Jan.
23, 2002
EYE ON
THE MEDIA with david R. Guarino
CHICAGO'S PULITZER PRIZE WINNING
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER PAM ZEKMAN
Pam Zekman means business. Just ask one of the thousands of individuals who have found themselves the focal point of her investigative prowess and they'll tell you this is one woman who gets to the truth of the matter, regardless of what it takes. Her legacy of investigative reporting at CBS 2 Chicago spans 20 years and Zekman has used the time well. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has irrefutably tackled some of the last two decades' most notorious and shocking tales of fraud, corruption, abuse, discrimination and mismanagement.
Clearly Zekman has built her reputation on results; to that end she has consistently delivered not only timely and relevant investigative stories, but she seems to set the bar for affecting change, seeing that justice is meted out when appropriate and for rounding up the purveyors of fraud and corruption and putting them out of business.
Pam Zekman
To all outward appearances Zekman is modest, though she has every reason to be otherwise. The winner of 15 Emmy awards, two Du Pont Columbia Awards and two Peabody Awards, Zekman is no stranger to accolades. Indeed, the University of California at Berkeley graduate shared two Pulitzer prizes for excellence in local reporting. Yet Zekman remains grounded and clearly focused on the many tasks at hand. As the senior investigative reporter for CBS 2 Chicago, Zekman oversees the implementation of countless undercover investigations herself and she occasionally acts in conjunction with CBS 2's "Problem Solvers," to tackle just about every crooked business practice, consumer scam, and rip-off you can think of, and dozens more you have probably never even heard of.
To meet Zekman is to be fascinated by her. The roster of tough stories she has investigated in her many years of service in the Chicago community boggles the mind and has earned her every major award in broadcast journalism. Nonetheless, Zekman remains totally involved with each new challenge, each new story as if it were the only one and the most important.
Witness a stunning investigative piece Zekman reported several decades back called "The Dance Hustle," in which she went undercover posing as a dance instructor to uncover a shocking scam that targeted lonely middle-aged and elderly women and men. The unsuspecting victims were invited to a take a free dance "lesson," swept off their feet and told that they had immense talent, were promised an instant social life and often paired with instructors more than half their age. As the victims became more and more immersed in the dance school "family," they were systematically signed up for tens of thousands of unnecessary dance lessons only to wind up losing huge sums of money (in many cases their life savings) when the clubs mysteriously went out of business and the principals vanished without a trace.
Zekman has tackled Medicare and Medicaid fraud causing local clinics, hospitals and freestanding surgical centers to shut their doors. Offending medical personnel have lost licenses and in many cases also ultimately faced criminal charges resulting in indictments.
It seems readily apparent that Zekman is relentless and perhaps an appropriate metaphor would be to compare her to the perennial spider waiting for the fly. Zekman's expose of the shockingly unsanitary conditions at a number of very well known Chicago restaurants resulted in a number of business closures. This interim step was followed by new, stricter guidelines and ordinances designed to prevent further occurrences. The unsafe conditions of some CTA rail trains have also been the target of Zekman and her team of pros at Channel 2. Chicago's Board of Education was the subject of yet another Zekman probe, and today that agency wastes far fewer taxpayer dollars and has revised criteria for awarding contracts thanks to some surprise visits by Zekman and the Channel 2 Investigative Team.
City employees who would rather play pool or golf than work are employed elsewhere and many Chicago-area home owners can sleep more peacefully thanks to the replacement of defective gas connectors which resulted from Zekman's timely reports on the deaths, present and potential, attributable to the presence of dangerously defective connectors installed in the homes of unsuspecting Chicagoans.
Local ambulance service, nursing home fraud, medical "professionals" working without licenses...all have come under Zekman's investigative microscope, and the city and its environs are a safer, far less corrupt place largely in part to Zekman's tireless efforts to make a difference.
Zekman's roots in journalism can be traced to her decade in print. Zekman spent five years with the Chicago Sun-Times from 1971 to 1976 and an additional five years with the Chicago Tribune from 1976-1981. During this period, Zekman's "Mirage" probe gained her national recognition and her entry into the world of television, where she found her true metier. Zekman is also an alumnus of the City News Bureau (1968-'71).
An accomplished figure skater, Zekman recently took time out from her normally frenetic schedule to sit down with me for a fascinating and lively chat in her office at CBS 2 Chicago.
DG: Pam, have you yourself ever tackled a case involving an alleged gay/lesbian hate crime? Or, stated differently, have you ever done an investigative story that has had a profound impact on the GLBT community in general? If not, would you ever be willing to be involved in such a case?
PZ: The answer is yes. I've participated in stories that have involved different kinds of discrimination. The most recent one that I can think of is the Highland Park racial profiling story that we (CBS 2 Chicago) were out in front on. The cops came to me, the first woman to go on camera. There had been some stories done on the issues swirling around that controversy by the local newspaper in Highland Park. But we reported the first stories in which the white officers of Highland Park came forward and did interviews; amazingly did interviews, about what they described as an "unofficial policy" of racially profiling people who go through Highland Park. It's the most recent example I can think of when we got involved in a story concerning a systemic, discriminatory practice. And the story was amazing, and it wound up, as you know, getting a lot of attention as things escalated in Highland Park. And I have nothing but the utmost admiration for the cops who came forward, one of whom has been fired because of his speaking out, Rodney Watt. He's fighting this in Federal Court now; what he believes were trumped-up charges to get rid of him because he spoke out. But the short answer to your question is yes. There was a story that most of media picked up on mainly because this person called everybody. He believes that he was beaten up because some police officers believed that he was gay based on something they saw outside of a bar recently, and they wound up beating him up. I think it's unclear … the case is still in court, the victim was unable to identify the officer, so it's unclear as to whether or not the beating was intentional and perhaps hate based. What the issues really were, we still don't know, he was beaten up.
DG: Pam, what assumptions would you say have been made about you that are simply not true?
PZ: I think that I come across on camera and in the stories I do as somebody (who's) very tough, very hard. Obviously when I'm questioning somebody (about whom I've amassed a lot of information) for ripping people off, it's not a soft interview. On the other hand, there is a need to be tough and strong with some people and as a woman trying to make it in this business … when I started there were very few women doing hard news and investigative pieces. Women were in the feature department and there was a certain amount of "proving ourselves" that we had to do. And I think I learned how to try to use both what is a tough side of me but also the ability to be, I hope, compassionate and sympathetic with people and have that come across.
I think people may think that I'm always hard and always tough. I hear people say, "She must be a real bitch." I don't think I'm a bitch. People may think that I have no sense of humor; I do have a sense of humor. And I'm not that strong and that tough all the time. But I think that people get little snapshots of television personalities and they assume that that's the way they behave all the time. And it's not true.
DG: Looking back, what was one of your saddest moments?
PZ: Professionally?
DG: Either professionally or personally.
PZ: We'll stick with professionally. I had a tough time leaving the Sun-Times. ... I went to quit to take this opportunity and to tell Jim Hogue that I had been offered this position in television; people at the newspaper thought I was crazy of course, and they thought it would be very temporary. I was advised that television is fickle, but it was an opportunity that I wanted to take. I didn't want to look back at my life and say, "what would have happened if I had tried this?" And I went to resign from the Sun-Times and I cried through my explanation to Jim Hogue; I mean, I was very sad to leave. He'd been tremendously supportive through the Mirage Tavern series and everything else that we did. It was a huge risk that he (Hogue) took to let us do that story; at the Sun-Times we bought a bar and we ran the bar for a year to document corruption by city inspectors and building inspectors.
DG: So that's what "The Mirage" story was all about …
PZ: Yeah. It was a career maker for me. It was a wonderful experience. It could have fallen flat on its face; it was a success. But it was something that people still remember and talk to me about. The story had international coverage, it was in foreign newspapers, and people were captivated by it. And Jim Hogue had taken a chance on this and supported me and there I was, leaving. (Pam smiles) I felt loyal, I've always felt loyal to the people who employed me. It was a major move for me, to go from print to television. I was sad to leave. And now I've been at WBBM-TV (Channel 2) twice as long as both newspapers combined! The Sun-Times has changed ownership multiple times since I worked there, so as it turns out, it wasn't that much more stable than the television industry. But that was a very difficult time.
DG: Pam, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that you are (or were) a figure skater.
PZ: (Pam nods) I started out figure skating in this building (CBS 2 Chicago headquarters).
DG: In this building?
PZ: This was an ice arena. I'm convinced that that's why it's cold all the time, the ghost of the ice arena is down here. This was the Old Chicago Ice Arena. And the studio is right where the rink used to be. That's why there are no windows … well there are windows on the second floor. I figure skated right up to college, I was a competitive figure skater.
DG: Did you think that you would be a professional skater one day? Was that an aspiration of yours?
PZ: I always knew I was going to go to college, my parents drummed that into me. I was not a good enough student to both train for figure skating competitions and study. I didn't feel that I could balance both, I knew something would suffer. And so I always knew that I would probably be giving up figure skating when I started college, which is what happened. But it was a terrific experience; I've always been very fond of skating. I think that getting kids involved in competitive sports, whether as an individual sport or as a team sport, significantly molds personalities in various ways. I think that they (competitive sports) prepare you for the workplace, and for dealing with adult issues like failure. I was never a champion, in some ways that's good, in terms of how it molded me for the future. Then there are those who have been champions all their lives in some sport, yet they are not able to cope with the real world where you can't always be in the limelight or you can't always win. The world where you have to be able to fail and then pick yourself up and do it again or try again. And I think that's what skating taught me. How to take setbacks and how to pick myself up, literally, when I fell on something or figuratively in a skating career where you don't win the competition. You have to go back to training and get yourself pumped up to try and try again. And to this day we have setbacks in investigations, David. Things don't go right, tape doesn't work, and we lose the guy when we're trying to find him. Government agencies fight us, they won't give us the records we need to prove a story and we have to have a long protracted argument about that. We have victims galore on the phone, but nobody's willing to go public and come out on tape. We have to get around all these hurdles and pick ourselves up when we have a setback and continue. And I think that the skating prepared me for that in a unique way.
DG: Do you consider yourself a role model for upcoming journalists, especially investigative journalists and women, in particular? Because I would venture a guess that for untold numbers of aspiring writers and reporters, you have set the bar for investigative journalism here in Chicago.
PZ: That's an incredible compliment which I appreciate greatly. I would like to be considered that way because I try very hard to do stories and investigations that have meaning and substance and help people. I have heard that before (that I was considered a role model) and I find it very flattering, but I think, again, that I come from a strong tradition of investigative journalism in this town where other people set the bar for me. And I have just gone through my career trying to continue their tradition. And I am thrilled that all of us, all of the investigative journalists who have legs in this town, continue to do this kind of investigative reporting. We try to live up to Chicago's legacy of being THE town in this country for investigative journalism. We all try to do stories of substance and meaning, and the people who have survived have all tried to carry that on. If I have been a role model for some, I'm very grateful for that and I will continue to try to do those same kinds of stories. It's a huge challenge, because there's all kinds of things happening in journalism right now. There's been a pendulum swing several times now in my career; I've been doing this for 30 years. Investigative reporting has been in fashion sometimes and then out of vogue.
Post-Watergate everybody wanted to be an investigative journalist; everybody wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. (We both laugh) Every (television) station was having an investigative team, every newspaper. Everybody wanted to do it. And there was this huge increase in the number of stories reported, some of them had substance and some of them had NONE. Some of them resulted in lawsuits. And then suddenly the pendulum swung back the other way because people were scared of investigative reporting. They didn't want to spend the money or devote the resources or take the risk of being sued and losing. So there was a cutback in the field. Then it became desirable again.
DG: While working for the Sun-Times you once did a fascinating piece on the fraud committed by a prominent dance studio chain.
PZ: When I did that story I wasn't that well-known in Chicago. I went undercover as a dance instructor along with another woman at the Sun-Times. And we went through the training at several well-known dance studios. And I wore a blond wig, because my red hair was probably my single most identifiable characteristic. It was hard work, we learned how to do all of these dances … tangos and sambas and marimbas in two weeks...if I had to do it right now I couldn't, I forgot it all. The crash course was all designed to get to the sales training part, where they told us to play up to these people (the students), get them to sign up for $10 and $20,000 contracts (for dance lessons) even though they didn't need it. We were instructed to pretend to have "dance contests" that the students "won." In other words, the idea was to really trick people. But in the middle of it, after I learned the dancing instruction, and before I'd learned all the sales training, I was given a pseudonym, you don't use your real name. And they wanted the names to sound glamorous. And I had used my mother's first name when I first applied for the job (to go undercover); I used Lois instead of Pam. So the instructors were sitting around a table making up names for each other that sounded glamorous, and throughout all of this I was worried that my red hair was poking down through my short blond wig. And while I was undercover, I thought I had "Sun-Times" stamped on my forehead. And somebody suggested that my name should be, "Lois Lane." (I laugh) And I thought, they must know who I am. And it got worse and somebody else popped up and said, "Brenda Starr!" Then I thought my red hair was showing, you know? And it was just coincidental; they had not discovered me. It was a humorous thing that happened in the context of a rather serious, very intense, anxiety-provoking undercover story.
DG: What is your favorite charity or humanitarian cause?
PZ: Obviously right now they would be any organizations involved in the Sept. 11 aftermath. I think we are going to be paying the price for this for a long time, not only as a nation, but the effect on individual lives and families is going to be devastating for an incredible length of time.
DG: Tell me about the CBS 2 "Problem Solvers." The name is new, but the concept isn't, and I believe you've got several people working with you on this team. Can you comment?
PZ: I think that essentially over the years, we have done a number of stories in the Investigative Unit that have resulted in getting measurable results for people. These stories have been very successful in terms of station identity. Most of the stories had a "consumer-bent," yet they were investigative pieces. The Investigative Unit here at Channel 2 has been doing these kinds of stories for a long time. Whether that was an inspiration for "Problem Solvers" or not I don't know. But I think the CBS "Problem Solvers" is an effort to do more of that kind of story using other resources at the station. It's a public service effort by the station as well as a newsgathering vehicle. Now the station is devoting a lot of resources in trying to address some of the many consumer-oriented investigative pieces on a day-to-day basis in ways that the investigative unit can't handle alone. There are so many things you can do with this medium (television) to help people. This is just another way of doing that.
DG: What's next for Pam Zekman?
PZ: I hope to be doing this kind of reporting in some form, whether it's television or not, at this station or not; I would expect to retire doing this kind of reporting. I hope it's here to stay; I've been here 20 years. As long as I can continue to do things that are not "smoke and mirrors journalism," I'll be here to do the stories. I like to do stories where we are enterprising, where we do our own funding, we do our own investigations, and we bring about results and the stories involve topics that people can relate to.
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Like I said before, to meet Pam Zekman is to be inspired. Whether you choose to focus on her countless accomplishments and irrepressible drive or her enthusiastic hopes for the future of investigative journalism, her story, and her legacy, are and will always remain a significant part of Chicago's rich journalistic history.
E-mail: DavdRonald@aol.com