Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Interview with Charles Lewis, Founder of the Center for Public Integrity

Today, the center is a muckraking assembly line, winning its investigators 28 major journalism awards along the way to becoming the largest non-profit investigative journalism organization in the world - minus any requirement for on-camera drama. It broke the Lincoln bedroom scandal during the Clinton presidency, published the otherwise secret Patriot II Act, revealed that Enron was George W. Bush's top career patron, and disclosed the no-bid contracts granted to US companies in Iraq. In short, many of the last decade's investigative coups have been conducted by a non-profit, non-news organization. Recently, Charles Lewis stepped down from the center he founded. I asked him how his peers reacted when he first left 60 Minutes.

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