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A Pulitzer for ‘stories the world heard from no other source’
As noted by the judges, the Pulitzer Prize won today by AP was: “For a revelatory yearlong series detailing the atrocities of the war in Yemen, including theft of food aid, deployment of child soldiers and torture of prisoners.”
Addressing staffers at a celebration at AP’s New York headquarters, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said: “Yemen is one of the most dangerous places in the world to report. And yet, again and again, this team braved those dangers to tell stories that the world heard from no other source, and with extraordinary detail.
“We are keenly aware that this coverage that we won for today is about a humanitarian disaster — a humanitarian disaster that we now hope the world is paying closer attention to, in part, at least, because of our strong coverage.
“As such, we chose today — as a request of the journalists involved — to not break out the champagne and honor that reality. We will be celebrating, but we will be celebrating in the knowledge that what we do is tell the world what is going on, trying to shine a light on a terrible situation so that the world can decide how to respond. One of the things we are the most proud about on Yemen is that our coverage has kept going. It has not stopped.”
The Pulitzer Prize caps a gratifying list of awards lauding the work of correspondent Maggie Michael, photographer Nariman El-Mofty and video journalist Maad al-Zikry:
- McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage
- IRE Tom Renner Award
- Olivier Rebbot Award from the Overseas Press Club
- Batten Medal for Courage in Journalism
- AP’s Oliver S. Gramling Journalism Award
- Finalist for Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics
You will find the award-winning reporting in its entirety here. It was supported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
AP continues to produce investigative reports on the war in Yemen, including an investigation revealing that Yemen’s massive cholera epidemic – the largest recorded in modern times – has been aggravated by corruption.
At today’s staff celebration, Managing Editor Brian Carovillano added: “This work in Yemen by this amazing team, as well as the other four AP finalists, is especially gratifying because in all of these cases, this coverage represents exceptional and deep journalism on the most-important stories that happened in the world last year. This is compelling journalism that’s done often on deadline on the world’s biggest and most important stories and, in that way, I think it represents the very best of the AP and really captures our value to the world’s citizens and to our customers.”
A complete list of Pulitzer winners can be found here.
Read the AP news story.