Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for public service for Jan. 6 coverage & More Trending News

“This was a seminal event in American history and democracy,” Washington Post govt editor Sally Buzbee mentioned. She referred to as it the Post’s “mission and our absolute sacred trust” to not simply cowl the disaster totally however to seek out methods to get its reporting and evaluation out “to as broad an audience as possible.”

“I’m enormously pleased and very honored that the whole breadth and sweep of the Post coverage is what was recognized,” she added, together with the visible presentation that helped make the information particularly vivid and understandable to shoppers.

The Pulitzers additionally honored Post journalists as finalists in three different classes. Darryl Fears and different Washington Post nationwide staffers are finalists within the nationwide reporting class for a sequence of tales about environmental justice. Ann Telnaes is a finalist for the illustrated reporting and commentary class, previously often known as editorial cartooning. And Hannah Dreier and Andrew Ba Tran are finalists in investigative reporting for a sequence of tales about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed pure catastrophe survivors.

The New York Times received three Pulitzers Monday — for nationwide reporting, worldwide reporting and criticism — and was named a finalist within the breaking-news class for its reporting on the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

And 5 photographers for Getty Images — Win McNamee, Drew Angerer, Spencer Platt, Samuel Corum and Jon Cherry — received the Pulitzer for breaking-news pictures for their coverage of the assault on the Capitol as nicely.

The Pulitzer Prize board additionally awarded a particular quotation in honor of journalists of Ukraine, “for their courage, endurance and commitment to truthful reporting during Vladimir Putin’s ruthless invasion of their country and his propaganda war in Russia.”

The Pulitzers’ gold medal prize for public service is taken into account essentially the most prestigious of the greater than a dozen journalism Pulitzers awarded yearly. The Post has beforehand received the public service prize 5 instances — first in 1973 for its coverage of the Watergate investigation and most not too long ago in 2014, an award it shared with The Guardian for revelations concerning the National Security Agency’s world surveillance program.

Read The Washington Post’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning work for public service

This 12 months, The Post was acknowledged for a virtually year-long assortment of coverage that included breaking information tales, investigative experiences, video reconstructions and an editorial printed the evening of Jan. 6 calling for President Donald Trump to be faraway from workplace for his “refusal to accept his election defeat and his relentless incitement of his supporters” who attacked the Capitol that day. A centerpiece of the coverage was a three-part, 38,000-word investigative sequence, “The Attack,” that printed in late October, meant to supply the definitive account of forces and failures that led to the Jan. 6 riot, the tumultuous occasions of the day and subsequent efforts by Trump allies to decrease the assault and promote the false narrative of a stolen election.

Martin Baron, who served as The Post’s govt editor for eight years earlier than he retired in February 2021, referred to as it “journalistic teamwork at its finest.”

“The skills of every department were deployed. And I couldn’t be more gratified that it is now being recognized with journalism’s highest honor,” he mentioned through electronic mail. “It was a privilege to be part of such a remarkable newsroom, which rightly hasn’t let up in its investigation of who and what brought the United States to such a precarious point in its history.”

The Post’s bundle of coverage it had submitted for awards consideration dated again to a few days earlier than the assault. On Jan. 3, nationwide political reporter Amy Gardner reported a couple of cellphone name Trump had with Georgia’s secretary of state, urging him to “find” sufficient further votes to tip the state into his column — a surprising try and subvert the electoral course of that in some ways foreshadowed what would occur on the Capitol.

The morning of Jan. 6, 2021, started with Washington Post’s native information workforce fanning out throughout Washington to cowl a “Stop the Steal” pro-Trump rally. The workforce — hardened by masking months of unrest in the course of the 2020 racial justice protests in addition to the crackdown on protesters and aggressive clearing of Lafayette Square that summer time — have been supplied flak jackets and ready for some tense encounters with the protesters, mentioned Metro editor Mike Semel.

But someday after 1 p.m., the journalists reported again to Semel: The crowd that had cheered Trump throughout his speech on the Ellipse had moved to the Capitol, the place Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win, and have been breaking down the barricades.

It rapidly turned clear that an unprecedented — and terrifying — occasion was unfolding in entrance of those reporters. But “nobody ran away from it,” Semel mentioned. “There was bear gas being sprayed, they were looking for journalists to spit on and curse at. It was not a pleasant scene, and everybody ran toward it.”

The Washington Post’s principal account of the day unflinchingly referred to as what happened “an attempted coup.” A constantly updating reside weblog masking the mayhem carried 38 bylines that day. The Post broke a digital readership report on Jan. 6 for the variety of readers visiting the web site on the similar time.

Days later, D.C. crime reporter Peter Hermann reported on how metropolis police have been left to battle the mob on the West Terrace entrance. The Post’s “visual forensics” workforce created a moment-by-moment video reconstruction of the chaos contained in the Capitol. The Post additionally printed tales chronicling the life and deadly capturing of 1 rioter and detailing how shut the violent mob got here to Vice President Mike Pence.

But by spring it turned clear that Congress wouldn’t create a bipartisan fee to research what had transpired, because it had after the terrorist assaults of 2001. Matea Gold, now The Post’s nationwide editor, recalled writing a observe to colleagues expressing that it will be “a loss for the country” if there was no official accounting.

So The Post launched a months-long, investigative venture for which 75 journalists throughout the newsroom combed by 1000’s of pages of official paperwork, interviewed tons of of sources and examined numerous movies and social media posts. The end result was October’s three-part sequence, which included audio, video and in depth footnotes.

“This story is about much more than what happened in the halls of the Capitol that day,” Gold mentioned. It was “a growing effort to sow doubt about our system of democracy. That is a story that demands all our resources to tell.”

Journalists engaged on the three-part sequence uncovered revelatory reporting up till the ultimate moments earlier than it was printed, mentioned managing editor Steven Ginsberg. “The more we learned, the more we understood how violent and dangerous it was,” he mentioned. “It’s just critical for people to understand that and not look away, and appreciate what happened that day.”

Several editors acknowledged the Post was unusually well-positioned to comply with the story. While each different nationwide information group coated the riot, The Post — whose slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — additionally has a considerable reporting employees dedicated to masking the District and surrounding area, together with native occasions with nationwide significance, contributing to an general newsroom with assets and staffing few others can rival.

But “there’s a difference between being well-positioned and actually doing it well,” mentioned senior managing editor Cameron Barr, who led the newsroom as interim govt editor earlier than Buzbee’s appointment in May 2021. “We responded to the challenge in front of us, which was to cover this attempted coup with everything we had.”

More than a 12 months for the reason that assault, the nation stays deeply polarized about what happened on Jan. 6 and whether or not it posed a critical menace to democracy. Extremists have used it as a rallying cry, and conservative media and various Republican politicians have downplayed the assault.

The lack of consensus “just underlines the importance of the role that we play as journalists and how essential it was for us to tell the story in the deepest and most authoritative way possible,” mentioned Gold.

And whereas individuals can argue over the significance of Jan. 6, “there’s no substitute for bearing witness,” Semel mentioned. Rioters beat officers with flag poles, busted by home windows of the Capitol and tried to interrupt down doorways to cease the switch of energy.

“We witnessed it with reporters’ words, photographers’ photographs, videographers’ videos,” Semel mentioned. “You can interpret that any way you want, but we saw what we saw.”