Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson (born 1961) is an American journalist and television correspondent.

She hosts the Sinclair Broadcast Group TV show Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.

Attkisson is a five-time Emmy Award winner, and a Radio Television Digital News Association (RTNDA) Edward R. Murrow Award recipient.

She was formerly an investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau for CBS News and a substitute anchor for the CBS Evening News and then went to The Daily Signal, a news feed from The Heritage Foundation, a think tank.

Attkisson attended the University of Florida, graduating in 1982 with a degree in broadcast journalism from the College of Journalism and Communications.

Attkisson began her career in broadcast journalism as a reporter at WUFT-TV, the PBS station in Gainesville, Florida, in 1982.

She later worked as an anchor and reporter at WTVX-TV in Fort Pierce/West Palm Beach from 1982–1985, at WBNS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, from 1985 to 1886, and at WTVT in Tampa, from 1986–1990.

From 1990 to 1993, Attkisson was an anchor for CNN, and also served as a key anchor for CBS covering space exploration in 1993.

Attkisson left CNN in 1993, moving to CBS, where she anchored the television news broadcast CBS News Up to the Minute until January 1995, then became an investigative correspondent based in Washington, D.C.

She served on the University of Florida's Journalism College Advisory Board (1993–1997) and was its chair in 1996.

From 1996 to 2001, Attkisson hosted the PBS health-news magazine HealthWeek.

The University gave her an Outstanding Achievement Award in 1997.

Attkisson received an Investigative Reporters and Editors (I.R.E.) Finalist award for Dangerous Drugs in 2000.

In 2001, Attkisson received an Investigative Emmy Award nomination for Firestone Tire Fiasco from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

In 2002, she co-authored the college textbook Writing Right for Broadcast and Internet News.

Later that same year she won an Emmy Award for her Investigative Journalism about the American Red Cross.

Attkisson was part of the CBS News team that received RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2005 for Overall Excellence.

In 2006, Attkisson served as Capitol Hill correspondent for CBS, one of a small number of female anchors covering the 2006 midterms.

Attkisson was a member of the CBS News team that received RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2008 for Overall Excellence.

In 2008, when Hillary Clinton said she dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, Attkisson, who was on the trip, refuted Clinton's account, saying the trip to Bosnia was risky but that were no bullets to dodge.

The Washington Post also expressed skepticism and reported that there were no 'documented security threats' included in a review of 100 news articles from the time.

The day after Attkisson's report on the CBS Evening News, Clinton admitted there was no sniper fire and said she "misspoke".

In 2009, Attkisson won an Investigative Emmy Award for Business and Financial Reporting for her exclusive reports on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the bank bailout.

In 2010, Attkisson was nominated for two Emmy Awards for investigations into members of Congress and waste of tax dollars.

In July 2011, Attkisson was again nominated, for Follow the Money investigations into Congressional travel to the Copenhagen climate summit, and problems with aid to Haiti earthquake victims.

She later wrote the book Stonewalled, in which she alleged that CBS News failed to give sufficient coverage of Barack Obama controversies, such as the 2012 Benghazi attack. Attkisson has received criticism for publishing stories suggesting a possible link between vaccines and autism, a claim that has been rejected by the scientific community.

Attkisson, née Thompson, was born in Sarasota, Florida, into a family of seven children.

She attended Wilkinson Elementary and Riverview High School.

Her father was a lawyer, but she spent most of her life with her stepfather, an orthopedic surgeon.

In 2012, CBS News accepted an Investigative Reporting Award given to Attkisson's reporting on ATF's Fast and Furious gunwalker controversy from Accuracy in Media, a conservative news media watchdog group.

In June 2012, Attkisson's investigative reporting for the gunwalker story also won the CBS Evening News the Radio and Television News Directors Association's National Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video Investigative Reporting.

In July 2012, Attkisson's Gunwalker: Fast and Furious reporting received an Emmy Award.

The following year, Exposing the Business of Congress, which examined the impact of lobbyists on the United States Congress, was awarded an Emmy for investigative journalism in a newscast, while her work on Green Energy Going Red and Libya: Dying for Security led to nominations.

Exposing the Business of Congress was also nominated for a 2013 Gerald Loeb Award in the broadcast category.

Attkisson resigned from CBS News on in 2014, after 21 years with the network.

On March 10, 2014, Attkisson resigned from CBS News in what she stated was an "amicable" parting.

Politico reported that according to sources within CBS there had been tensions leading to "months of hard-fought negotiations" – that Attkisson had been frustrated over what she perceived to be the network's liberal bias and lack of dedication to investigative reporting, as well as issues she had with the network’s corporate partners, while some colleagues within the network saw her reporting as agenda-driven and doubted her impartiality.

Erik Wemple, in his Washington Post blog, said CBS News had greater resources to deal with potential litigation than Attkisson as an individual and commented "if her nearly aired stories are as bulletproof as she suggests, where’s the risk?"

He quoted Sonya McNair, a spokesman for CBS News, who had told him the operation "maintains the highest journalistic standards in what it chooses to put on the air. Those standards are applied without fear or favor."

Attkisson's book Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington was published by Harper later in 2014 and became a New York Times best seller.