Lifetime Achievement Award

Vic Lee, broadcast journalist and TV reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area retired this past January from KGO (ABC7) after a 50+ year career in journalism.

He was born in Shanghai and raised in Tokyo, and came to the U.S. to attend San Jose State University, where he was elected student body president and involved in African American - Asian American allyship.

His journalism career began with an internship at the New York Times. He then joined United Press International in 1969. Three years later, he returned to the Bay Area, and became a reporter for KRON-TV. He spent the last 15 years at KGO.

In his long and storied career, he has covered Japanese incarceration, the assassinations of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, the Zodiac Killer, and much more. He is known for his warm personality and extensive collection of contacts and sources.

He has also focused particularly on Chinatown and AAPI communities, remarking, “I feel that I owe the Chinese community since, you know, being Chinese American, and being sort of a rarity, an Asian male in this business, that I ought to cover them as much as I can.”

Vic Lee’s reporting has won numerous Emmys and awards — as well as garnered the attention of public officials. His story on San Francisco shops’ exploitation of Japanese tourists led to criminal investigations. His series on African famine and civil war in the 1980s won a Gold Award for best documentary at the New York Film Festival.

In 2018, he received the NATAS San Francisco/Northern California Chapter Governor’s Award, having been inducted to the Silver Circle in 1999.

In 2020, he, along with Lori Matsukawa and Henry Moritsugu, were honored at the Asian American Journalists Association’s virtual convention in the program “A Celebration of AAJA Trailblazers.”