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Brendan Keefe

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Posted: 03/31/2010

bkeefe@wcpo.com

Facebook: BrendanKeefeWCPO

30-time Emmy winner Brendan Keefe was named Best Large Market TV Reporter by the Ohio Associated Press in 2011, and Best Photographer with back-to-back wins in 2012 and 2013. He joined WCPO in 2007 as a weeknight evening anchor. Brendan is now I-Team Anchor and Chief Investigator for WCPO.

In just the last four years, Brendan has been honored with 23 Emmys from the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, including awards for investigative and feature reporting, photography, and editing. The vast majority of those Emmys were for solo work as an MMJ. Brendan won the very first "video journalist" Emmy in the Ohio valley chapter for his MMJ work.

So far in 2013, a seven-county narcotics task force completely shut down after Brendan Keefe's investigation revealed a practice called 'policing for profit' -- agents were seizing cars and cash from acquitted defendants while letting major drug dealers go free. Also this year, a national coupon website closed its doors just days after Brendan revealed many of its employees had to fight just to get paid. In 2012, Brendan exposed thefts by government workers in Arlington Heights, Ohio -- one of the most notorious speed traps in the nation -- before those employees were indicted for stealing money from speeding tickets.

A Decade in Major Markets

Previous to moving to Cincinnati to become a weeknight anchor, Brendan worked for New York's WCBS-2 as a correspondent. He was honored with a 2006 New York Emmy for his continuing coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Brendan has covered nearly a dozen hurricanes in his career. He also won a NY Emmy for live coverage of the Northeast Blackout from a darkened Times Square.

He also served as an auxiliary police officer for the NYPD's 13th Precinct in Manhattan in the years following the 9/11 terror attacks.

War Correspondent

Brendan has completed three combat reporting tours in the Middle East. He reported from the rooftops of Kuwait City as U.S. Forces invaded Iraq in 2003. Brendan returned to the region in April 2004 when he and a photographer were embedded with a U.S. Army Reserve unit from New York. During the deadliest month for I.E.D. attacks, Brendan endured a 600-mile convoy from Kuwait to Kirkuk in Northern Iraq, and later returned to cover the same unit in January 2005.

Brendan's Iraq reporting won the coveted Silurian Award from New York City's oldest press club.

Brendan's international assignments have also taken him to Madrid to cover the Al Qaeda terrorist bombings of commuter trains. He covered the national elections in Spain three days later when voters ousted the ruling party as a direct result of the terror attacks.

Street Reporter

Before joining WCBS-2 in New York, Brendan worked as a special projects reporter for the NBC affiliate in Houston from 1997-2002. He covered the collapse of Enron, and flew almost daily in Chopper 2 as a helicopter reporter. He also flew twice in zero gravity with NASA aboard the KC-135 "Vomit Comet." Brendan covered the space shuttle launch of Sen. John Glenn, and was present in the House of Representatives for the impeachment vote against President Bill Clinton. In 2000, He traveled with then-Governor George W. Bush in his first campaign for president. Brendan won four Suncoast Emmys while in Houston (now the Lone Star Chapter), including two awards for an underwater cave diving story he shot alone while on vacation in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Storyteller

Prior to his work in Texas, Brendan was an anchor and reporter for WFSB-3, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut. He anchored the weekday morning news with Mika Brzezinski from 1995 - 1997. Brendan's report on a paralyzed high school girl's secret plan to walk into her junior prom earned a Boston-New England Emmy -- his first. He also covered development of the Navy's first Seawolf submarine and spent two days 800 feet below the Atlantic Ocean aboard a Los Angeles class attack sub. Brendan filed the first all-digital, tapeless news story in 1996 using a prototype camera.

In 1994 and 1995, Brendan was a reporter for WJXT-4, the former CBS affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida. He started as an investigative reporter uncovering government waste and abuse as the "The Whistleblower." Later, Brendan was assigned as a military affairs reporter covering four major Navy bases.

Brendan worked for the CBS affiliate in Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1992 and 1993. He was bureau chief of the station's Battle Creek newsroom. While there, he provided gavel-to-gavel coverage of a major murder trial. The defendant, a former police officer and criminology professor, was convicted of executing his own wife, the local ABC morning anchorwoman. He appeared on the Donahue Show as a trial expert. Brendan also flew an F-16 fighter jet with the Air Force Thunderbirds in 1993.

Brendan began his broadcast journalism career in Rockford, Illinois where he reported and anchored for WREX-13, then an ABC affiliate. His yearlong investigation of the Ku Klux Klan culminated with an attack on him and his camera by masked white supremacists at the same rally where Geraldo Rivera was assaulted. Brendan started at WREX as a news photographer, skills that have served him well later in his career as a multi-media journalist for WCPO Networks.

Family Matters

A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, Brendan was raised in North Haven, Connecticut with his eight brothers and sisters. Two of his brothers and both parents died of cancer, and Brendan volunteers with The Cure Starts Now. He earned a bachelors degree in English Literature from Kenyon College in Ohio where he also created Kenyon College Television. Brendan's wife Tiffany was a network news writer before the couple moved to the Tri-State to start a family. Tiffany, Brendan and their two children reside in Anderson Township.

Brendan's MMJ work can be seen here http://youtube.com/brendankeefemmj