Biography

James Polk was born on September 12, 1937 in Oaktown, Indiana, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for CNN Special Assignment: Crime Stories (1992), CNN Presents (1993) and Atlanta Child Murders: The investigation and arrest of Wayne Williams (2013). He was married to Cara and Bonnie. He died on July 15, 2021 in Marietta, Georgia, USA.

He served three years in the Navy, and received a bachelor's degree in government from Indiana University. He started out at the Bloomington Herald-Telephone in Indiana, then at the Associated Press in Madison, Wisconsin. He went to Washington DC as an AP reporter. Later in his career, he worked on NBC's Nightly News and at CNN.

He was a a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Watergate scandal for the old Washington Star-News. He shared the prize for national reporting with the Providence Journal's Jack White.