Leah Hope of ABC-Channel 7 to receive Better Business Bureau Excellence In Media Award

CHICAGO, IL – Leah Hope, reporter at ABC-Channel 7, will receive the Diogenes Award for Excellence in Media from the Better Business Bureau serving Chicago and Northern Illinois (BBB) at the 86th Annual Dinner, being held at the Chicago Downtown Marriott on Thursday, March 21, 2013. Hope will be honored with the award for her years of news achievement.

“The BBB Diogenes Award for Excellence in Media is presented to a news reporter who exemplifies the goals and principles of the Better Business Bureau to support and foster an ethical marketplace benefiting both consumers and businesses,” said Steve J. Bernas, president & CEO of the Better Business Bureau serving Chicago and Northern Illinois.

The BBB Diogenes Award is named after the ancient Greek philosopher, Diogenes, who was said to have traveled the streets of Athens with a lantern looking for an honest man.

Hope is a general assignment reporter for ABC 7 News. She is an award-winning reporter who focuses on special investigations and other important stories affecting the lives of Chicagoans. She joined ABC 7 in 1997 and served as the co-anchor of ABC-Channel 7 News This Morning until 2001.

Hope’s work covering important issues in the African American community has been honored on both national and local levels. In 2003, she won two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for reports on a group of “Lost Boys” attacked by a Chicago gang, as well as changes in the cosmetics industry that reflect the changing face of America. The NABJ Chicago Chapter awarded Hope the 2003 Russ Ewing Excellence in Journalism Award and recognized her again with the 2004 Excellence in Enterprise Journalism Award for a series of reports on affirmative action.

Hope serves as a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. and participated in the 2001 AIDS Ride from Minneapolis to Chicago. She is a member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, American Women in Radio and Television, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Instituto Cervantes of Chicago.

Hope received her B.S. degree in Broadcast Journalism/Political Science in 1989 from Syracuse University in New York. She is the great-granddaughter of John Hope, the first African-American president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga.

Hope is married and resides in the Chicago area.