Biography

Charles Lyons, based in Rio de Janeiro, is a multimedia journalist and filmmaker. He recently produced coverage of the 2022 Brazilian election for PBS NewsHour, which included two long-form reports –– one on deforestation in the Amazon; the other on indigenous rights. Prior to that, he received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant to produce and edit coverage of the pandemic in Brazil, also for PBS NewsHour. He is currently writing a series of articles on illegal gold mining in Amazonian countries for environmental news site, Mongabay. 

Lyons has produced human rights and environmental short films for United Nations-TV in Brazil, India, and Japan, and was a producer/ writer for ABC News. As a print journalist, he was a contributing writer to The New York Times and a staff reporter and columnist for Variety. He wrote two editorials for The New York Times on indigenous issues in Brazil, and has been published in The Washington Post,  The Brazilian Report, and elsewhere. 

For PBS NewsHour, Lyons produced a series on climate change via a Google-funded non-profit. 

Lyons is also the author of the book, The New Censors: Movies and the Culture Wars, and holds a PhD in drama and film from Columbia University. He has taught film at Yale, Columbia, UCLA and Savannah School of Art & Design.