Long Island University Honors Polk Awards with Seminar Hosted by Award-Winning Journalists

BROOKVILLE, N.Y., March 29, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The 69^th George Polk Awards will be celebrated during two distinct events—the David J. Steinberg Seminar, “Getting Sources to Talk” April 5 at the Kumble Theater at LIU Brooklyn and the 69^th Annual George Polk Awards Ceremony Luncheon April 6 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.

The seminar will highlight the works of some of the Polk Award winners, including Jodi Kantor of The New York Times, winner of the Polk Award for National Reporting for exposing the decades-long sexual predation of the movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the campaign to cover it up; Stephanie McCrummen of The Washington Post, winner of the Polk Award for Political Reporting for digging into the past of Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama to disclose on-the-record accounts of sexual assault upon a fourteen-year-old girl and the pursuit of other teenagers; and Elle Reeve of VICE News, winner of the Polk Award for National Television Reporting for on-the-scene coverage of the Charlottesville demonstrations that probed the motivations and tactics of white nationalist leaders.

The George Polk Awards honor exceptional and important investigative journalism. They focus on the reporters themselves, placing a premium on work that is intrepid, original, resourceful and thought-provoking. Among the many journalism greats who are Polk laureates are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, Norman Mailer, Diane Sawyer, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, and more. 

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.

Generous support for the 69^th Annual George Polk Awards at LIU has been provided by: CNN, The New York Times Company, and CBS News.

SOURCE Long Island University