Lowell Bergman

Lowell Bergman is an American journalist, television producer, and professor of journalism. During a career spanning nearly five decades, Bergman worked as a producer, reporter, and director of investigative reporting at ABC News and as a producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, where he left in 1998 as the senior producer of investigations for CBS News. He founded the investigative reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and taught there as a professor for 28 years. He was also a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline. Bergman retired in 2019. Bergman's investigation into the tobacco industry was depicted in Michael Mann’s The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and featured Al Pacino as Bergman. From 1999 to 2008, Bergman was an investigative correspondent for The New York Times. In 1999, he formed a partnership between the Times and PBS’s Frontline, leading to collaborative investigative projects across broadcast, print, and web platforms. Bergman's work has been recognized with honors in both print and broadcasting, including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded to The New York Times in 2004 for “A Dangerous Business,” an investigation into worker safety violations and environmental law violations in the cast-iron sewer and water pipe industry. Bergman has received numerous Emmys, six Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver and Golden awards Silver and Golden Baton awards, three Peabodys, two Harvard Goldsmith Awards for Investigative Reporting, a George 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. 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.