Director Spike Lee was named Tuesday as one of the winners of the annual George Polk Awards for journalism for his acclaimed documentary on life in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Lee, the director of "Malcolm X" and "Do the Right Thing," was honored for "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," along with its producer, Sam Pollard. The pair won the award for documentary television for illustrating evidence of the government's poor performance in the aftermath of the devastating August 2005 hurricane.
Lee made eight trips to New Orleans and interviewed about 100 people while filming the documentary, which aired on HBO. Pollard is Lee's longtime collaborator, and the pair worked together previously on "Mo' Better Blues," "Jungle Fever," "Girl 6," "Clockers" and "Bamboozled."
Other 2006 winners ran the gamut from New York Times correspondent Lydia Polgreen, honored in foreign reporting for her work on the carnage in Sudan's Darfur region, to the staff of the free-circulation weekly Lakefront Outlook in Chicago, cited for its expose on cronyism at the Harold Washington Cultural Center.
The 12 awards, considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism, were announced Tuesday by Long Island University in New York. The Polk Awards, created in 1949 in honor of CBS reporter George W. Polk, who was killed while covering the Greek civil war, will be presented at an April 12 luncheon in Manhattan.
Other winners were:
Senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers and producer Adam Ciralsky of NBC's nightly news for network television reporting. The pair exposed a secret effort by the U.S. Army to drop a new technology aimed at protecting soldiers from rocket-propelled grenades. Hartford Courant reporters Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman for military reporting. Their four-part series detailed the military's lack of mental health screening and the high suicide rate among American troops. Robert Little, national correspondent for The (Baltimore) Sun, for medical reporting. His three-part series, "Dangerous Remedy," probed the use of an experimental drug on more than 1,000 soldiers. Los Angeles Times reporters Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling for environmental reporting. Their series linked a variety of health issues worldwide to industrial pollution and other factors that are destroying the oceanic ecology. Charles Forelle, James Bandler and Mark Maremont of The Wall Street Journal for business reporting. Their piece on backdating stock options, which allows executives to buy low and sell high, triggered a federal investigation into more than 130 companies. The Oregonian's Jeff Kosseff, Bryan Denson and Les Zaitz for national reporting. The trio did an expose of a multibillion-dollar federal program that was supposed to help people with severe disabilities find work but instead rewarded corporate executives. Debbie Cenziper, of The Miami Herald, for metropolitan reporting. Her year-long investigation into the Miami-Dade Housing Agency prompted the firing of top housing officials, along with a criminal investigation. Editor Ray Ring of the High Country News for political reporting. His investigation of the financing behind a campaign against land use regulations led to a defeat of the proposals by voters or courts in five states. The biweekly Colorado-based news magazine, founded 37 years ago, won a 1986 Polk Award for environmental reporting. The Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, American Public Media and Living on Earth for radio reporting. The three groups were cited for "Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet," a project on global warming.