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| Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for public service, shared with Guardian | Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for public service, shared with Guardian |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The Washington Post won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the prestigious public-service medal for a series of stories that exposed the National Security Agency’s massive global surveillance programs. | The Washington Post won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the prestigious public-service medal for a series of stories that exposed the National Security Agency’s massive global surveillance programs. |
| A team of 28 Post journalists, led by reporter Barton Gellman, shared the public-service award with the British-based Guardian newspaper, which also reported extensively about the NSA’s secret programs. Both Gellman and Glenn Greenwald, then the Guardian’s lead reporter on the NSA pieces, based their articles on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who has fled to exile in Russia, lending a controversial edge to this year’s awards. | A team of 28 Post journalists, led by reporter Barton Gellman, shared the public-service award with the British-based Guardian newspaper, which also reported extensively about the NSA’s secret programs. Both Gellman and Glenn Greenwald, then the Guardian’s lead reporter on the NSA pieces, based their articles on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who has fled to exile in Russia, lending a controversial edge to this year’s awards. |
| The Post’s Eli Saslow also won a Pulitzer -- newspaper journalism’s highest award -- for a series of stories about the challenges of people living on food stamps. Saslow, 31, was cited in the explanatory journalism category by the 19-member Pulitzer board in an announcement at Columbia University in New York, which administers the prizes. | The Post’s Eli Saslow also won a Pulitzer -- newspaper journalism’s highest award -- for a series of stories about the challenges of people living on food stamps. Saslow, 31, was cited in the explanatory journalism category by the 19-member Pulitzer board in an announcement at Columbia University in New York, which administers the prizes. |
| (See the full list of the Washington Post’s winners and finalists here.) | (See the full list of the Washington Post’s winners and finalists here.) |
| The Boston Globe won in the breaking-news category for its extensive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings last April. | The Boston Globe won in the breaking-news category for its extensive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings last April. |
| The New York Times swept the two photography categories, for breaking news and features. | The New York Times swept the two photography categories, for breaking news and features. |
| The award in breaking photography went to Tyler Hicks of the Times, for his photos of a terrorist attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya; the feature photography prize went to the newspaper’s Josh Hanes, for his photos of a Boston Marathon bombing victim who lost most of both legs in the attack. | The award in breaking photography went to Tyler Hicks of the Times, for his photos of a terrorist attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya; the feature photography prize went to the newspaper’s Josh Hanes, for his photos of a Boston Marathon bombing victim who lost most of both legs in the attack. |
| The investigative reporting award went to Chris Hamby of the Center for non-profit Public Integrity in Washington for articles about lawyers and doctors who rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease. | The investigative reporting award went to Chris Hamby of the Center for non-profit Public Integrity in Washington for articles about lawyers and doctors who rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease. |
| The awards to The Post and Guardian for their NSA reporting are likely to generate debate, much like the Pulitzer board’s decision to award it public service medal to the New York Times in 1972 for its disclosures of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. | The awards to The Post and Guardian for their NSA reporting are likely to generate debate, much like the Pulitzer board’s decision to award it public service medal to the New York Times in 1972 for its disclosures of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. |
| In both the NSA and Pentagon Papers stories, the reporting was based on leaks of secret documents by government contractors. Both Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg -- who leaked the Pentagon Papers to Times’ reporter Neil Sheehan -- were called traitors for their actions. And both the leakers and the news organizations that published stories were accused by critics, including members of Congress, for enabling espionage and harming national security. | In both the NSA and Pentagon Papers stories, the reporting was based on leaks of secret documents by government contractors. Both Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg -- who leaked the Pentagon Papers to Times’ reporter Neil Sheehan -- were called traitors for their actions. And both the leakers and the news organizations that published stories were accused by critics, including members of Congress, for enabling espionage and harming national security. |
| But Post executive editor Martin Baron said Monday the reporting exposed a national policy “with profound implications for American citizens’ constitutional rights” and the rights of individuals around the world. | But Post executive editor Martin Baron said Monday the reporting exposed a national policy “with profound implications for American citizens’ constitutional rights” and the rights of individuals around the world. |
| “Disclosing the massive expansion of the NSA’s surveillance network absolutely was a public service,” Baron said. “In constructing a surveillance system of breathtaking scope and intrusiveness, our government also sharply eroded individual privacy. All of this was done in secret, without public debate, and with clear weaknesses in oversight. “ | “Disclosing the massive expansion of the NSA’s surveillance network absolutely was a public service,” Baron said. “In constructing a surveillance system of breathtaking scope and intrusiveness, our government also sharply eroded individual privacy. All of this was done in secret, without public debate, and with clear weaknesses in oversight. “ |
| Baron added that without Snowden’s disclosures, “We never would have known how far this country had shifted away from the rights of the individual in favor of state power. There would have been no public debate about the proper balance between privacy and national security. As even the president has acknowledged, this is a conversation we need to have.” | Baron added that without Snowden’s disclosures, “We never would have known how far this country had shifted away from the rights of the individual in favor of state power. There would have been no public debate about the proper balance between privacy and national security. As even the president has acknowledged, this is a conversation we need to have.” |
| Gellman, 53, said, “This has been a hard, consequential story, which could have gone wrong in all kinds of ways. I’m thrilled at the recognition for The Post and honestly I’m relieved that we didn’t screw it up.” | Gellman, 53, said, “This has been a hard, consequential story, which could have gone wrong in all kinds of ways. I’m thrilled at the recognition for The Post and honestly I’m relieved that we didn’t screw it up.” |
| On the issues surrounding the story, he said, “We have been as careful as we could be to balance the public interests in self-government and self-defense. We consulted with the responsible officials on every story and held back operational details. But we were not prepared to withhold the secret policy decisions the government is making for us and the surveillance it’s directing against us. The public gets to have a say on those things. Enabling that debate is exactly what a great news organization should be doing.” | |
| The Pulitzer was the third in which Gellman played a key role. He was part of a Post team that won for national reporting in 2002 for coverage of the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks; he and Post reporter Jo Becker also won in 2008 for a series about Vice President Dick Cheney. He formally left The Post in 2010 to focus on book projects and other long-form writing, but returned last year on a contract basis to spearhead the newspaper’s NSA reporting. | |
| Greenwald, who now heads a new journalism venture called First Look Media, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. | |
| Gellman and Greenwald, 47, received the Snowden documents early last year from a mutual friend and colleague, Laura Poitras, 52, whom Snowden initially contacted anonymously. Since Poitras’ byline appeared on articles about the NSA in both The Post and the Guardian, she earned a share of two Pulitzers in two different publications, an unprecedented feat, according to Roy J. Harris, the author of “Pulitzer’s Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism.” | |
| As a British-based publication, the Guardian wouldn’t typically be eligible for the Pulitzers, which are awarded only to U.S. newspapers, wire services and news organizations. However, since its NSA stories were published by its U.S. Web site, the Pulitzer board deemed the stories eligible. | |
| Saslow said the genesis of his stories about food stamps were news reports about the quadrupling of the federal program over the last ten years. At first, he said, he wanted to write just one article — about the food stamp “economy” on the first of each month, when millions of Americans receive their benefits. But the story grew from there, into well-crafted pieces about a Florida recruiter for the program, a bread truck in rural Tennessee, and a story about how living on food stamps made South Texans obese yet still left them hungry. | |
| “It felt [as if] most people were talking about the economy getting better and the stock market rising, and both of those things were true,” he said. “But the food stamp program was the lasting scar of the economic collapse, and in some ways it was going a little unnoticed that one in seven people depend on the government for their food. It felt important to tell those stories in a year when Congress was debating historic food stamp cuts.” | |
| In addition to its winning entries, The Post had two finalists in this year’s competition, the 98th: Michael Williamson for feature photography, for work that accompanied Saslow’s food-stamp articles; and the newspaper’s breaking-news coverage of the Washington Navy Yard shootings in September. | |
| Pulitzer winners receive $10,000, except for public-service recipients, which receive a gold medal. | |
| The public-service award was The Post’s fifth, tied for the second most after the Los Angeles Times, which has won six, according to Harris. The Post also won public-service medals for its coverage of the Watergate scandal (1973); for an investigation of police shootings in the District (1999); for Katherine Boo’s reporting on wretched conditions in District group homes for the mentally retarded (2000); and for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital (2008). |