Charles Benton was a philanthropist and executive who served as chairman of the Benton Foundation. He was also an advocate for public broadcasting, and was dedicated to improving the function of media to better serve public interest.

Benton founded the nonprofit Benton Foundation in 1981, and also served as the organization's chairman. Like his father, William Benton, who was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and the publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Charles Benton was devoted to using media as a means to educate and serve. While William was responsible for the original conception of the foundation, it was Charles who led its evolution from a grant-making operation to a functioning foundation, devoted to causes such as universal, affordable broadband.

Charles Benton was also chairman of Public Media, Inc. and of the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee on the DTV transition, as well as public broadcaster WTTW-TV in Chicago. In addition, he served on the boards of the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science under President Carter, and was on the board of the Institute of Museum and Library Services under President Barack Obama.

In 1967 he created the nonprofit Fund for Media Research, which was commissioned by the Department of Education to research the use of television in school systems. In 1997 he was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, also known as the Gore Commission.

Benton died April 29, 2015, in Evanston, Illinois. He was 84.