The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York.
Awards YearCategoryWinnerOrganizationWork2025"Long Island University announces 2025 George Polk Awards in Journalism," press release from Long Island University via PR Newswire, 2/18/2026 Foreign Reporting Abdi Latif DahirJustin ScheckVivian Nereim The New York Times “for "Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia," groundbreaking investigative accounts, reported at considerable risk, revealing how well-placed individuals profited from the trafficking of East African women recruited for domestic work who were abused, stranded and often killed" International Reporting Anna Maria Barry-JesterBrett Murphy ProPublica "for stories exposing the cavalier approach officials took in deciding to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and establishing the profoundly harmful impact the aid cutoff had on millions of people in need around the world" National Reporting The New York Times The New York Times "for relentless and unflinching coverage of the White House " Local Reporting Giulia McDonnell Nieto del RioMark Arsenault The Boston Globe "for probing the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University arrested by six masked agents in what her Somerville neighbors assumed was a kidnapping and held for six weeks in Louisiana" Justice Reporting Jan Ransom The New York Times "for exposing the beating death of an inmate at the hands of New York prison guards, establishing the likelihood that three other inmates had met a similar fate and portraying a prison system so out of control that video evidence of inmate torture was ignored" Environmental Reporting staff of Business Insider Business Insider "for "The True Cost of Data Centers"" Health Reporting Lizzy Lawrence STAT "for chronicling the degradation of the Food and Drug Administration as Americans' health care protector" Political Reporting Andy Kroll ProPublica "for "The Shadow President"" Magazine Reporting Elliott Woods Texas Monthly "for "A Deadly Passage," the product of more than two years of exhaustive reporting to show how Latin American families were devastated by the deaths of 53 migrants in the back of a tractor trailer in South Texas" Immigration Reporting Nick Miroff The Atlantic "for spotlighting an example of wrongful deportation that became a global cause célèbre" Photojournalism Stephanie KeithAbdel Kareem HanaJehad AlshrafiMariam Dagga freelance, Associated Press "for "The Trap at 26 Federal Plaza"" National Television Reporting Cecilia VegaCamilo Montoya-GalvezAndy CourtAnnabelle Hanflig 60 Minutes "for "The Prisoners," a segment putting the lie to assertions that most Venezuelans deported to the notorious Salvadorian CECOT prison were violent felons or known gang members" Foreign Television Reporting Mstyslav ChernovAlex Babenko FRONTLINE FEATURES, The Associated Press "for "2000 Meters to Andriivka," that brought home the harrowing nature of front-line warfare in Ukraine" Sydney H. Schanberg Prize Jon Lee Anderson The New Yorker "for "Congo's Thirty-Year War," an article that highlights the complex historical and current forces driving a conflict that is spreading to neighboring countries and spawning scores of ethnic militias at an incalculable cost in human suffering" Career Award Maria Hinojosa Latino USA "anchor and executive producer of Latino USA. a syndicated public radio show devoted to Latino issues, and founder of Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit newsroom"2024"Long Island University announces 2024 George Polk Awards in Journalism," press release from Long Island University via PR Newswire, 2/17/2025 Foreign Reporting Ronen BergmanMark Mazzetti The New York Times “for "The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel," chronicling how a half-century of condoning the terrorizing of West Bank Palestinians by ultranationalist settlers and their supporters became government policy" War Reporting Declan Walsh staff of The New York Times The New York Times "for a series of dispatches from Sudan, reported at great personal risk, demonstrating how starvation, indiscriminate destruction and inhuman atrocities were deployed as tools of a civil war" National Reporting Katherine Eban Vanity Fair "for revealing how political considerations that prioritized economic interests over public health concerns slowed the federal government's response to a bird flu outbreak, seemingly ignoring lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic" Local Reporting Alissa ZhuNick ThiemeJessica Gallagher The Baltimore Banner "for doggedly amassing data to establish that Baltimore was enduring the most lethal drug overdose crisis of any major city in American history with some surprising victims" State Reporting Sara DiNatale San Antonio Express-News "for her four-part series exposing the deceptive practices of solar energy contractors who trained door-to-door scam artists to target elderly homeowners with false promises of energy savings that never materialized, rebates that didn't exist and tax credits for which they didn't qualify" Health Care Reporting Bob HermanTara BannowCasey RossLizzy Lawrence STAT "for "Health Care's Colossus," a penetrating six-part series examining the massive reach of UnitedHealth Group into every aspect of a broken health care system" Medical Reporting Kavitha SuranaLizzie PresserCassandra JaramilloStacy Kranitz ProPublica "for mining hospital records and death certificates in Texas and other states that enacted stringent abortion bans in the aftermath of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision to uncover a tragic result: the preventable deaths of women denied routine treatment for pregnancy complications as new laws threatened physicians with prosecution" Political Reporting Jane Mayer The New Yorker "for "Pete Hegseth's Secret History," which unearthed a record of financial mismanagement, sexual misconduct and repeated incidents of workplace intoxication that twice cost President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense leadership positions in advocacy groups he ran" Justice Reporting Katey RuschCasey Smith freelance "for "Right to Remain Secret," a two-part series published by the San Francisco Chronicle. A product of five years of research, their stories detailed how dozens of police officers in California arranged to cleanse their records of damaging behavior and retire with lucrative pensions in secret deals that allowed their departments to avoid cumbersome dismissal proceedings" Technology Reporting Olivia CarvilleCecilia D'Anastasio Bloomberg Businessweek "for stories about child safety online that revealed how predators have used the Roblox gaming platform to groom and exploit children, how "sextortion" scammers blackmailed teens via Instagram and how drug dealers sold fentanyl to kids using Snapchat" Magazine Reporting Rachel Aviv The New Yorker "for "Alice Munro's Passive Voice."" National Television Reporting Mike HixenbaughJon SchuppeLiz KreutzSusan Carroll NBC News, Noticias Telemundo "for "Dealing the Dead," revealing that a medical school in north Texas was dismembering the corpses of individuals who died alone." Foreign Television Reporting Marcia BiggsEric O'ConnorAndré Paultre PBS NewsHour "for their series "Haiti in Crisis," which depicted the complete breakdown of daily life in parts of Port Au Prince" Podcast Ben AustenBill Healy Audible "for "The Parole Room," which followed the 20th effort to gain parole by Johnnie Veal" Sydney H. Schanberg Prize Sarah A. Topol The New York Times Magazine "for "The Deserter," a view of the invasion of Ukraine through the eyes of a disillusioned Russian combat officer who defected with his wife and child, one of 18 deserters Topol interviewed in more than a year of reporting while keeping herself and her sources safe from Russian security services"2023"Long Island University announces 2023 George Polk Awards in Journalism," press release from Long Island University via PR Newswire, 2/19/2024 Foreign Reporting The New York Times The New York Times “for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas" National Reporting Joshua Kaplan Justin Elliott Alex Mierjeski Brett Murphy staff of ProPublica ProPublica "for revealing secret, lavish and highly questionable gifts that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received for decades from wealthy benefactors" Local Reporting Jesse Coburn StreetsBlog NYC "for "Ghost Tags: Inside New York City's Black Market for Temporary License Plates," the product of a seven-month investigation that uncovered an extensive underground economy in fraudulent paper license plates that motorists used to evade detection while driving on suspended licenses, dodging tolls and tickets and committing other more serious crimes" State Reporting Chris Osher Julia Cardi The Gazette of Colorado Springs "for exposing the heartbreaking consequences of a family court system that relied on the advice of unqualified and incompetent parental evaluators to return young children to abusive fathers, leading to four deaths in a two-month period" Business Reporting Staff of Reuters Reuters "for penetrating reports on nefarious practices at companies owned by multi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk" Medical Reporting Anna Werner Brett Kelman Fred Schulte Holly K. Hacker Daniel Chang CBS News, KFF Health News "for "When Medical Devices Malfunction," which reported on the failure of FDA-approved knee implants; hip implant failures that led to emergency surgery; faulty heart pumps; the recall of insulin pumps three years after an FDA official hailed them as technology that would "give patients greater freedom to live their lives," and (literally) jaw-dropping dental devices that totally escaped the agency's attention" Medical Reporting Michael D. Sallah Michael Korsh Evan Robinson-Johnson Debbie Cenziper Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ProPublica "for "With Every Breath," a series exposing the scope of a corporate cover-up that allowed Philips Respironics to continue marketing breathing machines around the globe years after the FDA received warnings about contaminants in the machines and the company's own experts concluded that the devices posed severe health risks to users" Justice Reporting Brian Howey freelance "exposé on a tawdry police practice was published by the Los Angeles Times and developed into a segment of a podcast by Reveal, The Center for Investigative Reporting" Magazine Reporting Luke Mogelson The New Yorker "for "Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine."" Photojournalism Samar Abu Elouf Yousef Masoud The New York Times "for chronicling Israel's bombardment and invasion of their homeland, Gaza" Podcast Meribah Knight Ken Armstrong Daniel Guillemette WPLN Nashville, ProPublica, The New York Times "for a four-part Podcast, "The Kids of Rutherford County," which chronicled the shockingly misguided approach to juvenile discipline by a domineering judge in one Tennessee county" Television Reporting Julia Steers Amel Guettatfi VICE News "for "Inside Wagner," compelling on-the-ground coverage of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic" Commentary Masha Gessen The New Yorker "In the Shadow of the Holocaust," a deeply personal and highly nuanced examination of how Germany and other European nations equate opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism" Sydney H. Schanberg Prize Jason Motlagh Rolling Stone "for "This Will End in Blood and Ashes," a vivid account of the virtually complete collapse of order in Haiti"2022"Long Island University announces 2022 George Polk Awards in Journalism," press release from Long Island University via Editor & Publisher, 2/21/2023 Foreign Reporting The New York Times The New York Times “The Making of Vladimir Putin,” a 6,750-word opus by Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen, tracing Putin’s “22-year slide from statesman to tyrant,” and “Putin’s War,” the 13,000-word product of two-months of research rep