Center for Public Integrity

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, the CPI is one of the largest nonprofit investigative centers in America. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

The CPI has been described as an independent, watchdog group. The Center releases its reports via its website 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. As of December 21, 2018, CPI was rated as 3 out of 4 stars overall by Charity Navigator, an independent nonprofits evaluator.

Mission

The mission of the center is "to protect democracy and inspire change using investigative reporting that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests".

History

1989–2004

CPI was founded on March 30, 1989, by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News ''60 Minutes''. By the late 1980s Lewis observed that fewer resources—time, money and space—were being invested in investigative reporting in the United States by established news outlets and major publications.
In his book entitled '' 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity'' Lewis recounted how he recruited two trusted journalists, Alejandro Benes and Charles Piller—whom he had met through his television work— to serve on the board of directors of the nascent CPI. All three had grown dissatisfied with what was being done in the name of investigative journalism by established news organizations. They chose the name public integrity as a way of underlying the "ultimate purpose of investigative journalism" which is "to hold those in power accountable and to inform the public about significant distortions of the truth." In their tenth anniversary Annual Report Piller described their first meetings in their "Boardroom—the cheap seats at the Baltimore Orioles game.

In May 1990, Lewis used the money he had raised and his house as collateral to open an 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 August 2000 the CPI published a story entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough: State Department Questioned Deal With Firm Linked to Russian Mob", in which the authors argued that while Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton—from 1995 to 2000—the company received "$3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans".

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 a staff writer for CPI's 2002 book ''Capitol Offenders''. CPI responded by hiring a copy editor to review all 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. He went on to work for a political consulting firm that specializes in opposition research. In March 2007, he 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.

Baskin was followed by Wendell Rawls Jr., who was named the center's interim executive director. Rawls had previously worked as the center's managing director — being named to that post by Baskin on December 19, 2005. He joined CPI in August 2005.

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... ewisquite 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 million and $3 million, more like $2.5 million. The budget for next year will be in the 6 to 7 million range." , 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. In November 2016, Bale resigned from the center to "pursue other international media opportunities" and John Dunbar assumed the role of chief executive officer.

In 2019, Susan Smith Richardson was named chief executive officer, becoming the first African-American CEO in the center's history.

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 Foundations, 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 Elspeth Revere, Bill Kovach, 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 Christiane Amanpour, Sheila Coronel, and Molly Bingham.

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

In 1997, CPI launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This international network, based in Washington, D.C., includes over 200 investigative reporters in over 90 countries and territories.
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".ICIJ
About the ICIJ
/ref> 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 organized 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.

Panama Papers

In April 2016, the ICIJ made headlines worldwide with the announcement that it and the German newspaper had received a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents from a secret source, created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca

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