Lee Zurik 5d3k13
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As the city of New Orleans's most honored investigative reporter, Lee has been uncovering and reporting impactful stories on WVUE since 2009. Following up his tenacious inquiries with detailed analysis and powerful storytelling, Lee delivers unprecedented ability of government officials, private citizens and corporations. Lee has been honored with journalism’s top honors including two George Foster Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. duPont Silver Batons, twelve National Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal. In addition to his work at WVUE, Lee is Gray Television’s Vice President of Investigations. In that role for WVUE’s parent company, he oversees Gray Television’s National Investigative Team – InvestigateTV. Lee is a New Orleans native and a graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. 304y21
Defective: Toy companies continue selling similar products following recalls 1i5r52
Recalls of dangerous consumer products can sometimes take months if not years. But even after a recall, similar-looking products remain on the market. InvestigateTV examined toys that had been recalled and similar-looking products that weren't.
Defective: Dangerous consumer products find their way into America by ship and through online retailers 1g5w41
Every year, the SC finds thousands of everyday household products for sale online or arriving at shipping ports that fail to meet federal safety standards. It is illegal to sell products in the U.S. that have been banned, recalled or failed to meet federal safety standards.
Defective: After recalls, Americans continue to die and get injured as products remain in homes and for sale online 94b16
An InvestigateTV analysis of Consumer Product Safety Commission data shows that since 2000, the agency has had to re-announce the recall of at least 46 products because the original alert did not reach the ears of consumers and, in many cases, continued to cause harm.
Permission to Practice: Doctors, patients say insurance prior-authorizations put profits over people 173q3b
Insurance companies say these reviews lower costs and protect patients, but what requires advance permission varies plan to plan, and critics argue the policies get between a patient and their doctor.
InvestigateTV - Season 2; Episode 13 556m
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to an attorney, but there’s a public defender shortage. The problem means delayed justice for victims and prolonged jail time for the accused not convicted of crimes. In some areas, vacancies are at an all-time high. It’s leaving both defendants and victims waiting for months, sometimes even years, for justice.
Defective: Federal database of consumer product complaints leaves out deaths, injuries the government and manufacturers know about 3k5l53
More than two decades ago, the death of a toddler in a recalled portable crib prompted Congress to a new consumer protection law. Yet today, children still are dying in unsafe products, recalls remain largely ineffective at ridding homes of dangerous products, and the SC website that was supposed to help creates a false sense of security, an InvestigateTV analysis of federal records shows.
InvestigateTV - Season 2; Episode 9 6x6661
Joce Sterman exposes how the system meant to keep doctors in check is letting physicians keep their licenses even when they come to work impaired. Plus, non-profit hospitals claim they charge privately insured patients more to make up for losses on Medicare reimbursements, but a new report says some hospitals are making money off Medicare
Defective: The federal government knows that consumers are using hundreds of dangerous everyday products 5q35n
When a company learns a product it sells could be defective and dangerous, it has 24 hours to let the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission know about it. But it could take months or years for the public to find out about the company’s possible concerns, if they even come to light at all. InvestigateTV has been battling SC and companies to disclose information about the products companies have sounded the alarm on – an alarm that remains relatively silent.
Big Bucks, Big Buyouts: Public universities shell out millions of dollars firing coaches who didn’t win enough 4r6k3n
For many college coaches, it pays to get fired. Over a 17-year period beginning in 2005, public universities have shelled out more than $1.1 billion in buying out the contracts of college coaches, according to an InvestigateTV analysis of NCAA financial data collected by Syracuse University. Most of that money was spent on football coaches who play at the highest level of Division I athletics. As football coaches' annual compensation now stretches into seven digits, massive severance payments also grow bigger and bigger.
Defective: When government safety officials learned about 13 deaths tied to an infant rocker, a federal law prevented them from immediately alerting the public 66636t
After the deaths of 13 children over the last 12 years, this summer, Fisher-Price and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned parents not to let their children sleep in certain rockers the company has made since the 1990s. Now, InvestigateTV has discovered that during a 2021 Congressional hearing, the company dodged questions about whether it currently had products on the market linked to children’s deaths.
Operation Profit: Some surgeons pull in millions by owning medical device companies 5me1p
Sometimes a surgeon is the salesman. Across the country, there are physician-owned distributorships where doctors own part of a medical device company and then buy (or have their hospital buy) that hardware to use in their own surgeries.
Betting on Change: Horseracing long plagued with scandals and equine fatalities 361l6s
A new federal law takes effect in July that aims to clean up thoroughbred horseracing, which for years has been plagued by scandals, drugs and equine fatalities. Racing insiders have pushed for decades for such a measure and they welcome the new oversight.
Defective: Government agency shackled by law often takes years to issue recalls on potentially dangerous products i2339
It takes years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to remove dangerous products from the market because of its cumbersome rule-making process and ineffective recalls that don’t incentivize consumers to return or destroy dangerous items.
Defective: Federal agency meant to protect consumers given little power to ban defective products 2m374p
The federal agency created to watchdog consumer products - from crock pots to xylophones - is muzzled by its governing law, which gives all the power to manufacturers, including those with dangerous toys, appliances and other items on the market. The Fisher-Price Rock N Play – an inclined sleep product that defied the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for safe infant sleeping – exposed all that is wrong with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Large swaths of rural America are health care deserts with too few primary care doctors, pediatricians, and OB-GYNs to care for residents 4c2r1v
In 207 counties in 2018, there wasn’t a family, general or internal medicine doctor – the primary care doctors mainly for adults, according to an InvestigateTV analysis of federal data.
Nurse practitioner field grapples with question of whether to standardize curriculum nationwide 6v1w2n
Nurse practitioners are questioning their own education at some colleges. There’s no national standard on how to educate nurse practitioners, while medical education for doctors was standardized more than 100 years ago.
Penalties at Play: Millions of dollars flow to nursing homes from fines they have paid for poor care 376a36
Every year millions of dollars flow to nursing homes from a fund that is padded with fines collected from long-term care facilities that inspections show have put the health and safety of residents in jeopardy.
Closing and Cashing In: Coronavirus relief funding goes to colleges with histories of financial instability and plans to close 69413w
The federal government allocated nearly half a billion in CARES Act funds to colleges the government considered not financially responsible. Some colleges received money after announcing their plans to close for good.
Prosecuted and Paid: Government doles out billions in coronavirus relief money to companies that paid out millions in fraud-related cases 6y6n30
More than 200 companies that paid the federal government for fraud related accusations in the last decade received billions of dollars in unsolicited relief money as part of the coronavirus bailout package.
For-profit colleges received $1B in federal aid 683s2v
For-profit colleges received more than $1 billion from the CARES Act, money that was intended to help at-need institutions and students. Some of these schools are owned by billion-dollar companies, while community colleges received proportionally less .
