Times Writer Wins Prize for Kosovo War Coverage

Times staff writer Paul Watson has won a 1999 George Polk Award, one of journalism’s top honors, for his reporting on the war in Kosovo and his revelations of atrocities committed by both sides.

It is the second year in a row that a Times staff writer has won the award for coverage of the Kosovo conflict. And it is the 11th time that The Times has been honored with the prize, established by Long Island University in 1949 in memory of a CBS reporter slain while covering the civil war in Greece.

“Searing reports on the war in Kosovo, made possible by his ingenuity, persistence and courage, earned Paul Watson the Polk award for foreign reporting,” the university said.

“After Serb officials rounded up about 30 journalists from NATO’s member countries and expelled them under police escort to Macedonia, one--Paul Watson--returned the following day,” the university continued. “He was the only North American reporter to spend most of the next 67 days of the 78-day bombing campaign reporting, firsthand, on the daily terrors and privations, the courage and cruelties of both Albanians and Serbs.”

Times Foreign Editor Simon K.C. Li said Watson “bravely put himself in place to see the horrors of both Serb actions against Kosovo’s Albanians and NATO’s not always accurate bombing.”

“We thank the Polk judges for honoring his courage and, implicitly, his successful search for the truth beyond easy certainties and patriotic assumptions,” Li said.

Watson, 40, joined The Times in August 1998 after serving in Hong Kong as Asia bureau chief for the Toronto Star. He began his 11 years with the Star as a reporter in 1987.

Watson was among 13 winners of 1999 Polk awards. Others went to the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Daily News, the Daily Southtown of Chicago, Associated Press, BBC News, WWOR-TV of New Jersey, the Washington-based National Security Archive and author and radio broadcaster Studs Terkel.

The awards will be presented April 18 in New York. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson won a 1998 Polk award for her reporting on the armed fight for independence by ethnic Albanians in Serb-controlled Kosovo.