1086 politics and radio

Becker, Samuel L., “Presidential Power: The Influence of Hollander, Barry A., “Political Talk Radio in the ’90s: A Panel Broadcasting,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (1961) Study,” Journal of Radio Studies 6, no. 2 (Autumn 1999) Braden, Waldo W., and Earnest Brandenburg, “Roosevelt’s Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Fireside Chats,” Speech Monographs 22, no. 5 (November Transformation of Political Speechmaking, New York and 1955) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Casey, Robert D., “Republican Propaganda in the 1936–1937 Kernell, Samuel, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Campaign,” Public Opinion Quarterly 1 (1937) Leadership, Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1986; 3rd Chester, Edward W., Radio, Television, and American Politics, edition, 1997 New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969 Martin, Howard H., “President Reagan’s Return to Radio,” “Cordial to Harding, Cold to Speeches,” New York Times (25 Journalism Quarterly 61 (1984) June 1923) Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency, Princeton, New Cornwell, Elmer E., Jr., Presidential Leadership of Public Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987 Opinion, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965 Willis, Edgar E., “Radio and Presidential Campaigning,” Dryer, Sherman H., “Air Power,” Colliers 106 (14 September Central States Speech Journal 20 (1969) 1940) Wolfe, G. Joseph, “Some Reactions to the Advent of Freidel, Frank Burt, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Triumph, Campaigning by Radio,” Journal of Broadcasting 13, no. 3 Boston: Little Brown, 1956 (Summer 1969)

Polk, George 1913–1948

U.S. Radio Correspondent

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio reporter George He was tireless in his efforts to report on the Greek civil Polk was murdered in Greece in May 1948 at the age of 34, war that was punishing a population that had already suffered and the identity of his murderer was never discovered. It is a under Nazi occupation during World War II. The United States great irony that a prestigious award named for him is given government was backing the Royalist regime in power. In 1947 annually to journalists whose tenacious investigative reporting President Harry Truman convinced Congress to provide a con- demonstrates the importance of a free press, for Polk was dis- troversial $300 million aid package to Greece that included couraged—not only by the government, but by well-respected funding, military personnel, supplies, equipment, and civilian members of journalism’s elite—from the type of in-depth dig- advisors. In its battle against Communism, America’s Cold ging that would later garner other reporters the coveted Polk War policy of supporting the Greek government had come Award. The evidence indicates that, in order to further U.S. under fire from Polk, who wrote critical stories of “corruption Cold War policies, CBS and a committee of Washington jour- and venality,” charging that money was being siphoned from nalists were willing to accept the unlikely conclusion that the millions of dollars in American funding. In the days prior Communists were behind Polk’s murder. to his death, Polk had received information confirming his sus- Shortly after Polk arrived in Europe in 1945 as a freelancer picions of malfeasance and planned to report it on his return to for the Los Angeles Daily News and United Daily Features the United States. Syndicate, he met CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow. Polk’s last broadcast report aired from Greece on 6 May Impressed by the former Navy pilot, who soon became a 1948. He told a CBS colleague that he was taking a few days respected member of the Middle East press corps, Murrow of vacation before heading home to the United States and a urged Polk to consider reporting for CBS. Polk was writing Nieman fellowship. Eight days later, his body washed ashore in for Newsweek when CBS hired him in 1946 to be their Cairo Salonika Bay. He had been shot, execution style, in the back correspondent. Within months, the network promoted him to and his hands and feet were bound. Members of the American chief Middle East correspondent. press were quick to respond, and when the New York Newspa- polk 1087

George Polk Courtesy CBS Photo Archive per Guild set out to conduct an independent investigation of (OSS) head General William “Wild Bill” Donovan to represent the correspondent’s death, a group of nationally known media the committee. But Donovan’s investigator, Lieutenant Colonel representatives stepped in. James Killis, was recalled by the State Department after he dis- Political columnist Walter Lippman headed the self- covered evidence pointing toward the Greek government and appointed committee looking into the murder. Included in the away from the Communists. group were CBS head William Paley, James Reston of the New Who killed George Polk? A number of theories have been York Times, Ernest Lindley of Newsweek, and Washington advanced in the intervening years. The one accepted without Post publisher Eugene Meyer, among others. Lindley, an editor skepticism by the U. S. government and rubber-stamped by at Newsweek, in later years described the committee’s purpose: the Lippman Committee, despite weaknesses and inconsis- to do “everything within their power to see that the murderers tencies in the evidence, blames Communist guerrillas who of George Polk were arrested, brought to trial, and convicted.” were supposedly hoping the right-wing Greek government Lippman chose attorney and former Office of Strategic Services would be blamed for Polk’s death. Thus, the theory postulates, 1088 polk the American support for the Greek government would relationship between the committee and the U.S. government. diminish. Stone, who called Polk “the first casualty of the Cold War,” There is compelling evidence that upper-level Greek officials published a 1952 series of articles challenging the Lippman were trying to prevent Polk from reporting on government cor- Committee’s report. ruption. Shortly before his death, Polk met with Greek Foreign The George Polk Awards are presented annually by Long Minister Constantine Tsaldaris. Polk told the powerful politi- Island University for special journalistic achievement. They go cian that he knew about U.S. assistance money that had found to famous as well as small town reporters. its way into Tsaldaris’ personal bank account. He threatened SANDRA L. ELLIS to “blow this story sky high.” Polk had also been reporting on the brutality of the repressive Royalist regime. In his broadcast See also Murrow, Edward R. on the day he disappeared, Polk described the effects of martial law in Greece and reported the more than 200 executions George Polk. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, 17 October 1913. recently conducted by military firing squads. One of five children of George Washington Polk, Sr., and Another theory suggests that agents from Great Britain, the Adelaide Roe; attended Virginia Military Institute three years; leading power in the Middle East before being replaced by the graduated University of Alaska, 1938; hired by Shanghai United States, murdered Polk to sabotage U.S.-Greek relations. Evening Post, 1938; hired by Paris bureau of Herald Tribune, In the mid-1990s, an alternative theory was suggested. In this 1949; transferred to Herald Tribune New York City office, scenario, Polk was tracking down information about drug 1940; took leave of absence for graduate study at New York smuggling and black marketeering. The criminals supposedly University, 1941; joined U.S. Navy, 1941; assigned as fighter got rid of Polk before he could reveal what he knew about pilot to Marine unit at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal; their activities. awarded Purple Heart and presidential citation after being During the summer of 1948, as the Greek authorities wounded; discharged 1944; assigned to Washington, D.C. showed few results from their investigation, Donovan began to bureau of Herald Tribune; hired as foreign correspondent for pressure for an arrest. In August police brought in journalist Los Angeles Daily News, 1945; feature writer, United Features Gregory Staktopoulos and tortured him during the next six Syndicate, 1946; named CBS News correspondent, 1946. Died weeks. Eventually Staktopoulos “confessed” to assisting the (murder) in Salonika, Greece, 9 May 1948. Communists, who he said were directed by the Kremlin. He was convicted in a show trial the following April. There were two supposed conspirators who were tried in absentia. Later it Further Reading was determined that one was dead at the time Polk was killed. Bernhard, Nancy E., U.S. Television News and Cold War Staktopoulos was sentenced to life in prison but the sentence Propaganda, 1947–1960, Cambridge and New York: was later reduced and he was released in 1961. He maintained Cambridge University Press, 1999 his innocence until his death in 1998. Polk’s Greek widow Keeley, Edmund, The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics described pressure from officials to sign a document implying and the Polk Affair, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton that her husband had been killed by a jealous lover. She left the University Press, 1989 country with a vow never to return. Marton, Kati, The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-Up in Donovan’s report, described by some as a whitewash, was the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, New three years in coming. It appears that his goal throughout the York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1990 investigation was to deflect attention and embarrassment from Unger, Sanford, “The Case of the Inconvenient the Greek government. Criticism of Lippman and the commit- Correspondent,” Columbia Journalism Review 29 tee members focuses on their willingness to support the U.S. (November/December 1990) government’s version of events rather than the truth. Icono- Vlanton, Elias, and Zak Mettger, Who Killed George Polk? clast I.F. Stone appears to be the only media representative at The Press Covers Up a Death in the Family, Philadelphia, the time to report on the conflict of interest evidenced by the Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1996