A History of Journalistic Integrity, Superb Reporting and Protecting the Public: The George Polk Awards in Journalism
Edward Hershey

Mass communication turns election campaigns into sound bite contests and makes millionaires of impudent paparazzi. But it also offers the press more opportunity to live up to the billing William Hazlitt gave the British journalist William Cobbett more than 175 years ago as "a kind of fourth estate." By unearthing myriad forms of scandal and deceit in the last half-century, reporters have assumed an increasingly vital role in alerting and, ultimately, protecting the public.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the list of winners of the George Polk Awards. Established by Long Island University in 1949 to memorialize the CBS correspondent slain covering a civil war in Greece, the George Polk Award has become one of America's most coveted journalism honors -- and probably its most respected. Russell Baker and Bill Moyers, among others, say the George Polk Award means more to them than any other prize. When Washington Post reporter Ronald Kessler won a George Polk Award for national reporting some years ago, his boss, Ben Bradlee, was taken aback because the Post hadn't even submitted Kessler's stories. "I can't believe it," Bradlee said on learning of the award. "We thought it was far and away the best thing we printed all year, but we didn't enter it because we felt it was not the kind of work that wins awards."

Some of the biggest names in journalism have won George Polk Awards -- Christiane Amanpour, Roger Angell, R. W. Apple, Homer Bigart, Jimmy Breslin, Walter Cronkite,
Gloria Emerson, Frances FitzGerald, Thomas Friedman, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Marguerite Higgins, Chet Huntley, Peter Jennings, John Kifner, Ted Koppel, Charles Kuralt, Joseph Lelyveld, Tony Lukas, Mary McGrory, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Newfield, Roger Rosenblatt, Morley Safer, Oliver Sacks, Harrison Salisbury, Sidney Schanberg, Daniel Schorr, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Red Smith, I. F. Stone and Nina Totenberg.

So, too, have small-town reporters. Journalists from Bridgeport, Casper, Des Moines,
Fairbanks, Fargo, Pittsfield and Spokane have won George Polk Awards. Recipients have
been as highbrow as the London Times Literary Supplement or the New York Review of
Books and as homespun as Redbook or Inside Edition.

And amid the prominent publications and broadcast outlets on the list are less obvious
honorees -- American Banker, the Amicus Journal, Amnesty International Report, Chemical & Engineering News, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Guam Cable Television, High Country News, the North Carolina Independent Weekly, Insurance Forum, National Thrift News, New Orleans CityBusiness, New Time Films, the Progressive and Southern Exposure. What all accomplished, at least once, was superb reporting based on original investigation-exposing war crimes in Southeast Asia or Serbia, corruption in city halls or world capitals and cheats and hucksters who bilked the poor, abused power or endangered the public.

Announcement of the annual George Polk Award winners is publicized around the country, and sometimes the award itself makes news by citing a controversial story or unusual outlet. In 1980, for example, after two inmates serving life sentences at the Angola, La., prison were honored for serious examinations of criminal justice issues and searing accounts of prison life in their magazine, the Angolite, the inmates' own story attracted front-page and prime-time attention. And a 1977 George Polk Award to the New England Journal of Medicine provided the first significant mainstream visibility for a publication that would achieve enormous attention and prestige in the ensuing decades.

It was two-time winner John Kifner of The New York Times who explained great battlefield reporting much the way the late House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O'Neill characterized politics. "All reporting is local," Kifner said. "I cover wars the way I used to cover cops." In that spirit, Polk Awards are not usually presented in the name of "investigative reporting." In the tradition of Polk, all good reporting is investigative. The exception was in 1973 when Seymour Hersh, the first five-time George Polk Award winner, won for his historic account of the My Lai massacre.

Occasionally a George Polk Award is given to someone better known outside the field of journalism. James Baldwin, William O. Douglas, Henry Louis Gates, Michael Harrington, Norman Mailer, Leo Rosten, Edward Sorel and Susan Sontag were Polk winners who expressed satisfaction that their work could be taken for reporting. The award has been presented anonymously twice (to photographers whose identification might have jeopoardized them), and twice posthumously -- once to a videographer killed in Guyana covering Jonestown and, in 2001, to John B. Oakes, who was to have received the year 2000 Career Award at age 87. After being notified of his award, he penned these words to the Polk committee just two weeks before the award ceremony, "There is no other journalistic prize in existence that I would rather have than this one." His son accepted it for him at the luncheon.

A special George Polk Award for career accomplishment, first presented in 1978 to Carey McWilliams, founder of the Nation magazine, has honored such legendary figures as Murray Kempton, James Reston, George Seldes, William Shirer, William Shawn and Fred Friendly. Some were less obvious -- sports broadcaster Red Barber, Washington photographer George Tames, St. Louis editorialist Richard Dudman, and New York Times obituary writer Alden Whitman among them.

The integrity and continuity of the selection process gives the George Polk Award special
cachet that has helped make it a reporter's award. Winners in about a dozen categories are
named each year from among hundreds of nominees referred by a panel of several hundred advisors (including many prior recipients) and submitted by reporters or their news organizations. Final judging is by educators and communicators who are Long Island University faculty members or alumni. Their selections are not subject to review by institutional officials.

The George Polk Awards are presented each spring at a luncheon in Manhattan attended by news executives, journalists, educators and students. The honored work is exhibited, elegantly crafted citations are read by familiar voices -- Douglas Edwards of CBS and Reed Collins of CNN each did it for many years -- and recipients provide observations, often describing pressures they faced from the angry subjects of their exposes. Long Island University's journalism department takes a more academic look at some of the award-winning efforts on the eve of the luncheon, assembling a panel of winners to discuss their reporting and respond to questions from members of the press and journalism students.

In the spirit of George Polk, homage is also paid at the awards luncheon to journalists who have died in the line of duty. The list, compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists and posted in the exhibition area, is invariably long enough to elicit exclamations of surprise.

The George Polk Awards celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1999. Over the years they have highlighted the best of American journalism -- and a good part of the nation itself -- in the final half of the 20th Century. The tradition continues into the 21st Century, starting with a distinguished roster of Winners of 2000 George Polk Journalism Awards.


Edward Hershey attended his first George Polk Awards luncheon in 1962 when he was a freshman journalism major at Long Island University. Three years later he was Long Island University's George Polk Outstanding Student in Journalism. Hershey was a reporter at the New York World-Telegram & Sun, the Suffolk Sun and Newsday, where his own investigative reporting won awards from the Society of Silurians and the New York State Publishers Association. Hershey served as a George Polk Awards juror in 1974, joined the Polk Awards Commettee in 1978 and has participated in every year of Polk judging since. He is director of communication strategies at Cornell University.