The George Polk Awards in Journalism, administered by Long Island University, honors excellence in print and broadcast journalism. The award was esablished in 1949 and named for CBS correspondent George Polk, who was killed while covering a Greek civil war.
2005 George Polk Awards
National Reporting:
Dana Priest, The Washington Post, for her disclosure of secret overseas prisons
Foreign Reporting:
Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, The Washington Post, for reporting on sham reconstruction plans in Afghanistan.
Local Reporting:
Adam Clay Thompson, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, for “Forgotten City,” an expose of the city's public housing problems.
International Reporting:
José More and Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune, for “Pipeline to Peril,” a two-part series on the massacre of 12 Nepalese men in Iraq that revealed a human trafficking business with links to a subsidiary of Halliburton.
Television Reporting:
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, ABC News, for reports on the use of torture by the CIA in secret foreign detention centers.
Justice Reporting:
Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., for revealing elements of the murders of three civil rights activists in 1964, which led to the conviction of the mastermind behind the plot.
Metropolitan Reporting:
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which provided non-stop coverage of Hurricane Katrina despite being forced from its headquarters, split among several locations throughout Louisiana, and relying on Web-only reports for several days.
Health Reporting:
David Evans, Michael Smith, and Liz Willen, Bloomberg News, for revealing problems with the U.S. clinical trial system that took advantage of poor participants by failing to disclose dangers and resulting in numerous medical problems for those tested.
Business Reporting:
Barry Meier, The New York Times, for coverage about a heart implant that was found to be defective.
Political Reporting:
Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer, Copley News Service, and Dean Calbreath, The San Diego Union-Tribune, who uncovered the scandal of Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the once-powerful Southern California Republican who admitted accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.
Radio Reporting:
JoAnn Mar, independent radio producer, for “Crime Pays: A Look at Who's Getting Rich from the Prison Boom,” a one-hour documentary that uncovered the secret profits for those involved in the growing private prison system.
Commentary:
Frank Rich, The New York Times,
Book Award:
Victor S. Navasky, former editor and publisher of The Nation, for his memoir, A Matter of Opinion.
