Lee Zurik
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.
Patients and doctors say the health insurance claims process is increasingly lacking humanity as one major insurance company is taken to court over its use of a computer program.
Text messages seem to contradict the NOPD's statement on why Mayor LaToya Cantrell needed NOPD escorts for Essence Festival Weekend. Documents show several days she had more officers protecting her than were on duty in entire police districts.
Every year, the CPSC 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.
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.
Mayor Cantrell faces allegations of violating a city council ordinance by staying overnight in the Upper Pontalba apartment during Essence Fest weekend.
NOPD leaders say they had to manually inspect the timesheets and detail shifts of every officer, every day, for a nine-month time period. It comes as Interim Superintendent Michelle Woodfork says a computer system that was supposed to prevent officers from double-dipping isn’t working as planned.
The City of New Orleans accuses the Federal Consent Decree Monitor of political motivations, after a report from the monitor slammed the NOPD’s handing of an investigation into Officer Jeffrey Vappie, a former member of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s executive protection team.
The drug benefit industry says it works to lower costs and improve outcomes, but critics say these 'middlemen' have too much control.
Inspector General Ed Michel's office says it has discovered no policies in place to regulate and guide the executive protection team’s operations.
Permission to Practice: Doctors, patients say insurance prior-authorizations put profits over people
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.
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.
Cantrell's Campaign Finance Report, filed just before the deadline, shows she spent $198,000 out of her campaign account in 2022.
Stella Cziment wrote a letter warning of potential conflicts regarding the NOPD’s internal investigation into Officer Jeffrey Vappie's timesheets.
In a pair of investigations Andy Pierrotti looks at flawed forensics and wrongful convictions.
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.
For decades, service members and their families were essentially barred from suing the military for medical malpractice.
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.
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
Sources tell Fox 8 the FBI now is asking about Mayor LaToya Cantrell's schedule, use of a city-owned apartment and her time spent with a member of her security detail.
After a Fox 8 attorney got involved, the City of New Orleans released public documents Wednesday (Nov. 23) it initially refused to hand over.
Clothing purchases on the mayor's behalf dating to 2017 are being scrutinized by the FBI, according to Fox 8 sources.
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.
Surveillance video raises questions about how Mayor Cantrell is spending her time and taxpayer money outside the office.
The FBI is now investigating an NOPD Lieutenant accused of payroll fraud.
In Louisiana, a judge can rule that a municipality owes a plaintiff money, but despite that, the municipality never has to pay. New data shows it is mainly a New Orleans problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FOX 8 filed a lawsuit against the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board and its Executive Director Ghassan Korban, after the board refused to provide public records and at times stopped responding to requests for updates.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Programs bridging public schools and homeschooling are growing fast, but critics worry about what that means for the future of education.
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.
Nine months after an explosion of a tank battery in Southwest Louisiana that claimed the life of a fourteen-year-old girl, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources announced a new rule is now in effect that could prevent another tragedy.
As lawmakers vow to push changes following the evacuation of more than 850 nursing home residents to a warehouse to ride out Hurricane Ida, one former lawmaker cautions that change is not easy in the industry.
Eight months after an explosion of an oil tank in Southwest Louisiana killed a teenage girl, a state agency hopes to have a new rule in place soon that could prevent another child from being injured or killed.
The lack of access to dental care plagues many parts of rural America.
While the Saints’ latest post-hurricane homecoming did not end with a win like they had envisioned, it was a homecoming game after Hurricane Katrina that likely sealed the Saints’ future in New Orleans for many years.
Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, says there is no way the basketball franchise will be sold as long as she is alive.
It’s a topic that seems to come up at least once a decade -- what is the future of the New Orleans Saints and will they stay in New Orleans?
15 of over 800 nursing home residents evacuated to a makeshift shelter ahead of Ida have died, according to LDH.
Bob Dean, the owner of seven nursing homes that evacuated more than 800 residents to a warehouse ahead of Hurricane Ida, plans to appeal the state’s decision to revoke the licenses for the facilities, his attorney said Friday.
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.
Officials have revoked the licenses of seven nursing homes involved in an evacuation that crammed elderly and vulnerable residents into a warehouse.
Nursing home residents who were crammed inside of a warehouse shelter in Tangipahoa Parish where seven people died describe conditions inside as a ‘nightmare.’ The residents were among hundreds evacuated from seven nursing home facilities on the Southshore to the warehouse facility in Independence, La. ahead of Hurricane Ida.
As lawmakers debate including female drivers in more crash test standards, the agency in charge is staying quiet.
