President Charles Lewis

Background

Charles Lewis is the founding president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism. Lewis founded and for 15 years was executive director of the nonprofit investigative reporting organization the Center for Public Integrity, which produced roughly 300 reports and 14 books during his tenure, garnering 35 national journalism awards. In 1997, he began the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the world's first working network of premier investigative reporters, currently 95 people in 48 countries.

In 2003, the Center posted secret Patriot II draft legislation against the explicit wishes of the Justice Department, and eight months later, published online the major U.S. government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq, revealing Halliburton to be, by far, the largest beneficiary. PEN USA, the respected literary organization, gave its 2004 First Amendment award to Lewis, "for expanding the reach of investigative journalism, for his courage in going after a story regardless of whose toes he steps on, and for boldly exercising his freedom of speech and freedom of the press."

In 1998, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. From 1977 to 1988, he did investigative reporting for ABC News and was a producer assigned to senior correspondent Mike Wallace at CBS News's 60 Minutes. He began in journalism at age 17, working nights in the Wilmington (DE) News-Journal sports department. A native of Newark, Delaware, he received a bachelor's degree with honors and distinction in political science at the University of Delaware in 1975, and a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

Co-author of five Center books, including the bestseller, The Buying of the President 2004, Lewis is writing his sixth book for HarperCollins, about power, the news media and the public's right to know. He serves on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the National Press Club. Lewis co-founded a new nonprofit enterprise tracking corruption around the world, Global Integrity, and he is a member of its Advisory Board.

He is a Distinguished Journalist in Residence at the American University School of Communications in Washington and recently completed a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2005 he was a Ferris visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University.

Interviews / Recent Writing