R.I.P.: Michele Gillen, Iconic Miami Investigative TV Reporter

Michelle Gillen

Michele Gillen, a legendary former South Florida television investigative reporter known for her dogged work exposing injustices, has died at age 66. She died of natural causes, reports The Miami Herald.

In all, Gillen won 39 local Emmys for her work stretching across decades.

Gillen grew up in New York City and graduated as a valedictorian from Emerson College in Boston in 1977. Her first job was at a TV station in Bangor, Maine. She came to Miami in 1980, at a turbulent time in the city’s history and weeks before the McDuffie race riots.

In Miami, her first job was at WPLG-ABC10, where she hit the streets chronicling the fires, murders and scandals.

In the mid-1980s, she was part of the newly formed investigative team that won national awards, including a best newscast award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Gillen and Bobby Groves, her producer, won the coveted Columbia-DuPont Silver Baton Award in 1988 reporting on the abuse of children in the state’s care.

After her time at WPLG, she moved to NBC in 1988 and became a correspondent for the news program “Dateline.” Gillen, however, got caught up in the Dateline scandal over staged crash tests on General Motors trucks, and was eventually moved to the NBC station in Miami, WTVJ. In 1995, she left for CBS’ KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, then returned two years later to Miami as an investigative reporter for WFOR-CBS4.

Gillen worked for nearly two decades at WFOR-CBS4, where she earned 25 regional Emmys. In 2004, she became the first TV reporter to interview Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi after he decided to give up weapons of mass destruction.

Her tenure at WFOR ended in 2018, after the station declined to renew her contract. She later sued CBS for age and gender discrimination, claiming harassment and bullying. The case settled in 2019.