The Center for Public Integrity

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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. The Buying of the President 2008 The Buying of the President 2008

    Did 2008 shape up to be the most expensive campaign year ever? Find out at the Center’s quadrennial signature project.

  9. Pushing Prescriptions Pushing Prescriptions

    The Center’s investigation of the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying might and gifts of free travel for members of Congress — and its resulting political influence and impact on the American public.

  10. Welding’s Toxic Legacy Welding’s Toxic Legacy

    The shaking in Jeffrey Tamraz’s right hand began in 2001. It was intermittent, so he paid it little mind. A six-foot, 260-pound bear of a man, he’d played football and thrown shot and discus in high school; later he got into competitive weightlifting, and worked up to bench-pressing 465 pounds — once, to win a bet, he flipped a Honda Civic on its side. He brought the same passion to his work. “I taught welding for six years,” he says. “I read books on welding. I loved to weld.”

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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