The Polk Awards: Honoring Slain Journalists
Recently, I went to one of my favorite events, the annual George Polk Awards Luncheon. The awards are a series of prizes given to newspaper and radio and tv reporters for distinguished journalism.. They are named after the CBS reporter, George Polk, who was murdered for criticizing both communists and conservatives in the 1946 Greek civil war.
On the tables, along with programs naming the winners of the awards, there were cards listing the names of the journalists who had been killed in the line of duty in 2005. There were 48 of them all told and they died in countries from Azerbaijan to Sri Lanka. A staggering 23 -- almost fifty percent -- died in Iraq.
Only one of the slain journalists was an American -- Steven Vincent. The name meant nothing to me. For the past two years I have spent most of my time in the 18th Century, writing about the American Revolution. Later that day I discovered, thanks to the wonders of Google, that Vincent was a free lance journalist who had seen the planes destroy the World Trade Center on 9/11, killing 2700 Americans. Vincent believed in the American mission in Iraq. He thought the United States had a moral duty to respond to the monstrous crime he had witnessed on 9/11. His posthumous book, In The Red Zone, is an electrifying look at all aspects of the war in Iraq, written with an amazing objectivity.
Vincent was utterly fearless, wandering the streets of Baghdad and other cities without any protection. He was murdered on August 3, 2005, after publishing a story in the New York Times about an assassination ring run by Shia militia in Basra. Members of the ring were almost certainly his killers.
As the awards ceremony began, the audience was asked to devote a minute of silence to the journalists killed in 2005. After those somber 60 seconds, the masters of the ceremony started distributing the prizes to the winning papers and reporters. The San Francisco Bay Gaurdian, a small weekly, won the local reporting award for revealing the deplorable condition of the city's public housing projects. The San Diego Union-Tribune won the political reporting award for discovering a one man corruption explosion by a local Republican congressman. The New York Times won the business reporting award for an expose of defective heart implant devices. The Washington Post won the foreign reporting award for a series of articles on corruption and renewed violence in Afghanistan.
As usual, I left the Polk Awards feeling upbeat about our nation's press. At home, after reading about Steven Vincent and sampling his book, a different mood descended. I could not get this American reporter and those twenty two no longer nameless but still faceless Muslim reporters slain in Iraq out of my mind. Here was where the Polk Awards went beyond the Pulitzer Prizes, which also rewarded talent and persistence and daring -- the attributes of the good reporter. By reminding us of reporters like Vincent and his Muslim confreres, the Polks entered a deeper realm, rooted in the sacrifice of the man who gave them his name. They told us how deeply some people valued freedom of the press.
If there was any journalist of recent years who personified the fearless style of George Polk, it was Steven Vincent. His death said something special about the war in Iraq. Didn't those 22 slain Muslim reporters also say something? Weren't they all bearing witness to their desire for a free society in Iraq, purged of murderous jihadists, where people had the right to vote and the truth could be printed in newspapers and broadcast on television and radio? Would it be too much to call them martyrs?
Maybe the 23 names say it all.
Raeda Warzan
Hussam Sarsam
Ahmed Jabbarff Hashim
Fadhil Hazem Fadhil
Ali Ibrahim Issa
Saman Abdullah Izzedine
Ahmed al-Rubai'i
Saleh Ibrahim
Ahmed Adam
Najem Abed Khudair
Jerges Mahmood
Mohammed Suleiman
Maha Ibrahim
Ahmen Wael Bakri
Khaled al-Atar
Adnam al-Bayati
Steven Vincent
Rafaed Mahmood Said al-Anbagy
Waleed Khaled
Hind Ismail
Fakher Haider
Firas Maadidi
Mohammed Hadoon