Charles Hauser, 76; Journalist Defied Court Order on Mob Article

Charles McCorkle Hauser, 76, a veteran journalist who risked prison by defying a federal order not to run a story on the mob, died Sunday after a brief illness in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Hauser spent 16 years as vice president and executive editor of the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin, where his staff won a Pulitzer Prize for an expose on Mafia ties to the state’s Supreme Court chief justice.

Hauser was convicted of criminal contempt for refusing to abide by a federal judge’s 1985 order not to run another story about the New England Mafia. He never served his 18-month sentence, but it took two years and three teams of lawyers before the U.S. Supreme Court vindicated him.

Hauser attended the University of North Carolina and later worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris and London for United Press International before becoming the Charlotte Observer’s Washington correspondent. He retired in 1989 after spending five years as vice president and general manager of the Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Va.