[Infowarrior] - WaPo, Guardian win Pulitzers for surveillance expose

[Richard Forno]

(Waiting for DiFi and/or Rep Rogers to come out slamming the Pulitzer folks for their "poor" judgment in making this award.  --rick)


Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for public service, shared with Guardian
By Paul Farhi

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/washington-post-wins-pulitzer-prize-for-public-service-shared-with-guardian/2014/04/14/bc7c4cc6-c3fb-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html

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.

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.

In addition to its winning entries, The Post had two finalists in this year’s competition: 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.

(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 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 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.

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.

“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.”

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.”

---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.