Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday (April 14) for international reporting on the violent persecution of a Muslim minority in Myanmar, the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University announced.
The board commended Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall of Reuters for their “courageous reports” on the Rohingya, who in their efforts to flee the Southeast Asian country, “often falls victim to predatory human-trafficking networks.”
Szep, celebrating with colleagues in Washington, said: “Disbelief, disbelief, I mean I heard one of our reporters said, ‘Jason, you’ve won a prize.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And I wandered down to where this reporter was, looked on the web page that was up and it was the Pulitzer web page and still I didn’t believe it when I saw it,” said Szep.
The reporter said that there were severe restrictions when covering a story in Myanmar and he’s hopes the plight of the Rohingya community will receive more attention.
“There is a community there, a very large community and it’s very, very hard to actually report the truth what’s going on with that community,” said Szep.
It marks Reuters’ first Pulitzer Prize for text reporting. Reuters was also a finalist in the investigative reporting category for exposure of an underground Internet marketplace where parents could bypass social welfare regulations and get rid of adopted children they no longer wanted.
The Guardian US and The Washington Post were each awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service for their coverage of secret surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency. Their reporting was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of global electronic surveillance by the U.S. spy agency.
The board said the Guardian US’ reporting helped to spark debate about the relationship between the U.S. government and the public over issues of security and privacy and the Post’s reporting explained how the disclosures fit into a larger framework of national security.
Reporting on the leaks, which began last June, sparked international debate over the limits of government surveillance and prompted President Barack Obama to introduce curbs on the spying powers of the National Security Agency earlier this year.
Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum last year after the U.S. Justice Department charged him with violating the Espionage Act.
Two New York Times photographers, Tyler Hicks and Josh Haner won Pulitzer prizes for Breaking news Photography and Feature Photography respectively.
Letters and Drama prizes saw Donna tart win in the Fiction category for her novel, “The Goldfinch”. The Pulitzer board described the work as a “beautifully written coming-of-age novel”.
The Pulitzer for Drama went to Annie Baker for “The Flick” which was chosen for its “well-crafted characters” and for “rendering lives rarely seen on the stage”.
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was won by Vijay Seshadri, for “3 Sections” and the Music Pulitzer went to John Luther Adams for “Become Ocean”.
The prestigious prizes, awarded by Columbia University, are given in 14 categories of journalism as well as drama, music, poetry and books.
Named after journalist and publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who left money to establish the Columbia Journalism School, the awards are decided by a 19-member panel of editors, news executives and academics.
The Pulitzer Prizes can bring badly needed attention and recognition to newspapers and websites competing for readers in a fragmented media industry, where many are suffering from economic pressures and budget constraints. (Reuters)
