Lee Zurik
:no_upscale()/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/gray/e9ea5d8e-0b6a-4588-a14e-ff8cd455f050.png)
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 accountability 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.
Permission to Practice: Doctors, patients say insurance prior-authorizations put profits over people
Updated: Mar. 20, 2023 at 2:53 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston, Jamie Grey, Lee Zurik, Bailey Williams and Payton Romans
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.
Updated: Feb. 27, 2023 at 3:00 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik
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.
Updated: Jan. 30, 2023 at 1:22 PM CST
|By InvestigateTV staff and Lee Zurik
In a pair of investigations Andy Pierrotti looks at flawed forensics and wrongful convictions.
Updated: Jan. 23, 2023 at 2:45 PM CST
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Lee Zurik and Conner Hendricks
More than two decades ago, the death of a toddler in a recalled portable crib prompted Congress to pass 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 CPSC website that was supposed to help creates a false sense of security, an InvestigateTV analysis of federal records shows.
Updated: Jan. 18, 2023 at 3:19 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik
For decades, service members and their families were essentially barred from suing the military for medical malpractice.
Updated: Jan. 17, 2023 at 4:02 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
New details of a divorce petition obtained by Fox 8 imply New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell was involved in an extramarital affair with Officer Jeffrey Vappie.
Updated: Jan. 9, 2023 at 4:06 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik
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
Updated: Dec. 15, 2022 at 10:30 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
Mayor LaToya Cantrell claims her use of a city-owned apartment is in line with past mayors. But now former Mayor Marc Morial says he never used the apartment the way Cantrell is utilizing it.
Updated: Nov. 23, 2022 at 12:21 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
After a Fox 8 attorney got involved, the City of New Orleans released public documents Wednesday (Nov. 23) it initially refused to hand over.
Updated: Nov. 16, 2022 at 10:11 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik, Ken Daley and Dannah Sauer
Clothing purchases on the mayor's behalf dating to 2017 are being scrutinized by the FBI, according to Fox 8 sources.
Updated: Nov. 15, 2022 at 10:47 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
FOX 8 reviewed Mayor Cantrell’s calendar for the past three years. Our findings lead two political analysts to conclude the mayor might not be working as much as taxpayers may expect.
Updated: Nov. 14, 2022 at 11:13 AM CST
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
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 CPSC and companies to disclose information about the products companies have sounded the alarm on – an alarm that remains relatively silent.
Updated: Nov. 9, 2022 at 10:05 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
Surveillance video raises questions about how Mayor Cantrell is spending her time and taxpayer money outside the office.
Updated: Oct. 13, 2022 at 6:36 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
Six days after an Orleans Parish deputy was reassigned over an allegation that he stalked Mayor LaToya Cantrell, the Mayor has been unwilling to back up the allegations.
Updated: Sep. 29, 2022 at 4:37 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
A two-month-long FOX 8 investigation finds New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is possibly breaking city policy and maybe even state law, spending much of her time at a city-owned apartment, possibly without paying rent.
Updated: Sep. 19, 2022 at 4:03 PM CDT
|By Jill Riepenhoff and Lee Zurik
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.
Updated: Aug. 18, 2022 at 10:10 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
When Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson took office, the change of command led to a change in communication. Her office has refused repeated requests from FOX 8 for information that the public has a right to know. Two experts believe the office is trying to punish FOX 8 for prior investigations into the man who now works as her Chief Communications Officer.
Updated: Aug. 15, 2022 at 4:19 PM CDT
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
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.
Updated: May. 23, 2022 at 5:34 PM CDT
|By Jamie Grey, Lee Zurik and Payton Romans
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.
Updated: May. 16, 2022 at 10:38 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
Questions have been raised over NOPD captain Sabrina Richardson's position on a state board that oversees punishments for state police troopers, as she is currently under investigation by the Orleans District Attorney's office.
Updated: May. 11, 2022 at 10:03 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
FOX 8 combs through license plate-reader cameras showing NOPD officers' vehicles miles away at times from the details they were getting paid for.
Updated: May. 9, 2022 at 1:13 PM CDT
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Conner Hendricks and Lee Zurik
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.
Updated: Apr. 25, 2022 at 5:18 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston and Lee Zurik
Diabetes patients say they're being priced out of being able to afford live-saving insulin. Who's to blame is a matter of who you ask.
Updated: Mar. 8, 2022 at 10:19 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
An audit performed by the city of Kenner backs up findings from FOX 8. The audit accuses former Deputy CAO Chad Pitfield of double-dipping, then falsifying documents in an attempted cover-up.
Updated: Feb. 17, 2022 at 11:08 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik
A FOX 8 investigation raises questions about connections between a now-fired Kenner employee and a contract worth Millions. Kenner paid its trash collector $5.5 million last year, but we found close to $1 million in payments were made without proper backup documentation.
Updated: Feb. 14, 2022 at 10:10 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
Five NOPD officers got target letters from the FBI as part of an investigation into detail work, sources say.
Updated: Feb. 14, 2022 at 5:18 PM CST
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Lee Zurik and Jamie Grey
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.
Updated: Feb. 14, 2022 at 5:09 PM CST
|By Jill Riepenhoff and Lee Zurik
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.
Updated: Feb. 3, 2022 at 9:56 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer
FOX 8 looks into a spike in the number of people who are released from their bond obligations or let out of jail when the District Attorney's office doesn't bring charges in the allotted time.
Updated: Jan. 31, 2022 at 5:08 PM CST
|By Emily Featherston, Lee Zurik and Jamie Grey
Programs bridging public schools and homeschooling are growing fast, but critics worry about what that means for the future of education.
Updated: Jan. 24, 2022 at 4:02 PM CST
|By Jamie Grey, Emily Featherston, Lee Zurik, Jon Decker and Cory Johnson
Foreign entities have bought 13 million more U.S. farm acres in 10 years, but agriculture policy scholars say the total could be far more.
Updated: Nov. 10, 2021 at 10:00 PM CST
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
Entergy has a secret it has been keeping from its customers and the New Orleans City Council.
Updated: Oct. 18, 2021 at 5:17 PM CDT
|By Daniela Molina, Jill Riepenhoff and Lee Zurik
The lack of access to dental care plagues many parts of rural America.
Updated: Sep. 23, 2021 at 10:22 AM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Mykal Vincent
15 of over 800 nursing home residents evacuated to a makeshift shelter ahead of Ida have died, according to LDH.
Updated: Sep. 7, 2021 at 10:25 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
Evacuation plans from the seven nursing homes that had licenses revoked showed they claimed to be prepared for a large evacuation with plans for supplies and food, but the Louisiana Department of Health and families of those evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ida disagree.
Updated: Sep. 7, 2021 at 3:34 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
Officials have revoked the licenses of seven nursing homes involved in an evacuation that crammed elderly and vulnerable residents into a warehouse.
Updated: Aug. 10, 2021 at 2:05 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston, Lee Zurik, Jon Decker and Jamie Grey
As lawmakers debate including female drivers in more crash test standards, the agency in charge is staying quiet.
Updated: Aug. 5, 2021 at 1:47 PM CDT
|By Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
Updated daily, this COVID-19 hotspot map illustrates where the largest number of new cases (relative to population) have been reported in the last seven days.
Updated: Aug. 4, 2021 at 4:56 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik, Jamie Grey, Jill Riepenhoff, Daniela Molina and Owen Hornstein
Bridging the Great Health Divide explores issues in rural America through the lens of residents, doctors and other health care providers.
Updated: Jul. 28, 2021 at 10:34 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
A New Orleans company, applied for and received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of nearly $200,000, but a FOX 8 Investigation found that at the time of the application, the company likely had no employees on staff.
Updated: Jul. 28, 2021 at 12:17 PM CDT
|By Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
Gray Television stations will air a documentary about disparities in rural health care and the people working to bridge the great health divide.
Updated: Jul. 21, 2021 at 10:00 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
Thousands of so-called ‘Shut-In Future Utility’ wells litter the Louisiana landscape with little enforcement to permanently plug them. One of those wells claimed the life of a Louisiana teenager, whose family says there was no warning of the site being dangerous.
Updated: Jul. 19, 2021 at 5:24 PM CDT
|By Jamie Grey, Lee Zurik and Daniela Molina
The purpose of the food stamp program is to help low-income families access healthy foods, but in rural America, that can be difficult.
Updated: Jun. 30, 2021 at 12:28 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston, Jon Decker, Lee Zurik and Jamie Grey
Bills in both the U.S. House and Senate look to update crash test dummies and testing procedures to make sure drivers are equally protected.
Updated: Jun. 14, 2021 at 4:05 PM CDT
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Daniela Molina, Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
Before last year food insecurity impacted about 10% of all U.S. residents. Experts estimate that number has at least doubled since the pandemic.
Updated: Jun. 14, 2021 at 4:01 PM CDT
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Daniela Molina, Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
Antes del año pasado, la inseguridad alimentaria afectó a aproximadamente el 10,5% de los residentes de EE. UU. Una vez que la pandemia cerró en gran medida la economía, los expertos estiman que el porcentaje de personas que sufren de inseguridad alimentaria al menos se duplicó.
Updated: May. 17, 2021 at 3:01 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston, Lee Zurik, Jackson Hicks and Jamie Grey
The federal government gives out subsidies to help farms through tough times, but much of the information about these taxpayer-funded payments is kept secret.
Updated: May. 10, 2021 at 1:47 PM CDT
|By Emily Featherston, Lee Zurik, Jon Decker and Jamie Grey
Experts say one of the most advertised safety standards largely doesn't account for more than half of all licensed drivers.
Updated: May. 5, 2021 at 10:50 PM CDT
|By Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich
An investigative unit made up of three state agencies exists to curb the amount of insurance fraud in the state. But a FOX 8 Investigation found all of the spending by one of those agencies doesn’t seem to be going to insurance fraud cases, in possible violation of the law that founded the unit.
Updated: Mar. 8, 2021 at 7:22 AM CST
|By Jill Riepenhoff, Daniela Molina, Jamie Grey and Lee Zurik
In nearly every Appalachian and Delta community, residents die on average before their 78th birthday, which is the average life expectancy in the United States. Health care providers are working on innovative ways to combat the unique disparities in the regions.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/CLMO3WHT7BA6RPETUAOG2UQB5A.png)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/3ETYALKJDZFEJGGNDGTSRPZE3Q.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/5DLSQDTH2FAE3JHZQ7TMA5VSBE.PNG)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/IOTEM2TPXNHFZEW6MFIJMBT4LQ.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/RYLTRJPOCBFGDBCGPI66GHBFD4.jpeg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/RCBBMXZ5L5CHFA3BDFDAJRGTII.png)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/FKNX7JAWEZDEDJPX63YRADIS2A.gif)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/NRISPK6BOBFRPJ6J76PX2G7Y2A.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/4KZM72YJKNGIBJCM7Q7P3KIEAE.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/UHV37DPJ7BDUPFXFH63GM3DNOM.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/ZXLUDVSV6BHSTPFFFV7P3RNMJQ.jpg)