Anna Werner
CBS News
Anna Werner is the consumer investigative national correspondent for "CBS This Morning" based in New York City. Her reporting is also featured across all CBS News broadcasts and platforms, including the "CBS Evening News," "CBS Sunday Morning," "48 Hours" and CBSN, CBS News' 24/7 live streaming service. Since joining CBS News in 2011, Werner has traveled across the globe.
In just the past year, Werner has reported on a host of investigative stories with subjects including phone scammers; insulin pricing; fraudulent generic drugs, harmful beauty products; high medical costs; lead in drinking water, breast implant cancer risks; financial scams of the elderly and grave robbing of native artifacts. She's also dug into medical record hacking; illegal dietary supplements; sperm donor anonymity; heavy metals in fruit juices; Instagram scams; child sex abuse; dangerous plastic surgery in Mexico; minors' addicted to JUUL e-cigarettes; the hacking of medical devices; glyphosate in breakfast foods, and the risks of crowdfunding. Her stories on the dangers of methylene chloride led to the toxic paint stripper being pulled from the shelves of most major national retailers.
At CBS News, Werner's stories have received widespread acclaim. Her award-winning reports have included a story on electric shock devices used on students at a Massachusetts special needs school which won a New York Newswomen's Front Page Award for Best Television Feature and a report on a district attorney gunned-down in Kaufman County, Texas, which led a Murrow-winning broadcast of the "CBS Evening News."
Before joining CBS News, Werner distinguished herself as a nationally recognized investigative reporter at CBS stations in Indianapolis (WISH-TV), Houston (KHOU-TV) and San Francisco (KPIX-TV).
At KHOU-TV, Werner initiated the national investigation of defective Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, breaking a story that resulted in the largest worldwide tire recall in history. After winning duPont-Columbia and George Foster Peabody awards for her Firestone stories, she won both of these awards again, along with a RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award when she uncovered a pattern of inaccurate DNA analyses by the Houston police crime lab. The stories resulted in a pardon for one wrongfully convicted teenager, the closure of the crime lab, and the re-examination of hundreds of DNA samples.
At KPIX-TV, Werner won two more Murrow awards, one for a story on I.C.E. deportation practices and another for donated clothes ending up being sold for profit in Africa. That same year, her series, "Unabomber, Evidence Revealed," won the Associated Press Bill Stout Award for Excellence in Enterprise News. She received her first Murrow award while working at WISH-TV, where her hidden-camera investigation demonstrated serious abuse of developmentally disabled patients at New Castle State Developmental Center, resulting in the closure of the center.
Werner's coverage has won numerous other awards, including three Society of Professional Journalists awards, three Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, two Scripps-Howard Jack R. Howard Excellence in Media awards, a Scripps-Howard Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service, a George R. Polk award, and a National Headliner award. Werner was named the Chris Harris Reporter of the Year by the Associated Press Radio and Television Association in 2008 and 2010 and the Journalist of the Year by the Consumer Federation of California in 2010. She has won 33 Emmy awards, including awards for best reporter in 2000 and 2001 and again in 2008 and 2009.
A Chicago area native, Werner graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism from Northern Illinois University.