The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization that conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world.



The Center was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis following a successful 11-year career in network television news. Through thorough, thoughtful and objective analyses, the Center hopes to serve as an honest broker of information – and to inspire a better-informed citizenry to demand a higher level of accountability from its government and elected leaders.



The Center extends its public policy journalism around the world. Created in 1997, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist 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 Access, another international project, was launched in 2001 to systematically track and report on openness, accountability and the rule of law in various countries.



Since 1990, the Center for Public Integrity has released more than 275 investigative reports and 14 books. In just the last eight years the organization has been honored more than 30 times by, among others, PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors [IRE] and the Society of Professional Journalists [SPJ]. The Center`s "Windfalls of War" report on U.S. government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan won the highly prestigious George Polk award [online category] in 2004.



The Center`s publication, The Buying of the President 2004, built on the success of its 1996 and 2000 predecessors and again focused on the relationships between major presidential candidates and their "career patrons." The book, which appeared on The New York Times bestseller list several times since its January, 2004 publication, has become something of an American classic because it provides the only investigative profiles and personal histories of the major presidential candidates prior to the first caucuses and political primaries. In the summer of 2004, the Center published The Corruption Notebooks, a hard-hitting collection of essays by leading investigative journalists around the world on the status of corruption in 25 countries.



The exponential increase in usage of the Center`s reports by the media, academics, nongovernmental organizations and the public at large shows the growing impact of its mission. The quality of the Center`s work, in only 14 years, has firmly established the organization as an institutional presence in Washington. By building upon and perpetuating its hard-earned reputation for "public service journalism," we aim to steadily increase the organization`s impact on public policy debates.



The Center for Public Integrity does not accept contributions from anonymous donors or from corporations, labor unions or governments.