The 2005 George Polk awards for journalism have been announced. One of the most prestigious awards in journalism, the awards this year seem to have a certain, um, theme. From a Polk awards press release posted on the Romenesko website:

ABC News correspondent Brian Ross and reporter Richard Esposito will be awarded the George Polk Award for Television Reporting for revealing the treatment, which many experts consider to be torture, that the CIA used in secret detention facilities. In naming the countries where the facilities were located as well as exposing the White House-approved “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA, including a method called “water boarding” that subjects detainees to simulated drowning, the reports triggered an avalanche of critical reaction from governments and the public around the world.
The George Polk Award for National Reporting will go to Dana Priest of The Washington Post for unveiling the existence of secret CIA-run prisons and wrongdoing that included the death of an Afghan detainee and the attempted cover up of the mistaken imprisonment of a German citizen. Priest detailed the elaborate covert operations in a series of 10 articles that unleashed an international furor and raised troubling questions at home about the government’s counter-terrorism campaign.
Also from The Washington Post, reporters Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway will receive the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Trekking across Afghanistan, they documented that claims of the U.S. reconstruction process in Afghanistan were a sham and a waste of millions of dollars. Shortly after they revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had misled Congress and the public, the longtime director of USAID resigned.
Two New York Times journalists, commentator Frank Rich and medical business reporter Barry Meier, also will receive Polk Awards. For his barbed essays that intertwine popular culture with politics, including “The God Racket, from DeMille to DeLay” and “Enron: Patron Saint of Bush’s Fake News,” Rich will be honored with the George Polk Award for Commentary…