CNN Wins George Polk Award for Coverage of the Fall of Afghanistan

CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, senior field producer Brent Swails and photojournalists William Bonnett and Scott McWhinnie have won the 2021 George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting for their reporting on the fall of Afghanistan.

The CNN team are being honored for their “real-time coverage of the rapid rise of the Taliban as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan” last August.

From the Polk Citation: “From the capture of Kandahar and Ghazni to the…gunfire on the streets of Kabul and crush at its airport, [Clarissa] Ward added context to chaos…interviewing jubilant fighters contradicting leaders’ assurances of a new Taliban and terrified women afraid to leave home.”

Established in 1949 by Long Island University to commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war, the annual George Polk Awards honor special achievement in journalism, placing a premium on investigative and enterprise reporting that gains attention and achieves results.

View the full list of winners here.