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The Washington Post received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service on Monday for its coverage of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol Uprising and its aftermath.
The award, considered the highest honor of American journalism, recognizes the work of more than 100 journalists in the Post, many of whom contributed to reports from the Capitol that day, as well as others who investigated security gaps that contributed to the crisis. , the human cost of the attack and the greater consequences for the nation.
“It was a fundamental event in American history and democracy,” said Sally Busby, editor-in-chief of the Washington Post. She called the Post’s “mission and our absolutely sacred trust” not only to cover the crisis in depth, but also to find ways to disseminate its reports and analyzes “to the widest possible audience”.
“I am extremely pleased and proud that the full breadth and scope of Post’s coverage is what has been recognized,” she added, including the visual presentation, which helped make the news particularly vivid and understandable to consumers.
Washington Post executive editor Sally Busby spoke after the newsroom was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage on January 6 and May 9. (Video: Reuters)
Pulitzer also honored Post journalists as finalists in three other categories. Daryl Fiers and other Washington Post national staff finalists in the national reporting category for a series of environmental justice stories. Ann Telnes is a finalist in the category of illustrated reports and commentaries, formerly known as editorial cartoons. And Hannah Dreyer and Andrew Ba Tran are finalists in investigative reports for a series of stories about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to survive natural disasters.
The New York Times won three Pulitzer Prizes on Monday – for national reporting, international reporting and criticism – and was named a finalist in the breaking news category for its report on the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
And five Getty Images photographers – Win McNami, Drew Angerer, Spencer Platt, Samuel Corum and John Cherry – won a Pulitzer Prize for photography for breaking news coverage of the Capitol attack.
The Pulitzer Prize board also awarded a special prize in honor of Ukrainian journalists “for their courage, endurance and dedication to truthful reporting during Vladimir Putin’s relentless invasion of their country and his propaganda war in Russia.”
Pulitzer’s Gold Medal for Public Service is considered the most prestigious of more than a dozen journalisms awarded by Pulitzer each year. The Post has previously won the Public Service Award five times, first in 1973 for its coverage of the Watergate investigation and most recently in 2014, an award it shared with The Guardian for revelations about the National Security Agency’s global monitoring program.
Read the work of The Washington Post for 2022, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
This year, The Post received recognition for its nearly one-year collection of reports, which included news, investigative reports, video reconstructions and an editorial published on the night of January 6 calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office for his “refusal to accept defeat.” of the election and his relentless incitement to his supporters, ”who attacked the Capitol that day. At the heart of the report was a 38,000-word, three-part investigative series, The Attack, published in late October, designed to provide a definitive description of the forces and failures that led to the January 6 uprising, the turbulent events of the day and subsequent efforts. Trump’s allies to reduce the attack and promote the fake story of stolen elections.
Martin Barron, who was executive editor of The Post for eight years before retiring in February 2021, called it “the best job on a team of journalists.”
“The skills of each department were developed. “And I can’t be happier that he’s now recognized with the highest honors in journalism,” he said in an email. “It was a privilege to be part of such a remarkable newsroom, which rightly did not give up its investigation into who and what led the United States to such an uncertain moment in its history.
The Post’s report package, which he presented for the awards, dates back three days before the attack. On January 3, national political reporter Amy Gardner reported on Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, urging him to “find” enough extra votes to direct the state into his column – a shocking attempt to undermine the election process, which in many ways foretold what would happen in the Capitol.
On the morning of January 6, 2021, he began with the local Washington Post news team, which spread to Washington to cover the Stop the Theft rally. The team – hardened by coverage of months of unrest during racial justice protests in 2020, as well as repression of protesters and the aggressive clearing of Lafayette Square this summer – received bulletproof vests and prepared for some tense meetings with protesters, the editor said. of Metro Mike Semel.
But around 1 p.m., reporters told Semel that the crowd applauding Trump during his speech at the Ellipse had moved to the Capitol, where Congress was attesting to Joe Biden’s presidential victory, and breaking down barricades.
It quickly became clear that these reporters were facing an unprecedented – and terrifying – event. But “no one escaped,” Semel said. “He was spraying bear gas, looking for journalists to spit and swear. The scene was not pleasant and everyone ran to her.
The Washington Post’s main story of the day unwaveringly called the incident a “coup attempt.” The ever-updating live blog, reflecting the chaos, carried 38 author lines that day. The Post broke the record for a digital readership on January 6 for the number of readers visiting the website at the same time.
Days later, DC crime reporter Peter Herman reported that city police had been left to fight the mob at the entrance to West Terrace. The Post’s “visual forensics” team created a video reconstruction of the Capitol in a time of chaos. The Post also published stories describing the life and fatal shooting of a rebel and detailing how close the violent mob was to Vice President Mike Pence.
But by spring, it was clear that Congress would not set up a bipartisan commission to investigate what happened after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Matthew Gold, now The Post’s national editor, recalled writing a note to colleagues expressed that it would be a “loss for the country” if there were no official accounting.
Thus, The Post launched a one-month investigative project, for which 75 journalists in the editorial office searched thousands of pages of official documents, interviewed hundreds of sources and viewed countless videos and posts on social media. The result was a three-part series from October that included audio, video and extensive footnotes.
“This story is about much more than what happened in the Capitol halls that day,” Gold said. It was “a growing effort to cast doubt on our system of democracy. It’s a story that requires all our resources to tell. “
Journalists working on the three-part series revealed revelations until the last moments before its publication, said editor-in-chief Steven Ginsberg. “The more we learned, the more we realized how violent and dangerous it is,” he said. “It’s just very important that people understand this and don’t look away and appreciate what happened that day.”
Several editors have acknowledged that the Post is unusually well positioned to follow the story. While every other national news outlet covers the uprising, The Post – whose slogan is “Democracy Dies in the Dark” – also has significant reporters dedicated to covering the area and the region, including local events of national importance, contributing to the overall editing of resources. and staff few others can compete.
But “there is a difference between being well-positioned and actually doing well,” said senior managing editor Cameron Barr, who led the editorial board as interim executive editor before Buzbee’s appointment in May 2021. “We have met the challenge. he had to cover this coup attempt with everything we had. “
More than a year after the attack, the country remains deeply polarized about what happened on January 6th and whether it poses a serious threat to democracy. Extremists used it as a rallying cry, and conservative media and a number of Republican politicians downplayed the attack.
“The lack of consensus” simply underscores the importance of the role we play as journalists and how important it was for us to tell the story in the deepest and most authoritative way possible, “Gold said.
And while people may argue about the importance of January 6, “there is no substitute for a testimony,” Semel said. The rebels beat officers with flags, smashed Capitol windows and tried to break down doors to stop the transfer of power.
“We have witnessed this in the words of reporters, photos of photographers, videos of videographers,” Semel said. “You can interpret it as you wish, but we saw what we saw.
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