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Topic: Miscellaneous items
Date/Time: 2/20/2006 6:24:30 PM
Title: 2005 George Polk Award winners
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
PRESS RELEASE

Long Island University Announces Winners of 2005 George Polk Awards

Long Island University has announced the 2005 winners of the George Polk Awards in Journalism. Media professionals whose works include exposés of United States-sponsored torture, heroic reporting from war zones and scenes of natural disaster, and revelations concerning questionable and potentially hazardous clinical trials and medical devices are to be recognized in 14 categories. Established in 1949, the Polk Awards are among the most coveted honors in journalism.

"The caliber of work produced by this year's Polk Award winners reminds us that investigative journalism is vital to our democracy and society," noted Dr. David J. Steinberg, Long Island University president. "We are indebted to these journalists for their vigilance during these troubling
times and for their dedication to ensuring that the stories they cover are
reported accurately and with the highest level of professional integrity,"
he added.

The George Polk Career Award will be bestowed upon Frederick Wiseman, the documentary filmmaker whose works include "High School," "Hospital," "Public Housing" and the 1967 classic, "Titicut Follies," which focus on the everyday experiences of less fortunate Americans who struggle against the bureaucracy of social institutions operating at the community level. Wiseman's pioneering "cinéma vérité" style is credited with forging a new genre of investigative reporting.

Receiving the George Polk Award for International Reporting will be Chicago Tribune reporter Cam Simpson and photographer Jose More for their investigation of the massacre of 12 Nepalese men in Iraq. Their two-part series uncovered a trail of forced labor and human trafficking that stretched from Nepal to the Middle East and was financed by a $12 billion U.S. defense contract awarded to KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The result of their efforts was a State Department investigation of abuse of foreign workers in Iraq and a promise by the Defense Department to develop new guidelines for U.S. contractors.

ABC News correspondent Brian Ross and reporter Richard Esposito will be awarded the George Polk Award for Television Reporting for revealing the treatment, which many experts consider to be torture, that the CIA used in secret detention facilities. In naming the countries where the facilities were located as well as exposing the White House-approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA, including a method called "water boarding" that subjects detainees to simulated drowning, the reports triggered an avalanche of critical reaction from governments and the public around the world.

The George Polk Award for National Reporting will go to Dana Priest of The Washington Post for unveiling the existence of secret CIA-run prisons and wrongdoing that included the death of an Afghan detainee and the attempted cover up of the mistaken imprisonment of a German citizen. Priest detailed the elaborate covert operations in a series of 10 articles that unleashed an international furor and raised troubling questions at home about the government's counter-terrorism campaign.

Also from The Washington Post, reporters Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway will receive the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Trekking across Afghanistan, they documented that claims of the U.S. reconstruction process in Afghanistan were a sham and a waste of millions of dollars. Shortly after they revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had misled Congress and the public, the longtime director of USAID resigned.

Two New York Times journalists  commentator Frank Rich and medical business reporter Barry Meier also will receive Polk Awards. For his barbed essays that intertwine popular culture with politics, including "The God Racket, from DeMille to DeLay" and "Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News," Rich will be honored with the George Polk Award for Commentary.

Meier won the George Polk Award for Business Reporting for his expose on a commonly used heart implant device with a deadly defect that was
unpublicized by medical-device manufacturer Guidant Corporation and by the Food and Drug Administration. His coverage, which began last May and continued this year, sparked government, corporate and medical investigations that have helped to save lives./CONTINUED BELOW

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