Reuters staff have received the 2023 George Polk Award for Business Reporting for their coverage of Elon Musk. Long Island University (LIU), which bestowed the award, hailed the publication’s critical coverage of Elon Musk’s companies.
The George Polk Awards have been around for some time. The awards were established in 1949 by LIU to commemorate George Polk, a renowned CBS correspondent who lost his life in 1948 during his coverage of the Greek Civil War. As noted by the LIU on its official webpage, the historic event honors the excellence of journalism and recognizes the relentless pursuit of truth.
In a press release, the LIU explained the reason why it selected Reuters’ staff for its award for Business Reporting. Long Island University specifically pointed to three alleged issues in Elon Musk’s companies that were covered by Reuters — the death of a worker at SpaceX, Tesla’s alleged shady practices, and Neuralink’s alleged subpar treatment of its laboratory animals.
“The staff of Reuters has won the Business Reporting award for penetrating reports on nefarious practices at companies owned by multi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. The reporters documented a spate of injuries and the death of a worker at SpaceX and poor treatment of laboratory animals at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant company.
“Other stories found that Musk’s electric automaker Tesla hid dangerous defects in steering and suspension parts, rigged in-dash driving-range estimates in its cars, invaded drivers’ privacy by sharing sensitive images recorded by their vehicles and made insurance customers wait months for claim payouts,” the LIU noted in its press release.
Elon Musk has responded to Reuters’ award from the LIU in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In his post, Musk criticized the Reuters staff’s 2023 George Polk Award for Business Reporting, stating that the publication should get a “Liar of the Year” award instead.
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