The Pulitzer Prize, one of the most important in world journalism, announced this Friday (11) its winners, with a focus on covering protests against racism and the coronavirus pandemic.
Teenager Darnella Frazier, 18, received an honorable mention for “bravely filming the death of George Floyd,” the statement said. On the website, the organizers stressed the importance of citizens’ contributions to the “search for truth and justice” in journalism.
With two awards each, the American newspaper The New York Times and the news agency The Associated Press were the biggest winners of the year.
In the Public Service category, the NYT was recognized for its “bold,” “visionary” and “far-reaching” coverage of the pandemic, which focused on social and racial inequalities in the US healthcare system.
Individually, New York Times Magazine member Wesley Morris won the Critics’ Award for his “engaged”, “playful” and “deep” work at the intersection of race and culture in the United States.
This is the second Critics’ Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 2012 in the same category while working for the American newspaper Boston Globe.
The Associated Press, meanwhile, was honored in the Hot News Photojournalism category for its coverage of the American reaction to the death of George Floyd, a black man who was suffocated by a white policeman in March of the year. last. Floyd’s death mobilized thousands of Americans to demonstrate in the streets and opened space for the advancement of the fight against racism in the United States.
And, for a photographic series illustrating the lives of elderly people impacted by Covid-19 in Spain, journalist Emilio Morenatti, senior photographer for the Associated Press in Spain and Portugal, won the specialty photography award.
A reporter with the agency since 2004, Morenatti has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
In the International Coverage category, BuzzFeed won its first Pulitzer Prize for a series of “clear” and “implicating” reporting on the persecution of Uyghurs in China, which featured the use of multiple resources, including satellite imagery.
Other winners of the year included the Boston Globe, in the Investigative Coverage category, which revealed in August 2020 that truck drivers had committed offenses on US highways without incurring heavy penalties. It was the newspaper’s 27th Pulitzer Prize, known for its investigation of cases of pedophilia in the Catholic Church depicted in the film “Spotlight: Secrets Revealed” (2015).
Science journalist Ed Yong, of the American magazine The Atlantic, was also awarded for explanatory coverage of Covid-19 in the United States, which, according to the organizers of the prize, was “lucid” and “crucial”. Prior to working for the magazine, Young published his work in the NYT and National Geographic magazine.
Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Greene was also recognized for his work on the region’s criminal justice system, including on topics such as policing, bail reform and prisons. Greene’s victory represents the 48th Pulitzer Prize received by the newspaper.
Created in 1917 to honor journalists, the Pulitzer Prize has undergone multiple changes since its first event, such as recognition of articles published online when newspapers migrated to digital media and the inclusion of non-journalistic categories, such as music and fiction.