Award-winning journalist Jim Avila is the Senior National Correspondent at ABC News based in Washington DC. In this role, he is overseeing an investigative/enterprise unit designed to use the Federal Agencies to break stories and expose trouble in food, drug, airline and environmental safety. He will also continue to contribute to "20/20," specializing in law and justice and consumer investigations.
A versatile reporter, Avila has broken big story after big story since joining ABC News in 2004. As the Senior Law and Justice Correspondent, he led major trial coverage at ABC News, from Jerry Sandusky and Penn State, to Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson and countless others for 20/20 and GMA. He has led several newsmagazine investigations on wrongful conviction, including a girl who recanted a story that she was raped by her two cousins after her mother admitted to concocting the account. Other recent reports include an in-depth investigation into unequal justice in the court system in Texas, tracing two men from different sides of the tracks who received two very different sentences from the same Texas judge. Avila also led ABC News coverage of the battle over child custody between the State of Texas and the Fundamentalist Mormon Sect accused of abusing children. Additionally, he has contributed to network-wide special reports on the bird flu, healthcare in America and Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Avila joined ABC from NBC News, where he had served as National Correspondent for "Nightly News" since January 2000, covering a range of domestic issues that included the September 11 attacks and their aftermath and the DC sniper shootings. He also reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, during which time he filed from inside NBC's Baghdad hotel compound during and after its bombing by terrorists.
Since 1997, Mr. Avila averaged 130 reports a year on "Nightly News," which was the highest number for any minority in broadcast history, according to Joe Foote at Arizona State's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Before being named National Correspondent at NBC, Mr. Avila was a Chicago bureau correspondent, where he covered high-profile events including the shooting tragedies in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas and Paducah, Kentucky.
Prior to NBC, Mr. Avila was anchor and the investigative reporter for KNBC in Los Angeles, from 1994 to 1996. There he was the principal reporter on the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, helping the station earn the 1995 Golden Mike Award and a 1996 Emmy Award.
Before joining at KNBC, he was political reporter and anchor at WBBM-TV, the CBS owned station in Chicago, covering a variety of news stories of local, national and international importance, including the Persian Gulf War from both Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv. Among his notable stories for WBBM-TV were the Beirut War, the TWA hijacking, the Nicaraguan civil war and the Mexican earthquake. From 1980 to 1984 Mr. Avila was a general assignment reporter for WLS, the ABC owned station in Chicago. Prior to that, he was a weekend anchor and the San Jose bureau chief for KPIX in San Francisco from 1976 to 1980. He began his broadcast career at KCBS Radio in San Francisco in 1973 as managing editor, and was later promoted to bureau chief.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Mr. Avila earned a National Emmy Award for his coverage of the destruction of Grand Forks North Dakota by flood and fire and another Emmy for covering the fate of undocumented workers during the southern California wildfires in 2008. He has received five Edward R. Murrow Awards for his coverage of September 11, the DC Sniper attacks and the War in Iraq. He was awarded the prestigious Cine Golden Eagle Award for his portrayal of an immigrant couple who put their son through M.I.T by collecting reusable cans from the streets of Los Angeles. In 2004, Avila was awarded the Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He has also received five Chicago-area Emmy Awards in the category of Spot News, and in 1999 the National Association of Hispanic Journalists honored him with the "TV News Feature Award". In addition he garnered three Peter Lisagor Awards from the Headline Club of Chicago, winning for his coverage of the Peru drug wars and the death of Mayor Harold Washington, and was named Best Reporter of 1989.
Jim is proudest of his three children, Jamie, Jenny and Evan.
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