The New York Times won three George Polk Awards on Wednesday for coverage of President Trump’s expansion of power, the abuse of domestic workers in the Middle East and brutality against inmates in New York.
Long Island University, which runs the awards, announced winners in 15 categories for journalistic work published in 2025, selected from 492 entries. The George Polk Awards have been awarded annually since 1949.
“Last year was the busiest year for news in memory,” said John Darnton, the longtime curator of the awards. He added: “Bottom line — the news media did its job. It kept us informed during a turbulent time.”
The foreign reporting prize was awarded to Abdi Latif Dahir, Justin Scheck and Vivian Nereim of The New York Times for their investigation, “Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia,” which revealed the extensive abuse of East African women who were trafficked for domestic work and the individuals profiting from their trafficking.
ProPublica’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy won the international reporting award for a series that exposed the global fallout from the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and cuts to foreign aid.
The Times was awarded the national reporting prize for its extensive coverage of Mr. Trump’s push to expand executive power, including, among many examples, his use of pardons, the withholding of government funds as a cudgel and the criminal prosecution of his political enemies.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Mark Arsenault of The Boston Globe won the local reporting award for their coverage of the detainment of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University. Ms. Ozturk had drawn the attention of the State Department after co-writing an opinion article in the campus newspaper that criticized the university’s response to student government resolutions supporting Palestinians.
Jan Ransom, an investigative reporter for The Times, was awarded the justice reporting prize for her reporting on brutality by New York State prison guards against inmates, which led to laws that strengthened prison oversight.
The environmental reporting award went to the staff of Business Insider for their series “The True Cost of Data Centers,” which examined the many impacts on communities and the environment of the infrastructure being rapidly built to support artificial intelligence.
Lizzy Lawrence of Stat News was awarded the health reporting prize for her reports on turmoil at the Food and Drug Administration. The award also went to the staff of Stat News for the series “American Science, Shattered,” on the vast disruption to scientific research caused by the rupture between the Trump administration and universities.
The political reporting award went to Andy Kroll of ProPublica for “The Shadow President,” a profile of Russell Vought, the little-known Trump administration official who used his perch at the Office of Management and Budget to help expand presidential power. The article was co-published with The New Yorker.
Elliott Woods of Texas Monthly was given the magazine reporting award for “A Deadly Passage,” for which the reporter traveled across Mexico and Guatemala to speak to some of the families of the 53 migrants who died in the back of an un-air-conditioned truck in Texas in 2022, the deadliest immigration-related disaster in American history. Mr. Woods was also honored for “Stay Strong, My Brother,” a profile of one of the survivors.
Nick Miroff of The Atlantic was awarded the immigration reporting prize for his work highlighting the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father in Maryland who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite his legally protected status.
Stephanie Keith, a freelance photographer for New York magazine, received the photojournalism award for her images depicting the despair of immigrants showing up for routine court hearings in downtown New York before Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took them away for deportation.
The photojournalism award went to the Associated Press photographers Abdel Kareem Hana, Jehad Alshrafi and Mariam Dagga for their portrayal of the severe food shortages in Gaza. Ms. Dagga was killed in an Israeli strike in August.
Cecilia Vega, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Andy Court and Annabelle Hanflig of CBS’s “60 Minutes” won the award for national television reporting. Their segment, “The Prisoners,” found that the majority of the Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador had no criminal record, refuting the government’s assertion that they were felons and gang members.
The documentary “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” by Mstyslav Chernov and Alex Babenko, won the foreign television reporting award. The documentary, which followed a group of Ukrainian soldiers trying to liberate a village in the ongoing war with Russia, was a collaboration between Frontline Features and The Associated Press.
The Sydney Schanberg Prize, which honors long-form coverage of conflicts or corruption, was awarded to Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker for his article “Congo’s Thirty-Year War,” which examined Mr. Trump’s claim that he had ended the conflict.
Maria Hinojosa, an anchor and executive producer of the syndicated public radio show “Latino USA,” will receive the George Polk Career Award. Ms. Hinojosa is also a founder of Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit newsroom.
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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