Talk about reporting during wartime, both domestically and internationally. John good afternoon and welcome. Im john darnton, the curator of the george polk awards. It is my pleasure to announce the winners for the most outstanding works of journalism in 2019. I would like to express my gratitude to long island university, the sponsor, and in particular, dr. Kimberly klein, liu president , for her unflagging support. I want to thank my friend and colleague ralph engelman, our faculty coordinator. As many of you know, our awards were established in 1949 to commemorate george polk. The cbs correspondent assassinated the year before during the greek civil war. We are now in our 71st year, having bestowed as of today 3125 prizes. In keeping with his legacy, our judges honor reporters whenever possible and not just their news organizations. We seek out those who are dogged 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 carry an impact. This year, we received 561 submissions. Internationally, many of them dealt with the big stories. Wars in syria, afghanistan, and libya. The uprising in hong kong, chinas repression of the uighurs, the spread of ebola in the congo, 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 elsewhere, vaping, opioid addiction, and the upheavals 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 winners, or than half are single reporters working more or less alone. It is an indication that the mantle of george polk, a loan lone journalist, has been taken up by a new generation. Enough talk. Here are the winners. The foreign reporting award goes to ahmed for illuminating the causes of homicidal violence in central america, brazil, and the caribbean. National reporting, low make real of the Houston Chronicle, for revealing the administrations continuing use of inhumane practices in dealing with refugees. Metropolitan reporting to the staff of newsday for its series, long island divided, documenting widespread discrimination against africanamericans in suburban housing. Local reporting to Brian Rosenthal of the New York Times for uncovering the scheme in which profiteers inflated the price of taxi medallions and sold them to drivers through exorbitant loans. International reporting to mark 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 noah heyer, kevin melby, and david of Bloomberg News for revealing that developers reaped profits by using a tax break intended to help poor areas called opportunity zones to instead construct highend luxury projects. Business reporting to dominic gaetz, mike baker, and lewis can of the Seattle Times for showing how boeing and the faa cut corners in approving deadly design changes to the 737 max jets. Environmental reporting to helen a of politico for 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 jan swain, jonathan charman, 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 s respective mayors. Magazine reporting to Lily Pressler for the 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 sud worth worth of bbc news for investigating camps in western china that detained and indoctrinate the Muslim Population of uighurs. Finally, a special award to 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 effects 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 scheffler. Craig joined the postin 1999 and covers the pentagon and National Security. Mark, a writer and reporter who turned to video, is now executive producer of visual investigations at the times. We are lucky to have as our moderator, sarah ellison, the Washington Post media writer. Sarah, over to you. Sarah thank you so much, john. And thank you to craig and mark for joining us. We are lucky to have you. I wanted to note that the name of todays panel, wartime lies, secrets, and crime, we are here in washington, where so little is bipartisan, it feels like this is one area where we can say that all sides of the political spectrum share in their ability to produce wartime secrets and lies. You both have explored that in your work. I want to start a little bit with specifics of your investigations and i will start with mark. John mentioned some of your investigations into russias bombing targets of syria. I want to know, how did that start . How did you come to that topic to begin with . Mark the russians have been active in syria for years. A lot of people have known that. It has been a bit of an open secret that they were involved in air and on the ground. The critical component was not that the russians were constantly stonewalling. There were a lot of rumors about what they were involved in when it came to hitting civilian targets. Our goal was to really find out, were the russians responsible for what the International Community would consider a war crime, bombing hospitals . It is almost impossible, because in a lot of these places in syria, everybody is either evacuated or they are petrified of providing any information about what is going on. Think weeam did not would even be able to find. Ulpability we had lots of videos of air attacks. We had lots of videos of aftermath. But really, the team kept pushing and trying to figure out, how do we find out it was the russians without having somebody on the inside telling us, or god forbid the United International defense or intelligence community. They were not willing to get into this area. Was,we ended up doing theres a Network Inside syria of Early Warning spotters, a group of people that basically take it upon themselves to try and eavesdrop and keep tabs on russian air activities. We were able to using them and other sources, able to get a russian pilot transmission. The russians transmit for a number of reasons on an open russian pilots transmit on an open channel, so we obtained that material that allowed us to zero in on russian culpability. Sarah those are audio recordings. Is that what you are talking about . Mark they are recordings between russian pilots and air traffic control, communicating sorties, communicating about their bombing runs. We had several russian translators helping us decode the language and terminology that they would use. We established patterns of russian activity, corroborated with visual evidence, eyewitness accounts, help us put this portrait together of russians hitting hospitals inside the country. It was a grueling task, you are going through hours and hours of pilot transmissions, then trying to geo locate locations with timings, log 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 of adjudicating 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. Sarah 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 general, in 2016, he was gaining notoriety for campaigning for donald trump and appearing at chanting locklies her up about 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 special Inspector General for afghanistan reconstruction. I had covered the pentagon and terry 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. I thought 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. We got word that our request was denied, they were not going to give this material about general flynn. We filed freedom of information act request, ultimately a lawsuit. We got the document and it was a blistering interview. General flynn was withering and his assessment of the war and in particular, 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. It took three years, but ultimately we got all this Public Information available and posted it online for readers to see. We wrote 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 . Craig we heard there were more, and 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 and 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. We were able to identify 100 people who had given interviews like general flynn, but the majority of them, the Inspector General redacted the names, did not want to make them public, we are in court 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. Craig first. The Inspector General, one of 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 an interview, or you have a video, what is your process of approaching the actual story . Craig mark has a more complex response probably. For us, it is straightforward. Anybody whose 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. They were 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 a whole 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 the same Inspector General told congress after publication . Craig one of the main questions i had for him, why are you 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 admitted that 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 enemy was, and we are talking about commanding generals. Some pretty eyeopening 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 except he said, in some regards 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 leaked to us. 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 and other arms of the government 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 were 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. Sarah and he had not share that 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. Sarah 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. But what was your interaction with the Russian Military as you were reporting that investigation . Mark it was minimal. Down any that even remotely suggests they are involved in this activity. And they do so, at least in the case of our work, in a way that suggests almost nihilistic late, we would get emails with typos, so it wasnt even like they were presenting a formal defense. One of the things that we really was to we needed to do really consolidate our case here. Sourceopen investigations world, it works a little differently. We are doing forensic analysis and geolocation of locations that have been struck using, maybe say 30 videos for one location. So we know where this location was that was hit. Sarah where are you pulling those videos from . Mark this kind of work is interesting. All reporters work with open sources. Open sources is everything from the newspaper, state run of authoritarian regime, to a video ant somebody posts of american plane landing at some outpost in west africa. What the team does is, we take all of this open source material and use it as forensic evidence to kind of reconstruct what we think happened. In the case of one of the hospital bombings that we were looking into, we were able to collate probably somewhere on the order of 10 to 20 videos of the location. And these are videos posted by syrians that are living in these locations and filming the aftermath, or filming what it looked like before hand. It is kind of a new way of assembling a body of evidence. Stuff ofthe gumshoe talking to eyewitnesses. A lot of it is making sure that the videos we are dealing with are what they say they are, checking metadata, back end data on any piece of video, having our team sort of triangulate where the sun is going down to make sure we have the time right , so if we have the russian pilot transmission, we know what time they are flying, does that corroborate because we are not going to get, and we tried to get Russian Military defectors, and from our efforts they were not out there, so we had to take these other avenues. That is really what the Investigation Team is about, trying to find new ways to do conflict reporting and to hold these countries accountable. Sarah there is not a single 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. A lot of times you end up we were meticulous about making sure we had everything. The russians said they came out and said, we do not operate on open transmissions. Our pilots do not operate on open transmissions. It is not true because we have a preponderance of reporting that line up 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, kept the identity of deep throat secret. How can you ask 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. We cannot be 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 thinks 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 informants or consultants or 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 argument is they are farfetched and do not apply. We will see what the judge says. We think we are entitled to those things. The other i really is there was no consistency in how he treated these interviews. Many of them were labeled on the record, the document would say on the record, we would still have to fight to get those interviews. Some were labeled on the record, they would still redact names. Let me give you one example why we think it is important to fight for names. There is one interview with someone who served on the National Security council under obama, the name was redacted, the interview was about how they routinely distorted what they call the metrics or measurements of progress in the war at the white house. They would get reports from military headquarters or the pentagon or state department and go to the National Security council. This person said in this interview, we have the transcript, these metrics were routinely distorted, they knew they were resenting a false picture of how the war was going. This was being done at senior levels of the white house. They knew this was going on, they were distorting these measures of progress, the president himself would announce to the public. That is a serious statement. This is not some flunky at some lowlevel, a senior person at the white house. Who was it . We think the public has the right to know who is making this serious allegation and we would like to know more about it. That is the kind of thing that is why we think there is a compelling Public Interest and knowing who these people are and what they said about the war. Sarah this is a broader question for both of you. It is a little esoteric. Because you have had experience in trying to get to the truth during wartime, why do governments throughout different administrations and countries consistently lie during wars . [laughter] mark go ahead, craig. Sarah you can say they are all corrupt, but it has to be something else. Craig if you read the afghanistan papers, some of the individuals will give an explanation. There was an incentive not to tell the truth. Michael flynn in his interview gave a good story. He would say, each year, we get a new brigade or Battalion Team with the army or come in for 12 months into the war zone. They had the same mission. Which was to take the fight to the enemy and protect the population. Every single brigade or Battalion Commander would come in, they say, it is a mess, this war, this is going to be tough. By the time they left, every single one of them said, i accomplished the mission. We took the fight to the enemy, we protected the population, we are winning. Who is going to want to say at the end of their tour that they are losing . That they did not accomplish their mission . This is against the mindset of the military. Who wants to admit they failed . That looks bad, that is not going to go over well with the higher reps. Routinely in these reports, accomplish the mission. The next guy comes in, takes over, goes, what a mess. I cant believe things are so bad. The next guy, same thing. 12 months later, i accomplished the mission. Are those people trying to deceive the American Public . I think there is self protection, people dont admit that they did not accomplish it. They were not winning. It is hard for people to be honest, in the chain of command, but to the public at large. Sarah i will open up for questions in a minute. Think of something if you would like to ask a question. If you dont, that is fine, i have other questions. Ive noted you have done a lot of reporting internationally. I wonder why we are drawn to that and if you find that there are other barriers to getting to the truth or maybe not when you are reporting outside the united states. Mark in some places, for sure, because they do not have the history of being transparent or theoretically being transparent. The interesting thing about the work that the Investigation Teams does, you do not even obviously there is never a substitute for being there. We have bureaus all over the world that we collaborate with and that we that we partner with on investigations and stories. For our team, it is almost like an egalitarian approach to covering atrocity and conflict. What we are looking for is people basically eyewitness accounts, looking to build official accounts using the open source and open web to do it. That sounds a little random because we combine that with other things, like satellite imagery and geolocation and all the rest. But i think that the idea is that we can put together a story that does not need a government or even a tip, a public tip line, to help us corroborate. That is the goal. Internationally, in some of the locations we covered, the draw is that you are able to penetrate worlds, before the advent of the internet, were offlimits. The governments in some of these countries were able to dictate the terms of the narrative. What is exciting about this work is that it allows accountability to be held in ways that these governments have never had to deal with before. I think that is the big draw for me and the rest of the team. Sarah does anyone in the audience have a question . A question for mark. You mentioned that in your work on the russian bombing of the civilian targets in syria, you relied in part on the transmission from pilot to base on an open channel. It raised a question in my mind of when you use open sources and you have to fess up to it, you run the risk of having those sources closed down, cutting yourself off from a technique that was useful last time around. Mark it is a good question. This listening network, is what i would call it, they have this network set up as an Early Warning system for people to get out of bombing, sites that will be bombed. You are eavesdropping, hearing the pilots are going in this direction, hearing what they are saying, get out of this location. It was a serious question for us about, is us using this material, will it shut down . The russians have not stopped using the transmission lines that they have been using. We think we dont know for sure we think the reason they use open transmission, they are kind of using syria to guinea pig new war fighting technologies and weaponry and trying to run a decrypted Communication System over a place like syria with new materials we think it might be something that they dont necessarily know how to do it yet. We thought that because this constitutes a war crime in the International Community and because the russians the russians have not been shy about saying they are attacking what they call terrorists in syria. They their military officials brag that they killed 30,000 people, that they are all isis people or terrorists going against the regime. Like they have adamantly refused to say they targeted civilian targets or hospitals. We thought that holding them to account, even if they are not vociferous about denying it, the u. N. , they sit on the security council, the United Nations should know that the russians are party to this. That became the next phase of this investigation, which was the United Nations is in a position to callout the russians for these attacks and they are conducting their own investigation as we speak into russian and other targeting civilian sites. But i think that we felt like the right to know and the network that was helping us with this back us up on that. Sarah another . Also to mark. Listening to the communications of the russian pilots, did they ever indicate that they knew they were bombing hospitals or civilian targets . Did they say anything . Mark no, they speak in pilotese. United airlines used to let people listen into the transmissions, i dont know if they do anymore. You used to be able to listen to that, which i used to love. It is not a chatty thing. We were never able to i dont know if they knew what they were striking. They knew what they had to hit, they had coordinates, whether they knew what it was or not as a pilot, unclear. But obviously somebody spotting on the ground, hospitals are being hit by we suspect russians, it could also be syrians have bombed hospitals too. Whether the individual pilot knows, unclear. Sarah we have a question in the front right here. Mark, both craig and these stories required a lot of time. Was there ever fear at one point that there is no there there . What makes you stick with a path and think that there is something deeper, bigger at the end of it . Craig you are constantly making judgments based on instinct and what you have. In my case, it was pretty clear early on, since we got a general flynn interview, that would be news. If we had done a story on what he said, that might have been news. The power of what we uncovered were hundreds of people saying similar things. We thought it was worth waiting to see what else was there and the more we dug, the more we realize there was more material. We understood clearly early on that this was going to be a good story, we just did not know how good. We had to keep pulling on that string. As a journalist, youre asking that. You get a feeling there is a good story and you have to justify it to your editors to say why we are spending time on it, but you are making that evaluation, what is this worth . I think you go by instinct. Is that right . Mark yeah. Once you are two or three months into it and you are not sure we did do a lot of questioning about we have what we need to have . Sometimes it is a leap of faith. In some ways, it is good because it motivates the team to try and flip over more rocks than they had or they get creative and think about, have retried this . Have we tried this . There are times when we have gone down a road and have not necessarily had the material we are Getting Better at identifying that kind of path. I do think that even if we we would have had a story in some way, it may not happen as revelatory as it ended up being. You are able to, no matter what you have, to make something happen if the material is as strong as it is. Sarah we have one more question. Or two more. Hi. Did you ever get a sense that the russian pilots were aware that people were listening at there was disinformation provided by the pilots . For greg, how did you become aware that there were other names out there . The inspectoroia general, how many names there are . How did you chip away at that . Craig after we asked for the Michael Flynn interview, the next question was, how many other people did you interview . The Inspector General said, a lot. They were not precise, but it became clear that there were a few hundred at least. I put in another request for those. We kept pushing on both fronts. Mark i dont think because everything lined up for us and we were meticulous about making sure that the transmissions and times of the bombings matched with flight logs and eyewitness accounts, i think we felt confident that they were not we had decoded the terminology that they used. I think we felt good about that. Also, i dont i would never speak for russia, but i dont even know if they are that bothered, to be honest with you. Because they are bombing they feel in some ways they can operate with impunity, which is why we were and continue to be aggressive with this reporting. The world is looking in a different direction now. They feel like they can offer cate and misdirect and disinformationize their way out of it. I dont know if they feel like they have to take that measure. We felt pretty good that they were not being this in formative on the transmission. One thing, congratulations to both of you. Astonishing work. Lots of important stuff out there. One of the highlights of the series, the public was being lied to by its own leaders, including generals, in a sort of the way the pentagon papers brought out those decades ago. I will redo something, but of the big lines that kept being used i will read you something, one of the big lines that kept being used. Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible. That came from a higher up. Where you able to access actually when the example you gave, this person you want to find out their identity, any hard evidence, emails, or any specific hard evidence which i did not see in these reports, of a data point that was, here is the second version, here is the speech, here is the something. Actually specific examples . Craig i will give you one example. These came from memos that Donald Rumsfeld wrote, he call them snowflakes because he wrote so many, he dictated these memos, they would come fluttering down on his subordinates at the pentagon. These were obtained by the National Security archive at George Washington university under another free information act request. We could line this up. Here is rumsfeld, he is getting memos from a general, he went to afghanistan in 2006. From his chief civilian advisor, they both went to afghanistan in 2006. That summer, came back with reports that had been classified that said things are really bad in afghanistan, the taliban is making us come back, these were lengthy reports for the secretary detailing how things were going south and the insurgency was picking up steam and the u. S. Was in danger of losing the war. Rumsfeld is reading these memos, responding to them. At the same time, his speech writers are putting out talking points saying how great the war in afghanistan was going. He named example after example of women who have jobs or people in schools, road miles rumsfeld, at the same time he is he is getting theserumsfeld,s getting these classified reports and how badly these wars are going and asking dick cheney and others at the white house to see these reports, he is directing his press team and his speechwriters to put out a completely different picture, completely opposite of the information he is getting to the , public. [inaudible] could you speak in the microphone . Was not just mean he changing data points he was not , changing the information, he was just offering a rosy view and suppressing craig and suppressing the real view. This person would say they were altering data point, this example i gave the National Security official who worked in the Obama White House give specific examples of how in that interview, they would take statistics they would turn it around, the number of enemy initiated attacks, this person said, no matter if it is going up, we say this is a good sign because it shows we are taking the fight to the enemy. You know, it is just, everything was twisted around to present a positive result rather than a result. Negative i dont know if that answers your question. [speaking simultaneously] well , thank you very much for your a reporter to find out what is going on in wartime is one of the Biggest Challenges they face. You illuminated the problem for us. I would like to just quickly read through the winners again in case people have tuned in halfway through. But first, i would like to acknowledge someone in the audience. That is david, a former Washington PostForeign Correspondent and a writer, many books on the middle east. And david and his brother jim owe the nicolas b. Ott foundation, which is a sponsor of the polks, and without then them we would not be what we are today. The foreign reporting award goes to azam ahmed of the New York Times for illuminating the causes of violence in central america. National reporting to creole of the Houston Chronicle for revealing the administrations continuing use of inhumane practices in dealing with refugees. Metropolitan reporting to the staff of newsday for its series, long island divided, documenting widespread discrimination against africanamericans in housing. Local reporting to Brian M Rosenthal of the times for uncovering a scheme in which profiteers inflated the price of taxi medallions and sold them to drivers through exorbitant loans. International reporting to mark scheffler, Malachi Brown and the visual Investigations Team of the times for new techniques in forensic investigation that approved among other things russian pilots armed hospitals in syria. Financial reporting to noah, caleb and david of Bloomberg News for revealing that developers reaped huge profits by using a tax break intended to enhance poor areas to instead socalled opportunity zones to instead construct highend , luxury projects. Business reporting to dominic ands, mike baker, steve lewis can of the Seattle Times for showing how boeing and the faa cut corners in approving deadly design changes to the 737 max jets. Environmental reporting to Helena Miller of politico for establishing that the department of agriculture squashed its own research that would help farmers adapt to climate change. Military reporting to Greg Whitlock of the Washington Post for the afghanistan papers, a report on thousands of documents from u. S. Officials acknowledging the 18year 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 chance swain, jonathan charman 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 cities respective majors. Magazine reporting to Lizzie Pressler for the dispossessed, an article in the new yorker showing how speculators in the south used legal loopholes to seize black owned ancestral television reporting to john h of bbcth of sudwort news for investigating camps in western china that detain and indoctrinate the Muslim Population of uighurs. And a special award to Nicole Hannah jones of the New York Times and contributors for the 1619 project, which examined the central role of slavery in u. S. History and its continuing effects in contemporary society. Aeroneurotic congratulation to all of the winners and thank you all very much for your attention. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] one of our neighbors was a priest. We used to come by once a week to ask my father for the nation to the church and also donation to the church and also dairy project dairy products. In 18 years, my father never once refused such a request. November 1942, the same priest showed up. However this time showed up with an armed Police Officer and two armed police guards. We didnt know why that happened this time, so we all went down to find out what was going on. When we came close to the priest, he is looking at the Police Officer, pointing at us and say these are jews. We were turned into the authorities by priest. Cspan,r 1 tonight on a hearing on combating hate crimes and violence. The hearing was held 75 years after the liberation of the auschwitz concentration camp and watch it tonight at 9 00 eastern on cspan. Announcer 2 students from across the country told us the most important issues for the potential candidates to address our climate change, gun violence, teen vaping, college affordability, Mental Health and immigration. We are awarding 100,000 in cash prizes. The winners will be announced march 11. Announcer 1 2020 democratic president ial candidate Mike Bloomberg held a rally earlier today in select city. It was his first in salt lake city. It was his first Major Campaign event since the democratic primary debate in las vegas last night. [applause] mr. Bloomberg what a crowd. Thank you, lauren, and thank you, all of