George Polk, born in Texas, educated in Alaska, and killed in Greece, was not a Brookynite. But the values his work represented have been enshrined in an award that is administered by Long Island University, and an annual George Polk Seminar is held on the Brooklyn LIU campus.
About the George Polk Awards
One of America’s most coveted journalistic honors, the award memorializes George Polk, a talented CBS radio correspondent slain in Greece while covering Greek Civil War after writing critically about the brutal fascist government. It was a gruesome murder; his body was found floating in Salonia Bay, bound and with bullets to the head.
The George Polk Awards for excellence in journalism were established the year after his death, in 1949. The Polk Awards acknowledge journalists and “those who have risked their lives in covering a story . . . those who have exposed corruption, crimes and injustice in city halls and world capitals . . .”
Winners, who are chosen from newspapers, magazines, television, radio and online news organizations, have included many famous reporters, including:
- Edward R. Murrow
- Christiane Amanpour
- Carl Bernstein
- David Halberstam
- Gay Talese
- Fred Friendly
- I.F. Stone
- Morley Safer
- Joseph Lelyveld
- Anthony Lukas
- Walter Cronkite
Controversy over Polk
Interestingly, controversy continues to swirl over Polk's own work, life and death and the possible role of American-supported right wing elements in Greece, which was then torn between communists and fascist-leaning conservatives. The awards were created by a group of prominent journalists, including mid-century media icons Walter Lippman and James Reston of The New York Times, in the aftermath of Polk's death and subsequent claims of cover-ups. Among other books and articles on the topic, see the 1992 book The Polk Conspiracy by Kati Martin and the 1990 Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair by Edmund Keeley for different views of Polk's fate.
Polk is one of five journalists to have been honored by a commemorative US Postal Stamp bearing his image.
