“Anonymous” won this year’s Polk Award for journalistic merit — for recording the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during the uprising in Iran last June over the contested elections. “Anonymous” shot the footage — and shared it with the world by uploading it to YouTube. “In a way,” says Polk curator John Darnton, it recognizes that “neutral platforms like YouTube and Facebook can actually disseminate news — news in the raw — in addition to just social networking.”

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Yesterday, Long Island University announced the winners of the 2009 George Polk Award, an annual honor for excellence in journalism. And in addition to the regular heavy-hitters, they also recognized the anonymous men and women that filmed the death of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan. This marks the first time that citizen journalists have received such a traditional, industry-recognized honor. And as a result, it’s a really freaking big deal.

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Larry King welcomed Iranian PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad on his show last night to look back at his week at the United Nations, but King couldn’t resist the chance to question Ahmadinejad about his Holocaust Denial. “What my understanding of the Holocaust is is the need to raise a number of questions,” Ahmadinejad told King at the beginning of the questions. “And I actually have raised those questions but unfortunately my words have been distorted by the media … they call it information, the ‘free flow of information.’”

At 5pm today President Obama will be meeting Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. Crowley for the much-hyped “Beer Summit.” But today also marks the 40 day anniversary of Neda’s death. Neda, you may recall, was the young Iranian woman who death during last month’s sweeping election protests was captured on video and watched around the world. Will today also mark Iran’s reemergence as a headline dominator? Or will beer and Birthers continue to rule the day?