| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Another "Great Journalist" Exposed As War Fraud |
| 2007-02-22 |
| George W. Polk was honored as a truth-teller. A correspondent for CBS News, he was murdered in Greece in 1948. A coveted, respected award named after him, the George Polk Award, was established in 1949 and is given every year to journalists in numerous specialties. According to a statement on the official website, the winners have exemplified the unearthing of "myriad forms of scandal and deceit." They comprise a two-generation roll call of distinguished names in journalism: Christiane Amanpour, Homer Bigart, Walter Cronkite, Thomas Friedman, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Bill Moyers, Edward R. Murrow, Daniel Schorr, I.F. Stone, and many others. Polk cut a dashing figure as a newsman, but he also cut out the real story of his World War II service as a naval officer and replaced it with a huge fraud. He deserves to join the growing roster of American journalists whose dishonesty has gravely injured their profession. Who killed Polk remains a mystery. His body, drugged, bound, and shot in the head at close range, washed up in Salonika Bay during the Greek civil war of the late 1940s. Journalists widely believed that he died in fearless pursuit of a story. Polk was brave, and he wasn't reticent about his exploits. As a newsman, he often regaled his family and fellow journalists with tales of his exploits as a World War II fighter pilot and ace. The mystery of Polk's death inspired at least three books in the United States, as well as some in Greece. In The Polk Conspiracy, journalist and human rights activist Kati Marton recounts how Polk told his family that he had been a fighter pilot who shot down 11 Japanese planes and earned a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds. In The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair, Princeton University professor Edmund Keeley presents Polk as a Navy fighter pilot in the South Pacific, a twice-wounded recipient of a "presidential unit citation." Interestingly, Elias Vlanton and Zak Mettger's Who Killed George Polk? mentions only Polk's claims of flying bomber and reconnaissance missions, not the wounds or the planes shot down. Judging from the correspondence and tributes included in his personal papers, deposited at New York University Library, Polk's glorious war record helped him get--and keep--his reporter's job at CBS. When Polk's reporting in Greece was challenged, Larry LeSueur, a CBS anchorman, defended Polk as a "wartime Navy fighter pilot twice wounded over Guadalcanal." After Polk's death in May 1948, CBS's legendary reporter Edward R. Murrow eulogized him as a hero who had "flown both fighters and bombers for the Navy during the war, was wounded in the Solomons and decorated for bravery." None of this was true. Official documents reflect no evidence that Polk flew fighters in combat, much less that he shot down any Japanese planes. In fact, they demonstrate he was not even a qualified Navy pilot. Likewise, these records contain no evidence he was wounded, or that his decorations support his combat flying claims. Polk's actual service was admirable, but his later stories burgeoned into a fantastic deception... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #11 This story has now been offered to the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Harper's, Slate, the Wilson Quarterly, and the American Scholar. The first three declined to publish it; the others did not respond. I used to be disgusted. Now I'm just amused. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2007-02-22 21:02 |
| #10 a 60 year tradition of truthiness |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-02-22 19:01 |
| #9 Nother brick in the journalistic wall of dishonor. Of course, looking at some of the Polk Award honorees... it can be argued that they are carrying on the same grand tradition. Do I need the extreme sarcasm tags? |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-02-22 18:45 |
| #8 John Lundstrom, an historian mentioned in the article, is the author of The First Team, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, and many other books on carrier combat in the Pacific, and probably knows more about the Pacific war than Admiral Yammamoto did. I just finished The First Team, and it's a ripping good read with a wealth of detail, down to naming individual pilots (and their planes' tail codes and serial numbers!) for every sortie flown by every F4F in the Pacific for the first seven months of the war. If John Lundstrom says George Polk wasn't a naval aviator, he wasn't a naval aviator. Period. |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-02-22 18:19 |
| #7 It is probably fitting to nominate Al Gore for the George Polk Award fraud. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-02-22 17:10 |
| #6 Mark Z, Rather didn't quit, he was deemed unsuitable to be a Marine. In other words, he washed out. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-02-22 16:35 |
| #5 And in his mind, the intrepid journalist Dan Rather was a battle hardened US Marine with the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor etched into his heart. (at least until he quit boot camp prior to graduation) * spit * |
| Posted by: Mark Z 2007-02-22 14:54 |
| #4 Who killed Polk remains a mystery. His body, drugged, bound, and shot in the head at close range, washed up in Salonika Bay during the Greek civil war of the late 1940s. Sounds like suicide to me. |
| Posted by: The Ghost of Dictators Past 2007-02-22 14:31 |
| #3 GO FIGURE!! |
| Posted by: ARMYGUY 2007-02-22 13:20 |
| #2 Hey, Stalin's laughing at me. He wants to know how come I never won one of these. Time to find Polk and kick his ass... |
| Posted by: The Ghost of Walter Duranty 2007-02-22 13:20 |
| #1 They comprise a two-generation roll call of distinguished names in journalism: Christiane Amanpour, Homer Bigart, Walter Cronkite, Thomas Friedman, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Bill Moyers, Edward R. Murrow, Daniel Schorr, I.F. Stone, and many others. Quite a few loony lefties in that list. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2007-02-22 13:16 |