The New York Times won two George Polk Awards for investigative reporting that exposed corruption and drug trafficking behind the assassination of the Haitian president and revealed extensive details about US airstrikes in the Middle East that killed civilians.
Long Island University, home of the Polk Awards, announced the 15 winners on Monday. John Darnton, curator of the awards since 2009, said he had received 610 entries, the most ever, and that they “came from far more sources of investigative reporting than ever before.”
“This speaks to the vitality and continued promise of a changing journalism landscape and is reason to be optimistic about the future of our profession,” he said in a statement.
The Washington Post staff won the national reporting award for “The Attack,” an online series that thoroughly examined the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, showing how slow law enforcement agencies responded to advance warnings of violence and detailed the aftermath. More than 75 journalists from The Post contributed to the series, which was based on thousands of pages of documents and hundreds of interviews, videos, photos and audio recordings.
The Post also received a second prize, for technology reporting, which it shared with the Guardian US, along with the nonprofit Forbidden Stories. The award went to “The Pegasus Project,” a global investigation that found Israeli spyware had been used to hack into the smartphones of journalists, businessmen, politicians and human rights activists. Forbidden Stories organized a consortium of news organizations to delve into leaked files and search hundreds of documents.
The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series, led by reporter Jeff Horwitz, won the Corporate Reporting Award. The series, based on a whistleblower’s internal files, showed how Facebook executives ignored the company’s internal findings about how flaws in its platforms were causing damage and were unwilling to fix it.
The award for foreign reporting went to Maria Abi-Habib, Frances Robles and the staff at The New York Times for reports that revealed a conspiracy behind the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, linked to drug traffickers he tried to target. to bring to light. US officials say the investigation into his death has stalled. Ms. Abi-Habib interviewed more than 70 people to report on the president’s life in the months leading up to his assassination and uncovered corruption and self-trafficking in the government.
Azmat Khan, a contributing writer, along with The Times reporters Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt and the paper’s staff, won the Military Reporting Award for studies exposing the true toll of the US air war in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Pentagon had to admit that a drone strike during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan mistakenly killed 10 civilians, including seven children. Documents submitted by Mrs. Khan were discovered further showed a pattern of errors and civilian deaths.
The local reporting award was won by Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington, Eli Murray and The Tampa Bay Times for an investigation of the Gopher Resource lead smelting plant in Tampa, Florida, which found workers exposed to hazardous conditions. Their reporting led to action by regulators and a six-figure fine for Gopher Resource.
Two Miami Herald reporters, Carol Marbin Miller and Daniel Chang, as well as ProPublica, received the state reporting award for “Birth & Betrayal,” a series that revealed how a Florida law to reduce malpractice costs for midwives prevented hundreds of families from receiving adequate support. to care for their serious brain injuries. A fund intended to care for the children instead repeatedly turned down requests as it amassed $1.5 billion in assets. The director and board left in the wake of the reports and the law was revised.
A New Yorker article by Ian Urbina, reported with The Outlaw Ocean Project, on the European Union’s efforts to keep migrants out, received the International Reporting Award. Urbina and his team found that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were intercepted at sea by Libyans and held indefinitely in Libyan detention centers, a European Union-funded shadow immigration system.
Adam Feuerstein, Matthew Herper and Damian Garde of Stat, a medical news site, won the medical reporting award for revealing that Biogen had used a back-channel campaign with the Food and Drug Administration to get Alzheimer’s treatment approved, despite objections from its own institution. scientific advisors.
The environmental reporting award was presented to ABC News host David Muir, executive producer Almin Karamehmedovic and producer Esther Castillejo for “The Children of Climate Change,” which aired on the ABC programs “World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” . Mr Muir’s messages from Madagascar show how climate change has led to a famine affecting half a million children.
Sarah Stillman, a staff writer at The New Yorker, won the Magazine Reporting award for her work uncovering the exploitation and working conditions of the migrant workers who contract with disaster recovery companies to clean up the damage inflicted by climate disasters. For a year she traveled to disaster areas and spoke with workers and climate experts.
Linda So, Jason Szep and the Reuters staff were awarded the Political Reporting Award for their investigation of harassment and threats by supporters of Donald J. Trump against officials and pollsters involved in the election process of the 2020 election. The Reuters team tracked down nine people responsible for a series of threats, who said they had done nothing wrong. Only two expressed regret.
The award for local television coverage went to Dave Biscobing of KNXV, an ABC affiliate in Phoenix, for reports that revealed that the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County law firm had falsely accused protesters of being members of a criminal street gang.
National television reporting honors went to ProPublica’s AC Thompson for his documentary “American Insurrection,” an investigation into the rise of far-right extremism. The documentary was made with the PBS series “Frontline” and the investigative journalism program of the University of California, Berkeley.
CNN’s chief foreign correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and her crew won the Foreign Television Journalism Award for their coverage of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the swift takeover by the Taliban. The messages from Mrs. Ward showed Taliban revelers in the chaotic streets of Kabul, while some women were too scared to leave their homes and many were desperately trying to find a way out of the country.
The winners of the Polk Awards, named after George Polk, a CBS News correspondent who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek Civil War, will be honored over lunch in April.
Long Island University also announced a new award this year: the Sydney H. Schanberg Prize. Named after a longtime journalist at The New York Times, the award honors long-standing investigative or corporate journalism dealing with conflict, corruption, military injustice, war crimes, or authoritarian government abuse. The award, funded by Mr. Schanberg’s widow, journalist Jane Freiman Schanberg, comes with a $25,000 gift.
Mr Schanberg, who died in 2016, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Cambodia’s fall to the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. His account of the life of his colleague Dith Pran was the inspiration for the 1984 film ‘The Killing Fields’.
The inaugural winner of the new award, announced this month, is Luke Mogelson, a contributing writer for The New Yorker, for “Among the Insurrectionists,” his 12,000-word account of the unfolding of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, along with videos he filmed while in the Capitol with the rioters.
