1998 George Polk Award Winners at a Glance

Book Award- Philip Gourevitch for We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and based in part on articles that first appeared in The New Yorker, a chilling account of genocide in Rwanda in 1994, how it could have been averted and lessons to be learned from it.

Career Award-Russell Baker, author and retired New York Times columnist, for delighting generations of readers for 36 years with witty, pointed essays that took political satire to a new level.

Commentary-Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, for columns challenging myths about people of color and describing the effects of the unequal distribution of wealth in urban America.

Economic Reporting-Mary Jordan, Keith Richburg and Kevin Sullivan, The Washington Post, for "Shattered Lives," a series that put a human face on the Asian financial crisis.

Environmental Reporting-Gardiner Harris and R.G. Dunlop, Louisville Courier- Journal, for an investigative report on the death of 1,500 coal miners each year from black lung disease that revealed how mine operators ignore mandated safety rules and fake air-quality tests.

Foreign Reporting-Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, for early, prescient and perceptive dispatches about ethnic Albanians' armed struggle for independence in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

International Reporting-Alix M. Freedman, The Wall Street Journal, for "Population Bomb," an eye-opening account leading to the ban of a suspected carcinogenic sterility drug manufactured in the U.S. and widely distributed to women in Third-World nations.

Legal Reporting-Joe Stephens, The Kansas City Star, for "On Their Honor," a series that revealed conflicts of interest by federal judges who ruled on cases in which they had economic interests.

Local Reporting-Clifford J. Levy, The New York Times, for meticulously documenting instances of unethical political contributions in reports that sparked federal criminal investigations of top statewide officials' campaigns.

Medical Reporting-Robert Whitaker and Dolores Kong, The Boston Globe, for "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill," a national exposé of harmful experiments conducted in mental hospitals on patients in no position to give their informed consent.

National Reporting-Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Time magazine, for their investigative report debunking the myth that taxpayer concessions and rewards to corporations to remain in or move to an area preserve jobs or improve the economy.

Radio Reporting-Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now/Pacifica Radio, for "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship," which reported that the company's use of the military to protect its interests led to the death of two environmental activists.

Television Reporting-Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, ABC News-20/20, for "Made in America?" - revealing how a loophole allows firms to put "Made in the U.S.A." labels on garments manufactured under sweatshop conditions by exploited Chinese workers on Saipan.