Long Island University to Announce Polk Award Winners at National Press Club

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Feb 15, 2018, 04:33 ET

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Feb. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To underscore the crucial role of quality journalism in American democracy, Long Island University will host its first press conference to announce the winners of the 69^th Annual George Polk Awards. This event will be held in the First Amendment Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on February 20 at 11 a.m.

What: Long Island University to Announce Polk Award Winners
Exclusive Panel on Mueller Investigation with Michael Schmidt and Greg Miller

When: Tuesday, February 20. Coffee and refreshments served at 10 a.m.
Announcements/Panel to begin promptly at 11 a.m.

Where: National Press Club, First Amendment Lounge
Washington, D.C.

R.S.V.P.: [email protected]

The event will also include an Exclusive Panel Discussion about press coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump administration's possible collusion with Russia to influence the presidential election, featuring Greg Miller of the Washington Post and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times. The panel will be moderated by Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post's media writer and former public editor of the Times.

The George Polk Awards are one of the nation's most prestigious journalism honors. They focus on the reporters themselves, placing a premium on work that is intrepid, original, resourceful and thought-provoking. Previous winners include Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, Norman Mailer, Diane Sawyer, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, and many more luminaries of the Fourth Estate. This year, 485 submissions were considered in categories honoring all forms of media and ranging from Foreign Reporting to Local Reporting.

"It's a time of both crisis and triumph for responsible news media. Of vilification and vindication," says John Darnton, curator of the Polk Awards and recipient of two Polk Awards and a Pulitzer for his work with The New York Times. "They're attacked almost daily as purveyors of 'fake news' to undermine their credibility. Yet they've delivered on their promise to keep the American public informed. Without them, we wouldn't know what's going on in Myanmar or Yemen or Charlottesville or Washington. Without them, there'd be no Mueller investigation. So, this year the George Polk Awards have decided to highlight the achievements of the nation's press, television and online news organizations by announcing the winners in the capital."

While the Polk Awards are breaking tradition by announcing the winners at a press conference at the National Press Club, the awards themselves will be presented at the traditional luncheon held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on April 6, 2018.

History of the Polk Awards

In 1949, Long Island University established a new journalism prize to memorialize George Polk, a CBS correspondent who was killed while covering the civil war in Greece. The mission of the George Polk Awards, as distinguished from other journalism honors, focused on recognizing not the news organizations or publishers, but investigative reporters themselves.

Much about journalism has changed in the six decades since the inaugural Polk Awards, including the rise of the Internet and the technological disruption it has caused. But one constant has endured and even thrived: intrepid, courageous reporters committed to doing whatever it takes—even at risk of their own life and liberty—to uncover matters of critical importance to an informed public and the very foundation of democratic society.

As the only major American journalism prize that has always honored work across all media platforms, the Polk Awards has consistently been at the fore of the changing ways we access news and information. The list of Polk winners includes some of the biggest names in journalism. Seymour Hersh, Christiane Amanpour, Jimmy Breslin, Walter Cronkite, Thomas Friedman, Edward R. Murrow, Bill Moyers, A.M. Rosenthal, Jane Mayer, Sidney Schanberg, Pete Hamill, I. F. Stone, Studs Terkel, and the teams of Woodward and Bernstein and Barlett and Steele are all Polk laureates.

About Long Island University (LIU)
LIU is one of the nation's largest private universities. Since 1926, LIU has provided high quality academic programs taught by world-class faculty. LIU offers hundreds of accredited programs to approximately 20,000 students, with a network of over 200,000 alumni, including leaders in industries across the globe. Visit liu.edu for more information.

SOURCE Long Island University