Annual George Polk Seminar to Question Media Coverage of Politics and Finance
-- Top journalists slated for panel at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus --
-- Free reception and panel on Wednesday, April 15 --

Brooklyn, N.Y. – Are the news media “missing the story” when it comes to perplexing problems in politics and finance? That is the question award-winning journalists plan to discuss with an audience gathered for the annual George Polk Seminar at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus on Wednesday, April 15.

Under the headline, “Missing the Story? Press Coverage of Politics and Finance,” several of the latest George Polk Award winners will join the seminar reception and panel, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., on Wednesday, April 15. The event will take place at the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts at the Brooklyn Campus, located at the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush avenues in downtown Brooklyn.

Reservations are required for the George Polk Seminar, which is free and sponsored by the Brooklyn Campus journalism department and the Society of Professional Journalists. The following day, on Thursday, April 16, the panelists and other winners of 14 George Polk Awards for 2008, will be honored at an awards luncheon held by Long Island University at The Roosevelt Hotel, located in Manhattan at 45 East 45th Street (at the corner of Madison Avenue).

To attend the seminar or to purchase tickets for the awards luncheon, please call (516) 299-3298 or e-mail Jeanette.Morales@liu.edu.

The seminar will be moderated by Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Among the George Polk Award winners expected at the panel are David Barstow of The New York Times, Adam Davidson of National Public Radio, Stefan Forbes, producer and director of “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story,” and Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune.

Barstow won the George Polk Award for National Reporting for his two-part series, “Message Machine,” which documented the covert campaign waged by the Bush administration to transform retired military officers working as media analysts into defense-industry rainmakers. Adam Davidson will share the George Polk Award for Radio Reporting with Alex Blumberg of “This American Life;” the pair’s collaborative report, “The Giant Pool of Money,” distilled down the highly complex chain of events that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. Paul Salopek, winner of the George Polk Award for International Reporting, uncovered controversial aspects of America’s war on terror in the Horn of Africa.

Long Island University established the George Polk Awards in 1949 to honor excellence in journalism in memory of the CBS reporter killed while covering the civil war in Greece.

The Long Island University Public Radio Network will broadcast the George Polk Awards Seminar and Awards Luncheon live on 88.3 WLIU FM and 88.1 WCWP FM and on the Internet at www.wliu.org.

Media Contact: (718) 488-1015

Posted: March 10, 2009