Pam Zekman

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Pam Zekman serves on CBS 2 Chicago’s investigative team, alongside Dave Savini, a position she has held since 1981. During that time, her thorough investigations have earned every major award in television reporting and resulted in governmental reforms and criminal indictments.

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In recent years, her investigations have exposed millions of dollars in government waste, Medicaid and Medicare fraud, dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions in Chicago area restaurants and homes and scams that have cost consumers thousands of dollars.

Most recently, Zekman’s series exposing loopholes in drunken driving laws have resulted in legislation being introduced to help police and prosecutors crack down on drunk drivers. Her reports about dangerous taxi cab drivers have changed the way the City of Chicago deals with hazardous cab drivers. As a result, Chicago law makers are implementing new procedures to review accident and ticket histories and will revoke the licenses of many offenders.

Zekman’s two-part series about Urgent Care Centers in Illinois resulted in former Governor Blagojevich signing a bill into law that prohibits these facilities from using a name like “Urgent Care” that could be mistaken for an emergency room, after Zekman’s investigation uncovered that patients had died when they did not get the emergency care they needed.

In recent years, dozens of city employees have been suspended, fired, and even convicted of taxpayer theft after Zekman’s hidden-camera investigations caught them at home, bars and even playing golf when they should have been at work.

Her investigative team has gone undercover to report on unsanitary conditions in Chicago restaurants, which resulted in the closure of several restaurants, and new city ordinances and inspection procedures to protect the public. Another report, which traced a series of fatal explosions to defective gas connectors in Chicago area homes, resulted in the replacement of thousands of potentially dangerous connectors.

Zekman’s historic exposes of the Police Department’s fraudulent crime statistics, the Fire Department’s inadequate ambulance service and the CTA’s unsafe trains, have led to significant changes in city services. An in-depth investigation, that documented millions of dollars of waste at the Chicago Board of Education, resulted in sweeping changes in the way contracts are awarded, along with the indictment and conviction of contractors and school officials.

Other exposes over the years have disclosed major federal healthcare fraud (Medicare and Medicaid) by Chicago area surgical centers, clinics and hospitals. A number of these facilities were shut down and some medical entrepreneurs were convicted on fraud charges.

Zekman joined CBS 2 after ten years at the Chicago Tribune (1971-76) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1976-81), where she shared two Pulitzer Prizes for local reporting. It was during her tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times that her renowned “Mirage” investigation, which documented corruption by city and state inspectors who overlooked building, fire, and ventilation violations in exchange for bribes, gained her national attention.

She has won two DuPont-Columbia Awards, two Peabody Awards and 18 local Emmy Awards, all for her work on CBS 2 Chicago. Zekman received the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago chapter of American Women in Radio and Television and the City Club of Chicago’s 2004 John A. McDermott Award for Distinguished Social Leadership.

Prior to her work at CBS 2 and Chicago’s two metropolitan newspapers, Zekman served as a reporter at the City News Bureau for three years (1968-71).

A native of Chicago, she is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.