August 2024

Anna Werner is the senior consumer investigative correspondent for CBS News. Her award-winning reporting appears across all CBS News broadcasts and platforms, including CBS MORNINGS, the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH NORAH O’DONNELL and CBS NEWS SUNDAY MORNING.

Werner is also part of the CBS News and Stations specialized consumer/business/moneywatch unit and the medical health and wellness unit, appearing across local, network and digital platforms.

Since joining CBS News in 2011, Werner has covered and investigated a wide range of impactful stories, including on hospital, pharmaceutical and insurance practices, defective products, web-based and other financial scams, illegal dietary supplements and the impact of AI on consumers. Her investigative work has earned Werner numerous broadcast journalism awards and praise from her peers.

In 2024, Werner won the prestigious George R. Polk Award for “When Medical Devices Malfunction,” highlighted by her investigation into the unregulated AGGA dental device that was leaving patients with mangled mouths. This was Werner’s second career Polk Award. “When Medical Devices Malfunction” also earned a 2024 Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting.

Also, in 2024, she won the American Association for Cancer Research June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism for her series of stories resulting in the reversal of insurers paying less for DIEP flap breast reconstruction.

In 2023, “Diagnosis: Debt” won the NIHCM Digital Media Award and The Gerald Loeb Awards’ Consumer Reporting category, describing the struggles of consumers with medical debt. At the same time, Werner’s “Hertz Arrests Investigation,” detailing how Hertz renters were being wrongfully arrested, was named a finalist in the Loeb Video category.

In 2020, Werner won her fourth Sigma Delta Chi Award, given by the Society of Professional Journalists for her still ongoing multi-part series, Medical Price Roulette, which explores the lack of medical price transparency among providers, hospitals and insurance companies, as well as the human costs of this incredibly opaque system.

In addition to the above awards, Werner’s work has earned her two duPont-Columbia Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, five RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Awards, three Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, two Scripps-Howard Jack R. Howard Excellence in Media Awards, a Scripps-Howard Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service, a National Headliner Award, a New York Newswomen’s Front Page Award and the Associated Press Bill Stout Award for Excellence in Enterprise News. 

Werner was named the Chris Harris Reporter of the Year by the Associated Press Radio and Television Association in 2008 and 2010 and the Journalist of the Year by the Consumer Federation of California in 2010. She has won 35 Emmy Awards, including awards for best reporter in 2000 and 2001 and again in 2008 and 2009. Werner is perhaps best known for uncovering the defect in Firestone tires on Ford Explorers, which resulted in the nation’s largest tire recall.

Before joining CBS News, Werner distinguished herself as a nationally recognized investigative reporter at CBS stations in Indianapolis (WISH), Houston (KHOU) and San Francisco (KPIX).

A Chicago area native, Werner graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism from Northern Illinois University.