NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The Boston Globe was honored Monday with a 2002 George Polk Award for its yearlong series that dealt with sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
The award for "Crisis in the Catholic Church," was given in the National Reporting category and cited the work of a team of Globe reporters and editors. The series has have far-reaching effects, as not only the abuse by priests was uncovered, but the way the church's hierarchy dealt with known instances of abuse was brought to light. The ensuing outcry led to the resignation of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law.
The newspaper also a Polk Award won for Foreign Reporting, with Anthony Shadid's 10-part series on the Middle East taking that honor. Shadid was seriously wounded while reporting on the crisis in Ramallah.
The New York Times also won a pair of Polk Awards. Clifford J. Levy won for Regional Reporting for his series "Broken Homes" about the conditions that thousands of mentally ill adults face in state-licensed facilities. The Times won the Health Care Reporting category for a series on "Medicine's Middlemen." In the series, Walt Bogdanich, Barry Meier and Mary Williams detailed how two companies virtually corned the market in sale of drugs, medical devices and other supplies to many hospitals.
No other organization won more than one award this year, which saw entrants in 13 categories honored.
The Los Angeles Times was cited for International Reporting for a six-part series by reporter Sonia Nazario and photographer Don Bartletti that retraced the journey of a Honduran youth to the United States. Florida's water crisis was the subject of a 12-part Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel series by Debbie Salamone with Ramsey Campbell and Robert Sargent that won for Environmental Reporting.
The Criminal Justice Reporting Award went to Associated Press National Writer Michael Luo for a three-part series that looked into questionable confessions in a murder case in Alabama, work that led to two people wrongly convicted of the crime to be released. Elle Schultz and Theo Francis, of the Wall Street Journal, claimed the Financial Reporting prize for their investigation into how some employers use benefit plans to their own benefit.
The Medical Reporting category was won by Stephen Kiernan and Cadence Mertz of the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, who uncovered how the state withheld information about medical incompetence and health care fraud. The New Republic's Arnold Relman and Marcia Angell took the Magazine Reporting Polk Award for showing how pharmaceutical companies spend more of their profits on advertising and lobbying than they do on drug research and development.
Jason Riley and R.G. Dunlop of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., won the Local Reporting category for their work exposing a county court system that was rife with misplaced, mismanaged and delayed cases. Nashville's WTVF took the Television Reporting award this year for a series by Phil Williams and Bryan Staples that showed potential ethics violations by then-Gov. Don Sundquist.
Susan Sontag won for Cultural Criticism for "Looking at War," an essay that appeared in The New Yorker. The work looked into the history of modern warfare and studied the affect of photojournalism on the perceptions of war.
CBS News' Morley Safer will be given the Polk Career Award. Safer, a longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent, joined CBS in 1964 and made his mark while delivering reports about the war in Vietnam.
The 2002 George Polk Awards will give given April 10 at a luncheon ceremony in New York.
The Polk Awards were established in 1949 by Long island University to memorialize George Polk, a CBS correspondent killed while covering a civil war in Greece.
