Backgrounder: Charles Lewis

By Ashleigh Ormsby

Charles Lewis
Charles Lewis. Photo courtesy of the Center for Public Integrity.

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Lecture: Charles Lewis

"If Lewis didn't exist, somebody would have to invent him," a writer for The Chicago Tribune once observed. The quote appears on the "About" page for the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit, nonpartisan-watchdog organization created by Lewis. Located in Washington, D.C., the Center researches public policy issues.

Lewis got his first journalism job in 1971, at the age of 17, working nights in the sports department of the Delaware-based Wilmington News Journal. As an investigative reporter, he saw "the underside of politics," he recalled, in a September 30, 2004 phone interview with this writer. During the Watergate scandal, he interned for a U.S. Senator from Delaware, the only time he directly worked in politics. Lewis then worked for network television for eleven years, ABC News and CBS News. Lewis has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The Nation.

Lewis founded the Center in 1989. "I was frustrated [not only] with the state of broadcast journalism, but actually national journalism in general," he said. The number of scandals involving hundreds of people stealing huge sums of money, together with the sad fact that investigative reporting was becoming "a dying art form," caused Lewis to want to be able to do long term investigations on public policy issues, he said in an interview.

A man on a mission, Lewis quit his job as a producer at the CBS investigative show 60 Minutes, where he worked with correspondent Mike Wallace, and began working out of his house. "I had an idea of starting something in a nonprofit way, an attempt at journalistic utopia where I could investigate to my heart's content and didn't have to worry about ratings and shooting people tight and victims crying on camera and all the things I was having to worry about, including the powers [that] be," said Lewis to Mark Glaser, reporter for USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review. "I had had it."

In the past 15 years, the Center has grown from just Lewis into one of the world's most respected investigative reporting organizations, with a full-time staff of 40 and an annual budget of over $4 million. The Center takes what Lewis calls a "macro" approach to investigative journalism, looking for patterns of spending or corruption at the global, national, or metropolitan levels.

“The really sad part of the story is the media is, I think, worse than it was when I left. I thought it hit rock bottom in the late 1980's...I find it utterly pathetic today”

Since its creation, the organization has generated over 8,000 news stories, such as "Big Money, No Oversight," by Lewis printed in The New York Times on March 3, 1999. In addition, it has published more than 250 investigative reports, such as the recently released a report "Outsourcing the Pentagon." The report discloses all the Pentagon's contracts within the past 6 years, $900 billion worth of contracts. In the report, the Center identified and profiled 737 of the biggest defense contracts, 40% were no bidding. The Center was also the first to disclose that Halliburton had the most contracts in Iraq. Released on September 29, 2004, the report received a lot of coverage in newspapers and on cable news stations, "everybody has picked it up, it's kind of an important story," Lewis said in an interview.

The Center has also published over 12 books, including 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 and The Buying of the President, a series that is published every four years, to accompany presidential campaigns. These books expose the special-interest groups whose contributions help underwrite candidates' bids for the presidency. Following the paper trail, said Lewis, is a big part of investigative reporting. For The Buying of the President 2004, the Center interviewed 600 people, he noted. The truth buried at the bottom of the document pile or hidden, somewhere, in those miles of interview tape isn't always pretty to look at: In the article "Who's Who of Money Moguls in '96 Race" published in The New York Times on January 12, 1996 Lewis said, "The truth is that big-money interests have already preselected our choices of who will become the next President of the United States."

The Center has also exposed major political scandals, such as the Lincoln Bedroom Scandal, when more than 75 democratic contributors and fundraisers spent the night at the Clinton White House. The Center broke the story in its publication, The Public I, August 1996. The names of the overnight guest at the White House were kept secret, but the Center was able to compile a partial list of guests, including Tom Hanks and Barbra Streisand, both hosted fundraising events for President Clinton.

In 1997, Lewis launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a network of what Lewis believes are the world's best investigative reporters, covering issues whose impact goes beyond state or national borders. The project is a no-brainer for a man who holds a master's degree in international studies from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., and a B.A. in political science with honors and distinction from the University of Delaware.

In January 2005, Lewis will resign as executive director of the Center, although he will continue to serve on the Center's board of directors. "80 to 100 hour weeks have caught up with me, after 15 years," said Lewis in an interview. He plans on continuing to support the Center and help raise funds. Individuals and its many books and publications fund the Center, but it does not accept contributions from anonymous donors or corporations, labor unions or governments.

With the success of the Center as a nonpartisan watchdog organization, how does Lewis view the media today? "The really sad part of the story is the media is, I think, worse than it was when I left. I thought it hit rock bottom in the late 1980's...I find it utterly pathetic today," Lewis said in an interview.

Ashleigh Ormsby is a junior majoring in journalism and politics at NYU.

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