NEW YORK: Washington Post and Guardian won the Pulitzer Prize in public service on Monday for revealing the US government’s sweeping surveillance programmes in a blockbuster series of stories based on secret documents supplied by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
The Pulitzer for breaking news was awarded to Boston Globe for its “exhaustive and empathetic” coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt that followed.
Two of the nation’s biggest and most distinguished newspapers, Post and New York Times, won two Pulitzers each, while the other awards were scattered among a variety of publications large and small.
The stories about the National Security Agency’s spy programmes revealed that the government has systematically collected information about millions of Americans’ phone calls and emails in its effort to head off terrorist attacks. The resulting furor led President Barack Obama to impose limits on the surveillance. The reporting “helped stimulate the very important discussion about the balance between privacy and security, and that discussion is still going on,” Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. The NSA stories were written by Barton Gellman at Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, whose work was published by Guardian US, the British newspaper’s American operation, based in New York.
“I think this is amazing news,” Poitras said. “It’s a testament to Snowden’s courage, a vindication of his courage and his desire to let the public know what the government is doing.”
Snowden, a former contract employee at the NSA, has been charged with espionage and other offenses in the US and could get 30 years in prison if convicted. He has received asylum in Russia. In a statement issued by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Snowden saluted “the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop.”
Snowden said awarding the top prize in US journalism to his colleagues is “a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government.”
He added that the reporters he worked with faced “extraordinary intimidation” and other pressure to get them to stop reporting. Snowden added: “Their work has given us a better future and a more accountable democracy.” Snowden’s supporters have likened his disclosures to the release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret Vietnam War history whose publication by The New York Times in 1971 won the newspaper a Pulitzer. His critics have branded him a criminal.
The Pulitzers are given out each year by Columbia University on the recommendation of a board of distinguished journalists and others. The two winners of the public service award will receive gold medals. The other awards carry a $10,000 prize. (Agencies)