For weeks, rumors had swirled about a new U.S.-backed plan to oversee aid distribution in Gaza, but no one would speak on the record. Then one morning, Sam Mednick obtained a document outlining the proposal—provided by an aid worker in Gaza.
Realizing the urgency and sensitivity of the material, Mednick immediately flagged it to colleagues in Israel, Washington and Geneva, knowing the document would likely circulate widely and needed to be verified and published quickly.
Over the next 15 hours, AP’s global team—Mednick, Julia Frankel, Sarah El Deeb and Matt Lee—worked intensively to authenticate the 14-page plan. They reached out to more than a dozen sources across governments, humanitarian organizations and institutions, piecing together the context and confirming its legitimacy.
AP was the first major news outlet to publish the document’s details, and one of the few to directly connect the plan to the Trump administration and a U.S.-based foundation involved in its execution. The exclusive report built on weeks of ahead-of-the-curve reporting about shifting strategies in aid distribution in Gaza.
Judges praised the scoop—not just for its exclusivity, but for the rigorous reporting that made it possible under intense time and competitive pressure.
For their persistence, source-building and cross-regional collaboration on a sensitive and closely guarded issue, Sam Mednick, Julia Frankel, Sarah El Deeb and Matt Lee are this week’s Best of AP — Second Winner.
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