Lowell Bergman

Lowell Bergman is an American journalist, television producer, and professor of journalism. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Bergman worked as a producer, a reporter, and then the director of investigative reporting at ABC News and as a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes, leaving in 1998 as the senior producer of investigations for CBS News. He was also the founder of the investigative reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and, for 28 years, taught there as a professor. He was also a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline. In 2019, Bergman retired. The story of his investigation into the tobacco industry was chronicled in Michael Mann’s The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Bergman was portrayed by Al Pacino. From 1999 to 2008, Bergman was an investigative correspondent for The New York Times. He forged a partnership between The Times and PBS Frontline in 1999, creating collaborative investigative projects using broadcast, print, and the Web. Bergman has received honors for both print and broadcasting, including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded to The New York Times in 2004 for "A Dangerous Business," which detailed a record of worker safety violations coupled with the systematic violation of environmental laws in the cast-iron sewer and water pipe industry. That story is the only winner of the Pulitzer Prize to also be acknowledged for every major award in broadcasting. The recipient of numerous Emmys, Bergman has also been honored with six Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver and Golden Baton awards, three Peabodys, two Harvard Goldsmith Awards for Investigative Reporting, a Polk Award, the RFK Grand Prize, a Sidney Hillman Award for Labor Reporting, a Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, a Mirror Award from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and the James Madison Freedom of Information Award for Career Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists. Bergman was named one of the 30 most notable investigative reporters in the United States, according to Christopher H. Sterling’s six-volume Encyclopedia of Journalism. Through the non-profit production company Investigative Studios, he has continued to work on documentaries and documentary series, serving as Co-Executive producer with Brian Knappenberger on Netflix’s The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez and as executive producer and reporter on Agents of Chaos, a co-production with Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions. He is currently at work on a number of documentary series and a book.