NEW YORK, Feb. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Nine of the 15 winners of the 2025 George Polk Awards, announced today by Long Island University, focus on federal policies and practices involving immigration, public health, foreign aid, and presidential power.

Three additional awards honor reporting from foreign war zones, including mass starvation in Gaza, brutal front-line fighting in Ukraine, and a protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other award-winning investigations examined the deadly exploitation of East African women recruited to work in Saudi Arabia, the impact of massive data centers on local communities, and fatal abuse inside New York State prisons.

About the Awards

The George Polk Awards were established in 1949 by Long Island University to commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The awards, which place a premium on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results, honor special achievement in print, online or broadcast journalism. The 2025 recipients were selected by a panel of journalists and educators from 492 entries submitted by news organizations and individuals or recommended by former winners. 

"Last year was the busiest year for news in memory," said John Darnton, curator of the awards for the past 16 years. "So many potential winners crowded the field. An important investigation or revelation would no sooner be published than another one, even more important, would come along. Bottom line – the news media did its job," he noted.

2025 George Polk Award Recipients

The award for Foreign Reporting goes to Abdi Latif Dahir, Justin Scheck and Vivian Nereim of 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.

Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy of ProPublica have won the International Reporting award 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.

The National Reporting award goes to The New York Times for relentless and unflinching coverage of a White House that defied standards and norms in expanding executive power, issuing Presidential pardons, extracting lucrative profits from governmental action, withholding funds to punish localities and institutions deemed politically unfriendly, criminally prosecuting perceived enemies, abandoning environmental and public health safeguards, curtailing scientific research and regularly misleading courts and the public about initiatives like deportation of supposed felons and gang members or bombing of Venezuelan boats to curb drug trafficking.

Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Mark Arsenault of The Boston Globe have been cited for Local Reporting 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. She apparently came to the attention of authorities for co-authoring an article in the college newspaper supporting student senate resolutions urging Tufts to distance itself from Israel.

Jan Ransom of The New York Times is honored for Justice Reporting 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. Her further reporting, in collaboration with data and investigations reporter Bianca Pallaro and others, lent momentum to the passage of laws mandating more control of renegade guards.

The award for Environmental Reporting goes to the staff of Business Insider for "The True Cost of Data Centers," a thoroughly researched series highlighting the strain new and semi-secret facilities that fuel artificial intelligence are likely to place on communities, diverting overwhelming amounts of power, water and economic support.

The Health Reporting award goes to Lizzy Lawrence of STAT for chronicling the degradation of the Food and Drug Administration as Americans' health care protector and to the STAT staff for a 10-part series, "American Science, Shattered," and other reporting, using data, human stories and historical context to document the impact of the federal government's disruption of scientific research.

Andy Kroll of ProPublica receives the Political Reporting award for "The Shadow President," depicting Russell Vought, a conservative cost-cutting technocrat who directs the Office of Management and Budget, as the power behind the throne at the White House in a meticulously researched article co-published by The New Yorker.

The award for Magazine Reporting goes to Elliott Woods of 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. A second article, "Stay Strong, My Brother," profiled one of 11 survivors of the 2022 disaster, revealing the inner workings of smuggling operations controlled by Mexican drug cartels and establishing a link between increased U.S. border militarization and migrant deaths.

Nick Miroff of The Atlantic has earned the Immigration Reporting award for spotlighting an example of wrongful deportation that became a global cause célèbre. Miroff publicized the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, pulled from a car in Maryland as he drove with his 5-year-old special-needs son and sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison despite his protected status in what authorities later called "an administrative error."

The Photojournalism award is shared by Stephanie Keith, a freelancer on assignment for New York Magazine, and three Gaza-based Associated Press photographers, Abdel Kareem Hana, Jehad Alshrafi and the late Mariam Dagga. In "The Trap at 26 Federal Plaza," Keith captured the anguish of immigrants as they left scheduled court appearances and were immediately taken away for deportation. The AP photos portrayed scenes of Gazans struggling to secure food amid severe shortages, challenging Israeli claims that there was no famine. The images were produced under extremely difficult conditions with limited access, constant danger and scarce supplies. Ms. Dagga was killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital three days after the publication of her award-winning work.

Correspondent Cecilia Vega, immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez and producers Andy Court and Annabelle Hanflig of CBS "60 Minutes" have earned the National Television Reporting award 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. Working from an internal government document obtained by Montoya-Galvez, they found that 75 percent of them did not have an apparent criminal record. Three especially sympathetic — and innocent — deportees were profiled. The broadcast, which aired last April before the ownership change at CBS, was the earliest and most specific report establishing the identities of the Venezuelan detainees.

The Foreign Television Reporting award goes to Mstyslav Chernov and Alex Babenko for "2000 Meters to Andriivka," a documentary feature collaboration between FRONTLINE FEATURES and The Associated Press that brought home the harrowing nature of front-line warfare in Ukraine. With footage including shots from bodycams and drones, the reporters accompany a small band of Ukrainian soldiers as they fight and die on a narrow strip of forest to "liberate" a village, only to arrive and find it already largely destroyed. 

Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker has won the 2025 Sydney Schanberg Prize 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. The Schanberg Prize was established by the journalist Jane Freiman Schanberg to honor long-form investigative or enterprise journalism embodying qualities reflected in her late husband's legendary career. It comes with a $25,000 award funded by Freiman Schanberg, who stipulated that it honor "highly distinguished, deep coverage of armed conflicts; local, state or federal government corruption; military injustice; war crimes, genocide or sedition; or authoritarian government abuses" of at least 5,000 words "that results from staying with a story, sometimes at great risk or sacrifice." 

Career Award

The George Polk Career Award will be presented to pioneering Mexican American journalist Maria Hinojosa, 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.

The 2025 George Polk Award winners will be honored Friday, April 10 at a luncheon ceremony at Cipriani 42^nd Street.

The evening before (April 9) several of the winners will participate in the annual George Polk Seminar, a panel discussion on covering the migrant crisis moderated by Richard Tofel, founding general manager and former president of ProPublica, at the Kumble Theater on the LIU campus in Brooklyn. The seminar is free and open to the public.

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SOURCE Long Island University