December 31, 2008

To whom it may concern:

I would like to apprise you of some very significant developments regarding the Fund for Independence in Journalism, in the full context of the short history of this enterprise, and to thank the Board of Directors, the staff and our generous supporters for enabling our work here.

In 2003, the award-winning Center for Public Integrity was under legal siege, facing two libel lawsuits for its investigative reports, one of them brought by litigious, Moscow-based, billionaire oligarchs represented by Akin Gump and filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Worse, because of the pending litigation, no libel insurance company would insure the Center. How many more lawsuits would there be? And what if there was a judgment brought against the Center and upheld by the courts?

To say that things looked bleak would be an understatement. The entire institution, despite its national awards, international reach and reputation, was vulnerable.

After much deliberation, we all realized that the Center for Public Integrity needed a 509(a) (3) endowment and legal defense support organization, and that is how the Fund for Independence in Journalism was born. In the five years since then, with Bevis Longstreth (who proposed the innovative idea of creating the Fund) as chairman and myself as president, the newly incorporated and IRS approved Fund was able to raise roughly five million dollars in contributed support, and obtain written assurances from five respected law firms to defend the Center for Public Integrity against future libel litigation, on a case-by-case, pro bono basis.

By late 2005, the pending lawsuits against the Center had been dismissed, and there has been no new litigation brought against the Center since 2001 (knock on wood).

But by then, the Center faced another crisis. After I, as the exhausted founder and first Center executive director stepped down at the end of 2004 after 15 years, the next two executive directors spent considerably more than they were actually raising in 2005 and 2006, while keeping the full-time staff at or close to 40 people, thereby quickly dissipating the internal reserves that had been accumulated before them.

It took decisive action by the Center Board beginning in mid-2006 and the subsequent arrival in early 2007 of William E. Buzenberg – a nationally respected journalist for three decades and NPR's first managing editor – to stabilize the organization financially, thinning the staff ranks by a third and securing half a dozen multi-year grants to the Center for the first time since 2004.

On that road to redemption, however, the Center accounts by now were practically empty, with no immediate place to go financially for the more than $300,000 monthly overhead expenses. In the first months of 2007, the Fund for Independence in Journalism provided $1.5 million in "transition" funding to the Center. The Center was thus saved by the Fund, enabling the organization to get its expenses and revenue in balance.

At the very end of 2007, one other thing was provided: an unprecedented 380,000-word chronology of 935 "false statements" about the supposedly imminent national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by eight of the top Bush administration officials over two years after September 11, 2001. Iraq: The War Card was provided for publication to the Center for Public Integrity, as an in-kind contribution by the Fund, and it was posted online January 23, 2008 and covered by the news media around the world on the eve of the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War. This popular report had been heroically compiled for two and a half years by indefatigable Mark Reading-Smith, Matt Lewis, Jeanne Brooks and others at the Fund, as part of my forthcoming book about what has happened to facts, truth and the truth-telling role of journalists in our society.

All of the above are the contributions of the Fund for Independence in Journalism to the organization it was created to support. So too will be this timeless Fund website, linked to the Center's site for posterity, containing 23 high definition video-streamed snippets from more than 50 hours of interviews I conducted with some of the most important national journalists of the past half century, the recordings produced by Reading-Smith and Margaret Ebrahim. The celebrated journalists' careers and that of four other deceased or otherwise unavailable great journalists will be profiled in detail. This Fund project will provide a video record about their work spanning the most seismic historic moments since the 1950s, from the McCarthy early 1950s era to the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, from the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal to the Bush administration's "war on terror" including the war in Iraq. It will remind current and future generations of the vital importance of independent journalism to effective governance, to an informed citizenry, and to democracy itself.

Many of these journalists will be quoted in my forthcoming book about truth, power, the news media and the public's right to know. Feature film or television and radio documentaries, once partners are found, will be written and co-produced by Ebrahim and I and reported/narrated by me. Finally, this treasure trove of rich material ultimately will comprise an unprecedented, oral history archive which will continue to grow in the years ahead at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

In January, 2008, I informed the Board that I would be stepping down as founding president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism by year's end. Along the way, it had also become clear that it is much easier and more feasible for the Center executive director to raise endowment funds for the Center, than the president of the Fund, a legally separate organization.

On June 25, 2008, the Fund board of directors voted unanimously to maintain the Fund but as an inactive entity beginning January 1, 2009, and to preserve its name and tax status, all with a view to the possibility of reactivating it at some time in the future. The Fund board thereafter will consist of the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, the chair of the Center for Public Integrity board of directors, and the chief operating officer of the Center for Public Integrity.

The board also voted to give, at year’s end, all of the Fund's remaining assets, approximately $2 million, to the Center for Public Integrity for a Center board-designated endowment fund to be preserved and enhanced through investments and fundraising. The Center may use its investment income of up to $100,000 per year for research and development and special projects.

Thanks to the Board, the staff and our generous donors, the Fund was able to accomplish what it was established to provide: a legal and financial backstop supporting the Center during a difficult, tumultuous time. And now with the immediate legal and financial threats to the Center ameliorated, and the Center once again operating under strong, secure leadership, the organization boards have decided for the foreseeable future to consolidate all of their energies, talents, focus and assets once again behind the Center for Public Integrity.

I apologize for the long letter, but here, once and for all, is the story of the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

Best wishes,

Charles Lewis
Founding President