip Knightley, Gwen Lister, and Goenawan Mohamad.

Ideology

A 2012 New York Times editorial described the CPI as a "nonpartisan watchdog group."

In relation to a story in February 1996, CPI was characterized as a "liberal group" by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog, has described CPI as "progressive." The Center describes itself as "strictly nonpartisan."

Reports

CPI's first report, America's Frontline Trade Officials, reported that nearly half of White House trade officials studied over a fifteen-year period became lobbyists for countries or overseas corporations after retirement. According to Lewis, it "prompted a Justice Department ruling, a General Accounting Office report, a Congressional hearing, was cited by four presidential candidates in 1992 and was partly responsible for an executive order in January 1993 by President Clinton, placing a lifetime ban on foreign lobbying by White House trade officials."

CPI Fat Cat Hotel 1996

In 1996, CPI released a report called Fat Cat Hotel: How Democratic High-Rollers Are Rewarded with Overnight Stays at the White House. This report, written by Margaret Ebrahim, won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists. The report was an examination of the connection between overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency and financial contributions to the Democratic Party as well as the Clinton re-election campaign.

CPI Windfalls of War 2003

In 2003, CPI published Windfalls of War, a report arguing that campaign contributions to George W. Bush affected the allocation of reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Slate ran a piece arguing that due to a statistically insignificant correlation coefficient between campaign donations and winning contracts, "CPI has no evidence to support its allegations."

CPI LobbyWatch 2005

CPI first reports on LobbyWatch were released in 2005. In their January 2005 publication entitled "Pushing Prescriptions" CPI revealed that major pharmaceutical companies was the number one lobbyist in the United States spending $675 million over seven years on lobbying. They continued with this series in 2005 revealing how pharmaceutical companies had contacts even within the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Trade Representatives.

CPI Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? 2009

CPI'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?”

CPI The Climate Change Lobby Explosion 2009

More than 100 newspapers, magazines, wire services and web sites cited CPI's report, The Climate Change Lobby Explosion, an analysis of Senate records showing that the number of climate lobbyists had grown by three hundred percent to four for every Senator.

Tobacco Underground 2010

Tobacco Underground, an ongoing project tracing the global trade in smuggled cigarettes, produced by CPI'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. The Tobacco Underground Project was funded by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. It is a cooperative project between the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) with journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Journalists in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, China, Italy, Paraguay and the UK also participated. that won the Overseas Press Club Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors's Tom Renner Award for crime reporting.

Sexual Assault on Campus 2010

In 2010, CPI partnered with National Public Radio to publish "Sexual Assault on Campus", a report which showcases the failures of colleges and government agencies to prevent sexual assaults and resolve sexual assault cases.

Secrecy for Sale: offshore accounts 2013 to present

In 2013, International Consortium for Investigative Journalists released the results of a 15-month-long investigation based on 260 gigabytes of data regarding the ownership of secret offshore bank accounts. The data was obtained by Gerard Ryle as a result of his investigation into the Firepower scandal. The ICIJ partnered with the Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, the Washington Post, SonntagsZeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR to produce an investigative series on offshore banking. ICIJ and partnering agencies used the ownership information to report on government corruption across the globe, tax avoidance schemes used by wealthy people, the use of secret offshore accounts in Ponzi Schemes, the active role of major banks in facilitating secrecy for their clients, and the strategies and actors that make these activities possible.

In early 2014 the ICIJ revealed as part of their "Offshore Leaks" that relatives of China's political and financial elite were among those using offshore tax havens to store wealth.

Praise

Kevin Phillips of National Public Radio has said, "no other investigative organization shines so many probing flashlights into so many Washington dirty-laundry baskets."

In 2006, Slate media critic Jack Shafer described CPI as having "broken as many stories as almost any big-city daily in the last couple of decades".

Awards

CPI received the George Polk Award in 2003 for its investigation of US military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan ("Windfalls of War: U.S. Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan"). Its work led to widespread media coverage that increased congressional scrutiny of military spending.

In 2011, CPI won a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for their investigation of weak inspections endangering factory workers and surrounding communities.

In 2012, CPI reporter Michael Hudson won a "Best-in-Business" award for digital investigative reporting from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Hudson won the award for his report entitled The Great Mortgage Cover-Up.

CPI's work has also received awards from PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, the National Press Foundation, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and others.

CPI reporter Chris Hamby won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Hamby's story reported that doctors and lawyers working for the coal industry helped defeat benefit claims of coal miners who had contracted black lung disease. After CPI's Pulitzer win, Politico reported that "ABC News has accused The Center for Public Integrity of downplaying the network's contributions to a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report, setting off a bitter public dispute between two news organizations that once worked as partners." CPI executive director Bill Buzenberg said that ABC News overstated its contributions to the story.

Criticism

Funding from George Soros

The Media Research Center, a politically conservative content analysis organization, argued that the CPI funded by Soros, pressured the IRS to target conservative nonprofit organizations.

In 2003 the Wall Street Journal criticized the CPI for accepting large funds from George Soros, a progressive-liberal billionaire and critic of the Bush administration. These concerns were echoed by the National Rifle Association and others in 2005 and by the Idaho Statesman in 2006.

The web site of one of Soros' organizations, the Open Society Institute, discloses four grants to the CPI, all made before George W. Bush's entry into the 2004 presidential contest. In 2000 Soros awarded CPI a $72,400 one-year grant supporting "an investigative journalism series on prosecutorial misconduct." In 2001 CPI received a $75,000 one-year grant from Soros supporting "an examination of wrongful convictions resulting from prosecutorial misconduct." In 2002 Soros granted CPI a $100,000 one-year grant "to investigate the political spending of the telecommunications industry on the federal, state and local levels."

• A $1 million three-year grant in 2002 "to support the Global Access Project."

Despite their previous connections, CPI 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. It also produced a detailed profile of Soros family political activity during the 2012 election. In 2009, CPI reported that it received $651,650 from the Open Society Institute. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post wrote, "that CPI has engaged in a non-stop accusations against the Kochs and that CPI is also funded by Soros money (at least in part) raise suspicion as to whether this is advocacy journalism (reporting with an agenda) or truly independent journalism."

Funding from supporters of legal restrictions on campaign finance

Writing in The Wall Street Journal in March 2005, commentator John Fund accused CPI of being a member of what he termed the "campaign finance lobby." 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. Fund singled out CPI as a front group pushing Pew's agenda, arguing that "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."

CPI's Bill Allison responded to criticisms arising from Tregalia's speech by emphasizing that Pew's contributions to the CPI's work on campaign finance have always been forthrightly disclosed. In a published argument with blogger Ryan Sager, Allison also disputed the notion that the CPI's work amounted to advocacy. Allison stated, "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.

In another essay on CPI's website, Allison challenged CPI's critics, and Fund specifically, arguing that "[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...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?

Looting the Seas controversy

In November 2010, CPI published a report on bluefin tuna overfishing entitled "Looting the Seas." Politico reported that "to obtain key information for the project, reporters accessed a database maintained by an intergovernmental fisheries regulatory body with a password given by a source, likely breaking the law." CPI's own lawyer and an outside law firm both determined that CPI's staff likely broke the law in obtaining information for the report. In addition, one of the experts quoted in the associated documentary was paid $15,000 as a project consultant to CPI. The investigative methods used to produce the report became a point of contention within the organization when CPI employee John Solomon made a number of accusations against the team that had worked on the series.

CPI board member and former New York Times Washington bureau chief Bill Kovach was asked by then-CPI president William Buzenberg to look into the matter. Kovach concluded that CPI's reporting was "sound, ethical and fully in the public interest." In addition, the board hired an outside law firm to answer the legal questions. Columbia Journalism Review reported: "As for the legality of using the password to access data, the lawyers concluded that, in theory, a prosecutor might argue it violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But whether it actually did was open to debate. And, in any case, it was highly unlikely that charges would ever be brought." In the wake of the controversy, David Kaplan and John Solomon resigned from CPI. CPI officials also withdrew their entry of the tuna story for a Pulitzer Prize. Andy Revkin of the New York Times wrote, "the relationship of the television production to a United Nations agency and an environmental group can prompt questions about objectivity, but the package, over all, appears robust." The Looting the Seas series won two journalism awards: the Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the 2010 Whitman Bassow Award from the Overseas Press Club of America.

Coordination with advocacy groups

In 2011, Politico called into question CPI's collaboration with advocacy organizations. Politico reported that CPI had coordinated the release of a report on Koch Industries with Greenpeace. Politico also reported that Pew Charitable Trusts, a funder of the Looting the Seas report, hosted a screening of a CPI documentary and then organized a call to action with other NGOs for the protection of bluefin tuna. In 2008, CPI published a report on tobacco that was both funded by and promoted by an advocacy group called Tobacco Free Kids.