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Polk Awards Honour Reporters’ Courage, Candour and Curiosity

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2014 (IPS) - Nearly 66 years ago, an American journalist was found dead in Greece, his wrists and ankles bound and gunshot wounds in the back of his head.

George Polk had been covering the civil war between the Communist Party (KKE) and the Greek government for CBS news and his assassination, which has been much debated, shocked the U.S. public and sounded a clarion call about the risks inherent in the field of journalism.

While some decried the young reporters’ untimely death as being “in vain”, others say his legacy lives on, a reminder to even the most entrenched power structures that truth can prevail over brute force.

This legacy is maintained in part through the efforts of the Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn, which annually honours exceptional journalists for their outstanding contributions to print, television and digital media.

This past Friday, over 30 reporters from some 15 news agencies received awards at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan for investigating such issues as homelessness, military impunity and corporate greed.

“I think the role of a story-teller is a very necessary one in this society,” New York Times correspondent Andrea Elliot told IPS on the sidelines of the ceremony, moments before accepting a prize for her five-part series that delved into the life of one of New York City’s 22,000 homeless children.

“The power of these stories lies in a reporter’s ability to be fair and reveal circumstances… in a way that can prompt people to debate these issues and perhaps take a position on them.”

Her words were borne out by the arrival halfway through the ceremony of Glen Greenwald and Laura Poitras, both of whom became household names last June owing to their reports, in The Guardian newspaper, on the details of the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance programme leaked by Edward Snowden.

It was the first time the journalists had returned to their home country since federal prosecutors charged Snowden with violating the country’s Espionage Act by making public secret documents belonging to the National Security Agency (NSA).

The two shared the stage, along with the award for national security reporting, with their colleague Ewen MacAskill, also of the Guardian, and the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman.

Paying homage to the whistleblower who fired the on-going debate on privacy and government spying, Greenwald said, “Journalism in general is not possible without great sources, and the immense courage of those who come forward to tell their stories.”

In a nod to the lives that form the nucleus of many stories, Matthieu Aikins – whose Rolling Stone article probing the execution of 10 Afghan civilians in the Nerkh district of Afghanistan’s eastern Wardak province earned him accolades for magazine reporting – lamented the senseless deaths that have characterised the U.S.’ invasion and occupation. He called attention to the plight of the powerless, most often the rural poor, “the bearded men” whose deaths seldom register in the consciousness of the world.

While many journalists draw a firm line between their “subjects” and themselves, others are deeply moved by the urgency of the issues they write about.

In a brief interview with IPS, The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow described his process of entering the lives of six of the roughly 47 million beneficiaries of the federal food stamps programme, whose 78-billion-dollar budget is stretched almost to breaking point.

“I sometimes spent several weeks at a time with one family, just watching them go through their days – it was my favourite part of the job because it was such a huge privilege to have access to their lives and experiences,” Saslow told IPS.

At the same time, he said, developing such intimacy with those who are struggling to put food on the table makes it hard to draw the line between journalism and advocacy.

“You feel for them and you should feel for them, so a lot of the time it’s a really tough balance. I try to find other ways and other places in my life to do advocacy… because I believe the only way to do justice to people and their life stories is to write honestly – about the things that are hard, the stuff that’s embarrassing, the moments that are joyful.”

 
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