Ronen Bergman, a staff writer for Yedioth Ahronoth and the New York Times, is the winner of the George Polk Prize for Journalism, considered the second most important in the world of media.
Bergman won the prize together with Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times' national security correspondent in Washington, in the international reporting category, which is considered the most prestigious of the awards. The prize is awarded to them for “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel,” a nearly 14,000-word investigation published in the weekly Times magazine dealing with law enforcement in the West Bank, which took eight years to research and report. The New York Times won a total of three Polk awards this year.
This is the second year in a row that Bergman, a staff writer for Yedioth Ahronoth since 2000, a writer for The New York Times since 2010, and a member of the newspaper's editorial board since 2018, has won the Polk Award, along with other Times journalists, for his coverage of the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last year, the team won a series of other awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
The George Polk Awards for Journalism have been presented since 1949 by Long Island University in New York in memory of George Polk, a CBS correspondent who was assassinated in 1948 while covering the Greek Civil War. The awards, according to a statement from the jury, emphasize investigative journalism and journalistic initiatives that are thought-provoking and impactful. They are presented annually in recognition of outstanding achievements in journalism. The recent winners were selected from 493 nominations that included work published in print, online, television and radio, submitted by news organizations and individuals or recommended by a panel of past winners.
“Given the range and depth of exceptional and occasionally remarkable reporting before us, winnowing the list to these 15 meant making some very hard calls,” said John Darnton, the curator of the awards. “These winners represent the best of the best.”
“Through the George Polk Awards and the George Polk School of Communication, Long Island University continues to recognize the importance of investigative journalism and train a new generation of journalists around the world,” noted Dr. Kimberly Klein, president of Long Island University.
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According to the jury's announcement, "The International Reporting Award is being awarded to Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times Magazine for their investigation "The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel," which documents how a decades-long policy of turning a blind eye to violence by extremist settlers and their supporters in the West Bank became government policy."
Declan Walsh and the staff of The New York Times were given the prize for war reporting for their ongoing coverage of devastation and destruction from the civil war in Sudan, including revealing that the United Arab Emirates was using a humanitarian effort in the country as cover while secretly funneling weapons to the side it supported. Following the publication of the investigation, the United Arab Emirates froze some of its activities in Sudan."
The two prize winners, Bergman and Mazzetti, are currently collecting material for a book, "The Wall of Jericho: The Road to October 7th," which will be published by Penguin Random House in the United States and in many other countries and languages around the world and will include many revelations about the war and the road to it.