KCRA 3 TV news reporter Mike Luery retires after storied career in Sacramento and beyond
From a neglectful puppy mill in Missouri to a melee outside the state Capitol Building in Sacramento, Mike Luery has had his share of confrontations as a TV news reporter trying to produce a fair and balanced news story that offers more than one perspective.
“With experience you learn to ask the tough questions and to verify information because the truth is often nuanced and requires more digging,” Luery told The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday. “Today, I feel that I’m a much better reporter than when I first started.”
The day before, Luery retired after 24 years from KCRA 3 in Sacramento, where he learned a lot from the “terrific professionals” he worked with at the TV station, he said.
He’s leaving KCRA with “so much gratitude,” Luery said. The news organization gave him the chance to cover news from California state politics to the New Hampshire primary to a trade mission to Mexico with then-Gov. Jerry Brown.
Derek Schnell, news director of the NBC affiliate owned by Hearst Television, said Luery traveled the continent to bring back important stories to Northern California.
“He’s knocked on a myriad of doors and walked with public officials down countless corridors to get answers for our KCRA viewers,” Schnell said in an email to The Bee Wednesday.
“But what I will miss most about Mike is how he championed his colleagues, mentoring dozens of journalists throughout his tenure,” Schnell said. “His passion for news runs deep and I’m sure he’ll continue to stay connected to our community.”
Luery started at KCRA working as the station’s consumer affairs reporter responding to callers’ reports of rip-offs and other malfeasance. A series of calls reporting sick puppies sold at Sacramento malls led him to puppy mills in the Midwest. Working with the Humane Society of United States, Luery and a camera operator headed out to find these puppy mills.
One mill in Missouri, where some of these puppies were bred, had the dogs giving birth to puppies locked in wire cages in the summer heat with little water, Luery said. He tried to speak with the puppy mill owner. who refused to talk and called local sheriff’s officials.
Luery said that led to a heated confrontation with a sheriff’s deputy who wanted the TV news crew members to hand over their reporting at the puppy mill, or be hauled off to jail. The reporter refused and explained he was trying to provide both sides of this story.
Luery’s clever camera operator gave in to the deputy’s demands and handed over a tape, but he had switched the real one for a blank tape that was given to the deputy. Luery said they went home with the story.
Also worked in Connecticut, Texas and Florida
Luery has been in the news business for 35 years, starting as a news director at radio station KZOZ FM in San Luis Obispo. He also worked in radio news in Connecticut and TV news in Texas and Florida.
In West Palm Beach, he reported gut-wrenching news stories, such as a group of Haitian refugees who tried to reach the United States in shrimp boats. The boats capsized along the way, and the refugees’ bodies washed ashore, Luery said.
“That was really tragic and awful, seeing all those bodies on the beach,” Luery said.
Also in Florida, he produced a five-part investigative series on the Ku Klux Klan. Luery said that series started after he stopped for a red light and spotted a group of KKK members in full regalia asking for donations. He grabbed one of their fliers and later called the phone number on the flier.
Luery told group members he just wanted to let the KKK tell their story in their own words so the public could know what the group was all about. That led to a coffee shop meeting with the head of that KKK group and to cross burnings.
“It was very scary,” Luery said about the KKK investigative series. “But I just wanted them to tell it in their own words, which were stupid, uneducated and racist.”
Luery also worked as an investigative reporter for KOVR 13, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, and he worked for NBC Bay Area as its Capitol Bureau chief in Sacramento covering then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“That was an era when covering the Capitol was cool,” Luery said. “He was the celebrity governor.”
Capitol Building melee
He gained some unwanted attention in June 2016, when a group of men and women attacked him and KCRA photographer John Breedlove while covering neo-Nazi demonstrators gathered at the Capitol.
Luery tried to reach the Capitol steps to cover the demonstration and seek all sides of the news story. He was stopped by a group of people wearing black clothing, masks and ski goggles who had surrounded the demonstration in an attempt to keep cameras away from the neo-Nazi gathering.
The small group of neo-Nazi demonstrators had obtained a permit from the California Highway Patrol to hold a rally in the west area of Capitol Park. Members of Antifa, an anti-fascist group, had organized a counter-protest.
The confrontation between these opposing groups erupted into a melee, starting about 11 a.m. that day when Luery and Breedlove were stopped by the anti-fascist protesters shouting “no cameras” and demanding they leave.
Luery said the violent attack began when someone thrust a skateboard into his stomach and “started beating me up.” The protesters took away his notepad, microphone and iPhone. He said the group of about six or eight people tried to wrestle away the camera from Breedlove, whose thumb was broken in the process.
He said he fought back the urge to retaliate and found his microphone to continue his reporting. Luery and the cameraman were eventually shoved out of the crowd and crossed the street away from the protesters.
“They wanted for me to strike back. That a reporter attacked them, that would’ve been their false narrative,” Luery said.
Instead, Luery said he chose to tell the story the way it unfolded, capturing images of his own assault as the incident broke out into a riot.
Luery called it an eye-opening experience, recognizing the open hostility toward journalists trying to do their jobs. It hasn’t gotten any better in the past few years with chants of “fake news,” he said. That open wound of distrust between the public and news media continues to make it difficult for journalists to offer all sides of the story, he said.
“It’s definitely gotten worse... it didn’t used to be this way,” Luery said, referencing his coverage of anti-vaccine, anti-police brutality and anti-COVID-19 restrictions this year.
The COVID-19 pandemic made his final year with KCRA even more challenging as TV news reporters were forced to wear masks, stay 6 feet away from others and conduct many interviews via online Zoom chats.
“I like doing your job with one hand tied behind your back,” Luery said. “It’s been the most difficult year for news gathering.”
Luery announced his retirement on his Twitter account Tuesday. About 200 people responded online to his announcement, congratulating him on his retirement and wishing him well. They included KCRA viewers, agency spokespeople and former and current colleagues. One of them was the KCRA photographer caught with Luery in the 2016 melee.
“It’s been a true honor to work with you,” Breedlove said on Twitter. “Through thick and then, we always turned out some good stories.”
Luery said he had planned to retire this year and chose not to renew his KCRA contract. He decided this would be best time for his departure after election season is over.
KCRA taught him to be a better storyteller, using pictures, sound, documents and high-tech tools like drones to provide a compelling story to a TV audience, Luery said. But he also said he learned how to build news stories on a foundation of facts that can’t be disputed.
“The TV business is highly competitive and transitory, but I feel so fortunate to have landed at KCRA,” Luery said. “It will always be my home away from home.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
