NEW YORK, March 11 -- Journalists were honored Monday as the winners of the 1995 George Polk Awards were announced in New York. ABC News Middle East expert John Cooley, 68, was honored with a career achievement award for the 41 years he has spent covering tensions in the Middle East and North Africa as a war correspondent, columnist and author. The award recipients, announced by Long Island University in Brooklyn, which administers the prizes, are chosen annually by a panel that includes journalists, LIU alumni in the media, and journalism professors. The awards committee noted that Cooley visited Libya during the American bombing campaign against the North African country, and covered the Israeli siege of Beirut, the Lebanese hostage crisis and the Gulf War. He was also captured and tortured by Palestinian terrorists. 'What most distinguishes his work, in our opinion, is the calm wisdom with which he handles such explosive issues as international terrorism and the Muslim fundamentalist movements of such countries as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran and Egypt,' members of the awards panel said. The national reporting award went to Michael Weisskopf and David Maraniss of The Washington Post for a series on the first Republican- controlled House of Representatives in four decades. David Rohde of The Christian Science Monitor picked up the honor for foreign reporting for covering the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims. Other Polk awards included: --Metro Reporting: New York Times reporters Frank Bruni, Nina Bernstein, Joyce Purnick and Lizette Alvarez for their expose of the New York City Child Welfare Administration in the wake of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo's death.
--Network TV Reporting: Jim Clancy of CNN for 'Rwanda: Cry for Justice,' focusing on the effects of fighting on women and children. --Magazine Reporting: Richard Behar of Fortune for an article about illegal employee surveillance by a major insurance company. --Business Reporting: Kurt Eichenwald of The New York Times for a series on the failings of the American kidney-dialysis business. --Local Reporting: Elizabeth Llorente of The Record of Hackensack, N. J., for reports on inhumane conditions at immigrant detention center. LIU established the awards in 1949, naming them for a CBS correspondent slain the year before while covering the civil war in Greece. This year's awards will be presented on April 17 in New York City.
