CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY Wins 2017 Peabody Award

The CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY won a Peabody Award today for its investigative series on the widespread opioid addiction crisis in West Virginia. This multi-part investigation reported by CBS News senior national correspondent Jim Axelrod examined the doctors, pharmacists and drug wholesalers who contribute to West Virginia's highest rate of prescription overdose deaths in the nation-a troubling reflection of the country's spiraling rates of opioid addiction.

CBS News drilled down into the layers of the state's epidemic by interviewing then-West Virginia Secretary of Health Karen Bowling, Drug Enforcement Agent Gary Newman, executive director of West Virginia's Board of Medicine Robert Knittle, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, and Michael Kostenko, a DOCTOR WHO has since been jailed as a result of CBS News' reporting.

Click here to watch CBS News' Peabody Award-winning reports. Axelrod's investigative journalism was also honored with both an Emmy and a George Polk Award last year for his stories on compounding pharmacy fraud.

This is the second Peabody awarded to the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY. The broadcast was honored in 2012 for its in-depth reporting on the conflict in Syria.

The Peabody is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards given for outstanding work in electronic media. The program has been administered by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication since its inception in 1940.

Steve Capus is the executive producer of the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY and executive editor of CBS News.

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