Undercover reporting: A Zekman trademark

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Nov/Dec 1998 by Sadeghian, Tracy

She has been sprayed in the eyes with mace and her face has appeared on "wanted" posters in downtown Chicago. Just hazards of the job for WBBM-TV's Pam Zekman, whose 31 years of investigative reporting have made her enemies, while earning her a reputation as one of the nation's best.

Zekman nailed down some of her biggest stories by going undercover, a technique that has become one of her trademarks. It has also made her the target of critics who object to the various degrees deception involved in going undercover, from using fake names to falsifying resumes to using hidden cameras. Just how much deception should reporters use when they go undercover? The recently decided Food Lion case reignited that debate, and it has probably led some news organizations to shy away from hidden cameras and other undercover reporting altogether. But Food Lion has not slowed down Zekman a bit. (See preceding article on legal issues surrounding the case.)

Part of what made Chicago news good

"Undercover reporting was something that set her apart and is part of what made Chicago news so good," says WMAQ-TV's former investigative reporter, Peter Karl, who competed against Zekman in the 1980s and early 1990s. Karl worries about stations that use undercover reporting as merely a research tool to get quick hits. "We'd never just go undercover. We'd always do the prep work first."

Zekman spent much of her childhood where the Chicago Ice Arena stood. That was before WBBMTV bought the rink and converted it into television studios.

As a child and teenager, Zekman spent long hours before and after school tracing figures and perfecting jumps. It paid off. At 16, she competed in the National Junior Ladies Competition.

But she had to make a choice. In 1961, as a 16year-old freshman at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, Zekman commuted to Chicago for spurts of intense training. One of those sessions left her with a severely inflamed ankle; she barely made it through a national competition. Zekman says she always knew it would come down to school or skating. She picked school.

After leaving Berkeley with an English literature degree, uncertain about what she wanted to do, she worked as an adoption counselor at Cook County's Department of Aid. That year's experience gave her leads for a story she later did on lawyers running baby-selling rackets.

Zekman heard about City News Bureau, Chicago's training ground for journalists. She spent three years there covering police beats and the criminal and federal courts. "It was sink or swim. From the moment I started, I loved it. It exposed me to worlds I had never seen before."

Undercover work can ensure accuracy

One of her first undercover assignments was as a nurse's aide, after joining the Chicago Tribune's investigative task force in 1969. She worked in Chicago nursing homes, a position that allowed her to uncover patient abuse.

The decision to go undercover is never taken lightly. Zekman pinpoints what she intends to prove or disprove before sending someone in. Many times, the decision to go undercover has boiled down to whether people's recollections were valid. The first time she had heard about filth and mistreatment at the nursing homes from patients' relatives. She went undercover to ensure her story was accurate; otherwise she would have had to rely on the emotionally charged complaints of patients' relatives.

Zekman says she does not remember what she put on the job application, but one thing is clear: she tried to be as truthful as possible, drawing on her life experiences during job interviews. She remembers that she talked about how she became interested in the duties of nurse's aide because her father was a doctor and she enjoyed going on rounds with him. "Lies are hard to remember and I don't want to give them an excuse to criticize me later." Zekman was not criticized for the series; it received credit for helping shut 100 nursing homes in Illinois.

"Pam developed undercover reporting as an art form, a science," says Chicago Tribune reporter Bill Gaines, who worked aside Zekman from 19741976, when she led the Tribune'stask force.

Gaines held seven undercover jobs under Zekman's direction, including stints as a bill collector and hospital janitor. "We would falsify job applications. We used our real names, dates of birth and social security numbers, but falsified job references.

According to Zekman, the false references were not fabricated; they were usually friends and coworkers, and no one ever checked them. Zekman's lawyers advise her against using false job references, especially if they pertain to the field related to the undercover job she's seeking. Zekman says she is more sensitive about falsifying references because of Food Lion. "We try not to lie on the applications; telling the truth about your background and using real names and references makes it easier."

In 1979, after she moved to the Chicago SunTimes, Zekman was known to keep a blond wig handy. "It gave me a terrible headache and I was always afraid tufts of red hair would fall out and blow my cover." That wig came into use when she went undercover as a dance instructor to expose how Fred Astaire Dance Studios bilked lonely seniors out of their retirement savings. She stayed through the two-week crash course in ballroom dancing, then left. Zekman makes it a point to leave an undercover job after training ends because she does not want to commit the same fraud she is exposing.