Reporters
Mike Flannery
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Michael Flannery has been the political editor for CBS 2 since 1980, responsible for covering City Hall, Springfield and all elections.
Flannery has received many awards throughout his career. For his role in the station's coverage of the Death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, he shared the Emmy for Breaking News won by CBS-2. He won the Emmy for investigative reporting for his work on the scandalous Dixmoor Park District, which was later dissolved by court order. He received two more awards from the Associated Press; Best Reporter Award (1986), and was honored for his work on "The Death of Mayor Washington." He also received two Emmys in 1988; one for "Newsmakers," a weekly public affairs series and the other for his work on "The Death of Mayor Washington." In 1990, he was honored by the Illinois United Press International for reporting/individual achievement.
He won two Gold Bell Awards from the Mental Health Association in Illinois for his coverage of the atrocious treatment of patients in state run mental hospitals. Flannery's disclosure of a pattern of abuse of chronically ill psychiatric patients in a private halfway house won him the Illinois Associated Press Award for Best Enterprise (1982).
Flannery also serves as an investigative reporter for the station. He exposed unlicensed insurance companies that cheated thousands out of their health insurance. As a result of this investigation, the offending insurance companies were put out of business and many of the defrauded people were reimbursed.
Flannery joined CBS 2 after covering politics and labor at the Chicago Sun-Times. While there, his series on occupational safety earned him the Sidney Hillman Award, a Peter Lisagor Award from the local chapter of Sigma Delta Chi and the Jack London Award from the United Steelworkers Union.
Flannery was born in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government. Flannery has three children. He lives on Chicago's South Side.