Stolen Valor, circa 1944

George Polk's Real World War II Record

The fictional career of a famous newsman.

Does it matter if a journalist lies on his resume?

Maybe. After all, Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke lied to their employers before they lied to their readers. Should the profession of journalism name a prestigious award for a journalist who lied about his war record?

Tough question. I know that some will argue that the Polk prize honors his journalism, not his biography. Hence, the errors in the latter should have no bearing on the quality of the former.

The sticky part is that his employers and others defended his journalism with appeals to his wartime exploits.

When Polk's reporting from Greece came under challenge, LeSueur, acting as anchorman for CBS News, defended Polk as a "wartime Navy fighter pilot twice wounded over Guadalcanal." After Polk's death in May 1948, Murrow told listeners that Polk had "flown both fighters and bombers for the Navy during the war, was wounded in the Solomons and decorated for bravery." Paul Gallico eulogized Polk as "an American ex-Navy fighter pilot and War Hero." Gallico was outdone by George Walker, who told Americans that Polk was "a flyer who faced 60 Japanese Zeros in the bitter early days of Guadalcanal-and who suffered nightmares of being aflame as his permanent memories of being three times shot down." Drew Pearson advised his audience that Polk had sustained a broken back when he "crash landed at Guadalcanal."

Would a man who lied about his war record and faked government documents be willing to lie about sources to get a big scoop or to further an ideological agenda? Seems to me that the answer has to be a resounding “quite possibly.”

His defenders ask us to believe that a man can be terribly dishonest in one phase of his life, and absolutely honest (hence credible) in another.

Against that view, we have C. S. Lewis:

I would sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had be brought up among sharpers.

Even if his journalism was impeccable, there is still something unseemly about a man who tries to steal a bit of the honor that is due real heroes.

The one point that is very clear is that his colleagues in journalism are a pretty credulous bunch. They bought his stories hook, line, and sinker, when there we plenty of warning signs. Was this out of ignorance? Or is it one more example of the guild applying one set of rules to themselves and a much more rigorous set of rules to everyone else.