Long Island University To Announce Winners Of The 70th Annual George Polk Awards In Journalism

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Feb 11, 2019, 13:30 ET

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In a ceremony to be held on Feb. 19, 2019, in the First Amendment Lounge at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Long Island University (LIU) will announce the winners of the 70^th Annual George Polk Awards in Journalism, continuing the University's longstanding tradition of honoring and celebrating the impact of courageous and authentic journalism on our national and global discourse.

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, Ronan Farrow, and many more luminaries of the Fourth Estate. This year, a record 554 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, like last year, the George Polk Awards will highlight the achievements of the nation's press, television and online news organizations by announcing the winners in the nation's capital."

The George Polk Awards are conferred annually to honor special achievement in journalism. The awards place a premium on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results. They were established in 1949 by Long Island University to commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war.

The National Press Club is at 529 14^th St., NW, 13^th Floor; Washington, DC 20045; 202-662-7500. Doors open at 10 a.m.; winners' announcements at 11 a.m. followed by a panel discussion on "The Power of Sound: A Journalistic Renaissance," hosted by Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post. The distinguished winners of the 70^th Annual George Polk Awards will be honored at a luncheon ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan on Friday, April 5, 2019.

About Long Island University (LIU)
LIU, founded in 1926, is a nationally recognized teaching and research institution which continues to redefine higher education. Visit liu.edu for more information.

SOURCE Long Island University