The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first." With over 50 staff members, the CPI is one of the largest nonprofit investigative centers in America. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. The CPI has been described as an independent, watchdog group. The Center releases its reports via its website to media outlets throughout the U.S. and around the globe. In 2004, CPI's The Buying of the President book was on The New York Times bestseller list for three months. As of December 21, 2018, CPI was rated as 3 out of 4 stars overall by Charity Navigator, an independent nonprofits evaluator. Mission The mission of the center is "to protect democracy and inspire change using investigative reporting that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests". History 1989–2004 CPI was founded on March 30, 1989, by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes. By the late 1980s Lewis observed that fewer resources—time, money and space—were being invested in investigative reporting in the United States by established news outlets and major publications. In his book entitled 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity Lewis recounted how he recruited two trusted journalists, Alejandro Benes and Charles Piller—whom he had met through his television work— to serve on the board of directors of the nascent CPI. All three had grown dissatisfied with what was being done in the name of investigative journalism by established news organizations. They chose the name public integrity as a way of underlying the "ultimate purpose of investigative journalism" which is "to hold those in power accountable and to inform the public about significant distortions of the truth." In their tenth anniversary Annual Report Piller described their first meetings in their "Boardroom—the cheap seats at the Baltimore Orioles game. In May 1990, Lewis used the money he had raised and his house as collateral to open an office in Washington, D.C. In its first year, the CPI's budget was $200,000. In 1996, CPI launched its first website, although CPI did not begin to publish reports online until 1999. In August