Rudabeh Shahbazi
Rudabeh Shahbazi is a four-time Emmy award winning journalist and anchor on KCAL News at 5 pm, 9 pm, and 11 pm.
She has been at the forefront of breaking news and in-depth reporting on stories that matter to Southern Californians from both the anchor desk and the field since joining the station as a morning anchor in 2022.
Shahbazi has won multiple Golden Mike Awards for her medical reporting, from interviewing a patient in the operating room while she was undergoing brain surgery, to her investigation of contaminated bone graft material that killed a young Southern California teacher. She took viewers through her own cancer diagnosis and journey, with a station commitment to providing information, resources and hope to other patients.
Shahbazi won an Emmy for her reporting on the wildfires in Maui, where she was the only journalist to broadcast live from the Hawaiian homestead land. She field anchored from the Eaton fire, and continues to report on the recovery efforts from both the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Prior to joining KCAL News, she helped launch NewsNation as one of its original anchors and national correspondents. While there, she covered many of the country's biggest stories, including President Biden's inauguration from Delaware, the George Floyd and Jacob Blake cases and subsequent civil unrest, the Surfside condo collapse in Miami-Dade and deadly tornadoes in Kentucky, among others.
Shahbazi served as the main anchor at WFOR-TV in Miami for five years, where she anchored live continuous coverage of the Pulse nightclub and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport shootings, the Parkland school massacre, Hurricanes Matthew, Irma and Maria, and the death of Fidel Castro. She was on the ground in Cuba when President Obama and Raul Castro announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, initiating the period known as the "Cuban thaw." She was voted Best Anchor in Miami by the Miami New Times and one of the "Most Influential Women of South Florida" by Ocean Drive Magazine.
Previously, Shahbazi was a reporter and fill-in anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles. She also covered immigration and a wide array of other stories as a reporter at KNXV-TV in Phoenix, where she covered the US-Mexico border and was one of the first reporters on the ground in Tucson after the attempted assassination of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Shahbazi got her start on the air as an education reporter at KEPR-TV in Pasco, Washington and worked behind the scenes at KTVU-TV in Oakland, California. She also has a background in documentary filmmaking, having been part of the team that produced the award-winning "King Leopold's Ghost," and producing and reporting from the Middle East for PBS Frontline World shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. She also has more than a decade of experience behind the camera as a photojournalist and editor in major markets across the country.
Shahbazi holds a BA in journalism from Pepperdine University and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.