Anonymity is a privilege in journalism extended to sources and sometimes even to award winners.

Last week, a George Polk Award was given for an image of the violent death of an Iranian woman during protests last year. The man who first uploaded the video is anonymous, as are the man who captured the footage on a camera phone and the doctor who sent the video clip by e-mail with the message “please let the world know.” The uploader learned only last week that he had played a role in one of the highest honors in journalism, by reading an article about it on the Internet.

The 37-second video of the death of the woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, became a symbol of the Iranian opposition movement after the country’s disputed presidential election in June. It was first uploaded to the Internet by a 36-year-old native of Iran who lives in the Netherlands. After hearing about the award last week, the man said he was proud that the video had “concentrated the world’s attention to Iran and the Iranians, to their protest and their ways for expressing.”

The panel that administers the George Polk Awards, based at Long Island University, said it wanted to acknowledge the role of ordinary citizens in disseminating images and news, especially in times of tumult when professional reporters face restrictions, as they do in Iran. The university said it had never bestowed an award on an anonymous work before.

“It became such an important news element in and of itself,” said John Darnton, the curator of the Polk awards and a former reporter and editor for The New York Times.