World News | 75th George Polk Awards Honour Coverage of Middle East and Ukraine Wars, Supreme Court and Elon Musk
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. The New York Times was honoured on Monday with George Polk Awards for Foreign Reporting and Photojournalism for its coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas.
New York, Feb 19 (AP) The New York Times was honoured on Monday with George Polk Awards for Foreign Reporting and Photojournalism for its coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Photographers Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud captured “gripping and unforgettable images” as they chronicled the conflict from its opening hours on October 7 until they escaped from Gaza two months later, said Long island University, which presents the annual prizes, in a statement.
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The Times also relied on longtime freelance journalists in Gaza and imagery developed by its visual investigations team to document the extent of the Israeli bombardment and its impact on civilians.
They were among Polk Awards winners announced on Monday in 13 categories. In all, five of the prestigious journalism prizes were for coverage of the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars. The winners will be honoured in April as the university marks the 75th anniversary of the awards.
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“Given the significance of this year's programme we sensed a special imperative to honour work in the tradition of George Polk,” said John Darnton, curator of the awards, which were created in 1949 in honour of the CBS reporter who was killed while covering the Greek civil war. “As horrific as the outbreak of war in the Middle East and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine were, they provided us with no shortage of magnificent reporting, done at great peril, from which to choose.”
Awards also went to journalists who delved into the business practices of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the ethics of US Supreme Court justices and New York City's black market for temporary license plates.
Chis Osher and Julia Cardi of the The Gazette of Colorado Springs won the State Reporting award for their exposure of a family court system that relied on unqualified parental evaluators and returned young children to abusive fathers, leading to four deaths in a two-month period. The reporting led to changes in state law and an ongoing criminal investigation.
Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Alex Mierjeski, Brett Murphy and the staff of ProPublica won the National Reporting award for revealing questionable gifts to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from wealthy donors and the court's lack of a meaningful approach to policing ethics.
The 2023 Sydney Schanberg Prize went to Rolling Stone's Jason Motlagh, who embedded himself with rival gang lords in Haiti. That prize was established by journalist Jane Freiman Schanberg to honour long-form investigative or enterprise journalism and comes with a USD 25,000 award.
Other winners included the staff of Reuters for reports on Musk-owned companies including SpaceX, Neuralink and Tesla; Luke Mogelson of the New Yorker for reporting from Ukraine; and Anna Werner of CBS News and the KFF Health News team of Brett Kelman, Fred Schulte, Holly K. Hacker and Daniel Chang, for two entries focused on the Food & Drug Administration's regulation of medical devices.
As part of the 75th anniversary celebration, Long Island University is inviting all previous recipients to an April 12 luncheon in Manhattan where 16 journalists will be honoured as “George Polk laureates.”
An evening symposium, “Journalism in an Age of Disinformation, Digital Media and AI,” will feature Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace, Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour and former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet as panelists. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)