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Jilda Unruh
Four-time Emmy Award winning Investigative Journalist Jilda Unruh made a name for herself in big cities like Miami, Boston, and Minneapolis uncovering jaw-dropping cases of Public ...view moreFour-time Emmy Award winning Investigative Journalist Jilda Unruh made a name for herself in big cities like Miami, Boston, and Minneapolis uncovering jaw-dropping cases of Public Corruption. A respected story teller throughout her 35-years in Television News, her work uncovering graft, malfeasance and cronyism in the Miami-Dade County Public School System for more than half a decade led to threats against her life and some of the highest ratings in local TV news.
Jilda's investigations led to the firing of one Superintendent and the forced resignations of a team of top administrators. She broke stories that led to a Federal prison sentence for the President of the nation's fourth largest teacher's union. Jilda's reporting on the school board and administration pushed former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to appoint an oversight committee to review the district's finances involving land acquisition, construction and maintenance.
For the 6 years Jilda covered the corruption at Miami's School Board, she endured threats against her life, including one made by the Union boss who claimed to have ties to the mob. Being followed, receiving hate mail and nasty phone calls was all part of the job. Her reporting of the facts so irritated the local teacher's union, they hired two powerhouse law firms in Miami and Washington D.C. and filed an FCC challenge against her station's TV license. The last person who did that was President Richard Nixon and he failed.
Unruh knew more about what was going on behind the scenes in the largest school district in Florida than she was ever able to report. "In Cahoots" is based on information she was forbidden by station management to report or could not second source. Her doggedness was on full display in Miami between 1999 and 2005 as she shed public light on the private secrets in the school district.
Her collection of inside sources was vast and trustworthy. However, the fear that permeated the rank and file who worked in the district and saw all the wrong that was happening prevented most from ever appearing on camera. Only one person ever went on camera to stand up against alleged corruption at her school. She received death threats days after her interview aired, and left her job for her own safety.
Jilda's "tough-as-nails" investigative reporter instincts date back to the start of her career in Oklahoma. After graduating from Vanderbilt University with a double major in American History and Drama, Jilda began her career at the CBS station in her hometown of Tulsa. After moving to ABC station in Tulsa, Unruh was the first TV reporter to uncover and report on the secrets about the Race Riot of 1921 in Tulsa. Until the 1960's, it was the worst race riot in the nation's history. It was the first time her life would be threatened because of her investigative reporting. The Ku Klux Klan also threatened to bomb the TV station. Later, she would earn her nickname the "Pitbull in Pumps", as host of The Jilda Unruh Show, due to her relentless questioning of guests in Tulsa's first, live, studio talk show.
In 1994, she left Miami for the NBC station in Boston where she earned several Edward R. Murrow awards and won two more Emmys. After three years she went to the CBS O&O station in Minneapolis as Chief Investigative Reporter. There she won a National Gracie for Best Large Market Investigative Series about the nation's largest airlines and how they failed to properly care for "unaccompanied minors" or children flying alone. Her report prompted a Congressional investigation and a major overhaul of Northwest Airlines unaccompanied minor program, which they unveiled one year later.
After returning to WPLG in 1999, she unleashed her unrelenting passion for justice on a school district that was largely ignored by most media outlets. Unruh exposed the dark side of the Miami-Dade School Board, which is at the heart of the book In Cahoots, due to launch September 21st.view less