CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY Honored with George Polk Award

The CBS EVENING NEWS WITH Scott Pelley won the George Polk Award for Television News Reporting for its coverage of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng by CBS News Correspondent Holly Williams, it was announced by Long Island University.

Williams, who is fluent in Mandarin, reported on Chen's daring escape to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, following years of being under house arrest after exposing forced abortions in China. She was the first reporter to reach his village - and past government security guards - where other members of his family were under house arrest. Chen's older brother met with Williams at a secret location nearby and described how police tortured him to discover how Chen escaped.

The credits are as follows: Anchor and Managing Editor: Scott Pelley; Executive Producer: Patricia Shevlin; Correspondent: Holly Williams; Senior Producer: Heather Abbott; Producer: Marsha Cooke.

Scott Pelley was named anchor and managing editor of the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH Scott Pelley in May 2011. In addition to those duties, Pelley remains a correspondent on the news magazine 60 MINUTES.

With more than 20 years of experience at CBS News, Pelley has covered everything from breaking national news stories to politics to conflicts around the globe. Since bringing that experience to 60 Minutes in 2004, half of the major awards won by the broadcast have been for stories reported by Pelley.

Pelley's recent 60 Minutes reports include segments on late-breaking stories such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the mass murder in Tucson that seriously wounded Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords. His list of interview subjects includes President George Bush; Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke; Justice John Paul Stevens; Afghan President Hamid Karzai; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and Sharif El-Gamal, the man behind the "Ground Zero mosque." His story of Mike Williams - the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon who survived the explosion that caused the Gulf oil spill - won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia award.