The Center for Public Integrity

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In-depth, original investigative journalism on issues of public concern.

  1. States of Disclosure States of Disclosure

    Following up on our two previous analyses in 1999 and 2006, the Center for Public Integrity’s latest financial disclosure rankings for state legislators found that 20 out of the 50 states received a failing grade and three of those states have no disclosure requirements at all.

  2. Tobacco Underground Tobacco Underground

    The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business today, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product. Drawn by profits rivaling those of narcotics, smugglers move cigarettes by the billion, making tobacco the world's most widely smuggled legal substance.

  3. Pentagon Travel Pentagon Travel

    When Department of Defense personnel travel, it’s not always the federal government that picks up the bill. Over a 10-year period, defense employees have taken thousands of trips paid for by outside sources, including foreign governments and private companies that conduct business with DOD, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Pentagon travel disclosure records.

  4. Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown?

    The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.

  5. The Climate Change Lobby The Climate Change Lobby

    The report provides a first-of-its-kind look at the universe of special interests shaping the climate change debate in the United States and how it has sharply expanded between 2003 — when Congress previously voted on climate change — and 2008.

  6. Land Use Accountability Project Land Use Accountability Project

    Sprawl is threatening America’s famed open spaces, challenging our rural culture and love of nature. Yet, expansion and development, too, are essential to the American character. This project paints a complete picture of sprawl, examining the different assessments of and responses to the phenomenon.

  7. Broken Government Broken Government

    As the Bush administration came to an end, the federal government was not functioning as it should. Just how bad was this government dysfunction? In an effort to answer that question, the Center for Public Integrity embarked on Broken Government, an examination of the worst systematic failures of the executive branch over the past eight years.

  8. The Hidden Costs of Clean Coal The Hidden Costs of Clean Coal

    A highly productive method, longwall mining yielded 176 million tons of coal in 2007 — 15 percent of total U.S. production. An estimated 10 percent of all U.S. electricity now depends on coal from longwall mines, which have grown in Appalachia and in Illinois, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. But longwall mining is the most brutal technology yet employed to extract coal from underground quickly and cheaply. This project examines social and environmental impacts of longwall’s full-extraction method.

  9. Perils of the New Pesticides Perils of the New Pesticides

    A groundbreaking review of 10 years’ worth of adverse-reaction reports filed with the Environmental Protection Agency by pesticide manufacturers, which found that pyrethrins and pyrethroids — used in thousands of supposedly “safer” pesticides — accounted for more than 26 percent of all fatal, “major,” and “moderate” human incidents reported to the EPA in 2007. Based on information from the previously unreleased EPA pesticide incident-reporting system, this investigation spurred the director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs to announce the agency would begin a broad study of the human health effects of pyrethrins and pyrethroids.

  10. Iraq: The War Card Iraq: The War Card

    In a widely reported study of orchestrated deception, the Center found that President Bush and seven top officials made 935 false statements leading-up to the Iraq war — and offer them in a database for all to see.

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The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern in the USA and around the world.

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International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

The Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a collaboration of some of the world’s leading investigative reporters. ICIJ extends globally the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, working with 100 reporters in 50 countries to produce long-term, transnational projects.

ICIJ website