University, the sponsor, and in particular could in particular, the allied you president for her support. I want to thank my friend and , ourague Ralph Engelman faculty coordinator. As many of you know, our awards were established in 1949 to commemorate george polk. The correspondent assassinated the year before during the greek civil war. Year, now in our 71st 3125g bestowed as of today prizes. In keeping with his legacy, our judges honor reporters whenever possible and not just their news organizations. Who are doggedse in their investigations, resourceful in their tactics, and intrepid in overcoming the odds, whether it is sending dispatches from a battlefield or exposing corruption at city hall. We like stories that hold power to account, that reveal things that deserve to be revealed, and that carrie and impact that carry an impact. Received 561 submissions. Mary. With big stories in syria, afghanistan, and libya. The uprising in hong kong, chinas repression of the uygers ebola,pread of environmental disasters, political chaos in latin america. Domestically, reporters were drawn to write about wildfires and floods, police brutality, inhumane prison conditions, the breakdown in immigration enforcement, sexual assaults in religious institutions and vapi opioidng, the changes and our peoples in the trump administration. This year, we saw an increasing number of team entries. News organizations have become adept at mounting coordinated efforts of specialists to dig deeper into the issues. We also saw more partnerships among News Companies and across different media platforms. These are all to the good, but interestingly, of our 15 wearers winners, or than half are single reporters working more or less alone. It is an indication that the thef george polk mantle of george polk, a loan journalist, a lone journalist, has been taken up by a new generation. Here are the winners. The foreign reporter award goes med for illuminating the causes of genocide in brazil and the caribbean. , of the reporting Houston Chronicle, for revealing the administrations continuing use of inhumane practices in dealing with refugees. Metropolitan reporting to the series, newsday for its long divided, documenting widespread discrimination against africanamericans in suburban housing. Brianreporting to rosenthal of the New York Times for uncovering the scheme in which profiteers inflated the price of taxing battalions and sold them to drivers through exorbitant loans. To markional reporting scheffler, maliki brown, and the visual Investigations Team of the New York Times for new techniques in forensic investigation, they proved, among other things, that russian pilots bombed hospitals and other civilian targets in syria. Financial reporting to know up and davidkevin mel b, of Bloomberg News for revealing reaped profits by using a tax break intended to help poor areas called opportunity zones to instead construct highend luxury projects. Reporting to dominic gaetz, mike baker, anna lewis forof the Seattle Times showing how boeing and the faa cut corners in approving deadly design changes to the 737 max jets. Environmental reporting to helen foriller of politico establishing that the department of agriculture squashed its own research that would help farmers adapt to climate change. Military reporting to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post for the afghanistan papers, a report on thousands of documents from u. S. Officials, acknowledging the 18 year war is a disaster. Justice reporting to lisa gardner of the Philadelphia Inquirer for exposing the physical abuse of boys at a wellknown reformatory school. Political reporting is shared by charman,en, jonathan and dion leffler of the Wichita Eagle and Luke Broadwater and staff of the Baltimore Sun for revealing municipal corruption that led to the ouster of the iesmeasures. Dispossessed, an article in the new yorker showing how speculators in the south use legal loopholes to seize blackowned ancestral lands. Television reporting to john saad worth of bbc news for investigating camps in western china that detained and indoctrinated the muslim population. Toally, a special award Nicole Hannah jones of the New York Times and contributors for the 1619 product, which examined the role of slavery in u. S. History and its continuing. Ffects in contemporary society congratulations to all the winners. Now we have, as a special event, a Panel Discussion on the difficulties of finding truth in war. Two of this years winners are on the panel, Craig Whitlock and mark to figure out how we find out without having somebody on the inside, a russian pilot or thect or telling us, or defense ores intelligence community, they were not willing to get into this area. What we ended up doing was there is a Network Inside syria of Early Warning spotters, a group of people that basically take it upon themselves to try on eavesdrop and keep tabs russian air activities. Using themo ad other sources, able to get russian pilot transmission. The russians transmit for a number of reasons on an open channel,ilots who open we obtained that material that allowed us to zero in on russian culpability. Those are audio recordings, is that what you are talking about . They are recordings between russian pilots and air traffic control, communicating stories, communicating about their bombing runs. We had a several russian translators helping us decode the language and terminology that they would use. We established patterns of corroboratedity, with visual evidence, eyewitness accounts, help us put this portrait together of russians hitting hospitals inside the country. Task, you areing going through hours and hours of tryingransmissions, then to gl locator locations with activities, it was grueling work. In the end, we were able to establish that russia was doing this. As far as we were concerned, conclusively. At the times and the post, we are not in the Business Opportunity things like this, determine guilt or innocence. We would not come out and say this is a war crime, but let me say, the International Community should have plenty of evidence to make that argument. Craig you, started on the afghanistan papers with a limited question. I wonder if you can share with us what that was. Craig the series of the afghanistan papers, we got a tip. The tip was about general Michael Flynn, a retired army was gaining20 16 he notoriety for campaigning for appearing atand republican valleys chanting, locked her hillary clinton. We were doing background reporting on general flynn and how he had gotten involved with the trump campaign, but also his record in the military. The tip we got was that he had given a blistering interview about the war in afghanistan with an obscure federal agency called the Inspector General for afghanistan reconstruction. I had cover the pentagon antimilitary and general flynn, while politically he was controversial, in the military he was this wellknown figure for speaking truth to power and he would be critical of people in his chain of command for military intelligence matters. That could be interesting if he gave an interview about the war in afghanistan, we would like to know what he said. We went to the Inspector General and said, we would like to have a transcript of the interview and thought it was a straightforward request. At first, the agency said sure, should not be a problem. We will get back to you soon. Then they started delaying and hiding things and donald trump got elected and Michael Flynn was named National Security advisor. Request wasthat our denied, they were not going to give this material about general flynn. We filed freedom of information act request, ultimately a lawsuit. It was ae document and blistering interview. General flynn was withering and his assessment of the war and in , the lack of progress the American People over the years, he said what the reality was on the ground was so different from what was being totally public, he said it was almost a crime. That got us interested. Of course general flynn was one of hundreds of people who had given similar interviews. We thought this could be an important story so we filed more requests and another lawsuit. , butok three years ultimately we got all this Public Information available and posted it online for readers to see. We bought a bunch of stories about it. Sarah can i ask you, from the time you got that original tip to when you obtained general flynns interview, you remember how long that took . Craig a year and a half. Sarah from that point, how did you learn there were other interviews out there . ,raig we heard there were more the Inspector General was cagey about it, but finally acknowledged that there were hundreds more. We put a request in for those. We are pursuing these on two tracks. If we get the Michael Flynn one at when the lawsuit, the Inspector General will crop up the rest. We were wrong. We got the interview, but they double down and did not want to release the rest. We filed another lawsuit and they started trickling them out bit by bit. It took three years for them to release all the material. We are still in court to get more interviews and get the names of the people who were interviewed by the Inspector General. Identify 100to people who had given interviews flynn, but the majority of them, the Inspector General redacted the names, did not want to make them public, were in court flynn we are it and we are optimistic we will win. We think it is important that people who are in charge of the work, people who played a key role, if they were critical about the strategy and how the American People are not told the truth, the public deserves to know, there is Public Interest in knowing who those people are so they can judge for themselves the merits of what they say. Sarah i want to open this to both of you. , one ofector general the last things you did before publication was you had an interview with the Inspector General on camera. He allowed you to bring a video into his office. The way he approached at interview i would love for do to describe that and also, the broader question is, once you have your initial piece of documentary evidence, you have what is store process of approaching what is the process of approaching the actual story . Craig mark has a more complex response probably. For us, it is straightforward. Anyones name we are going to publish, we need to get comment from them in advance of publication and verify the facts we are going to report, active them a chance to respond. Particularly for people who may not want to talk, may not like what we are reporting, we were up front with the Inspector General in advance of publication. We would say, i told him and his staff, here is what we are planning to report. Reluctant to talk because there is ongoing education with our lawsuit still pending. I went back to him multiple times and said, we are getting close to publication, this is your last chance. We would like to get your response to an army of questions. He decided to go an array of questions. He decided to go on camera and we included that as part of our coverage. Sarah could you characterize for everyone the difference between that interview and what are the same Inspector General told congress after publication . Craig one of the main questions had, why argue withholding this material from the American Public . Why did it take three years for you to release these interviews in which people who are in charge of the war had, why admit the war was a failure, they did not know what they were doing, the strategy was illconceived, many of them did not know who the and me was . Commanding generals. So my opening comments. How could you as Inspector General whose job it is to hold people accountable, how could you keep that from the public . We did not get a straight answer regardse said, in some it was not his job, he was not supposed to deal with questions of strategy and policy. He was all over the map. It is important to emphasize, everything we did obtain is Public Information. Both from the court and the Inspector General himself. These were not linked to us. This is information we went the oldfashioned way under the law. This is Public Information. When the Inspector General testified before congress, he took a different tone sarah i wish we had the video. Craig at the same time, he is complaining that the pentagon are keeping secret this critical information about the war, which is true, but he himself is complicit in that because he withheld information as well. Sarah correct me if i am wrong, he says there is an incentive to lie. Craig he said what was clear from the interviews that we obtained was that there is a theme that american officials repeatedly lying about the lack of progress in the war. He said there was an incentive to lie because they all wanted to dress it up as a rosy progress, things are on the right track. In a way, he was making our case for us, saying that what we uncovered and were able to bring to light, according to him, showed without a doubt that the government of multiple administrations was blind to the American People about how the war was going. Not share thatad characterization with you prior to publication . Craig in our interview with us, he said he acknowledged that he told us he had said, this shows the American People had been lied to. He was not emphasizing at the same way, that is one of the ironies. As our stories came out, i wonder if he felt liberated to say he is critical of how the war has been handled and how they government has not been forthcoming. Mark, you may have a more complicated response, because when you are reporting on a foreign government, there are not the same kinds of official avenues. [no audio] having our team triangulate where the sun is going down to make sure we have the time right. Based on the patterns we established, what time they are flying, that corroborate we are not going to get we tried to get Russian Military defectors, from our efforts, they are not out of there. We had to take these other avenues into the story. That is what the visual Investigation Team is about. It is about trying to find new ways to do conflict reporting and to hold these countries accountable. Singlethere is not a place where you can go for that information. You have to overlay these different sources to establish what is the closest thing you can. Mark exactly. Up we were end meticulous about making sure we had everything. The russians said they came out and said we do not open rate operate on open transmissions. Our pilots do not operate on open transmissions. It is not true because we have a preponderance of reporting that lineup perfectly with the times of the attacks in question. The exact moment that a bomb drops is the exact moment when we have established a pattern of bomb dropping in other transmissions in other locations. Debunking those stories is part of the process and using this preponderance of gathered visual , audio, and eyewitness material to make the cases. Sarah you noted the post is still in active litigation. One of the arguments that is to reveal the names of the people who were giving these interviews. I noticed in his testimony before congress, one of the arguments do not reveal those names was, here is the Washington Post, for however many decades cap the identity kept the identity of deep throat secret. This Inspector General to reveal the names of people who requested anonymity . What is the argument . Craig the Washington Post is not a public agency. The freedom of information act apply to agencies of the federal government and the executive branch. The Inspector General may not like it, but it applies to his office as well. He has given a lot of different explanations in court for why he these officials who are in charge of the war, their identities should be withheld. It has been all over the map. Lawyers have called them whistleblowers or criminal orormants or consultants just people who did not want to their names made public because it might they might it might be politically embarrassing. But none of those add up under the law. They are not whistleblowers, these are not people who came to the Inspector General to report wrongdoing. This was the Inspector General seeking out people who were involved in the war to interview them for a public report called lessons learned. These people being interviewed or something they knew was to be made public. Maybe some would say, i prefer my name and not to be attached, but under the law, that is not a legal excuse to be exempt. To call them consultants or informants i think is a stretch to say the least. It is perhaps laughable. His reasons under the law, our