JAKARTA - Racial cases and COVID-19 have become the main news material for the mass media. The news also influenced the list of 2021 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Reuters and the Minneapolis Star Tribune each won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism about racial injustice in US policing. While the New York Times and Atlantic are honored for chronicling the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Star Tribune won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting for what the grand jury called "urgent, authoritative and nuanced" coverage of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police last May. Meanwhile Reuters and Atlantic shared the award for explanatory reporting.
The Pulitzer Prize is the most prestigious award in American journalism and has been awarded since 1917, when newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer declared the prize as a legacy to New York's Columbia University in his will.
In 2020, "news organizations in this country face the complexities of sequentially covering the global pandemic, racial views, and the fiercely contested presidential election," Mindy Marques, co-chair of the Pulitzer Council, said at the announcement ceremony, which was broadcast online.
The council named Reuters journalists Andrew Chung, Lawrence Hurley, Andrea Januta, Jaimi Dowdell and Jackie Botts for "pioneering data analysis" of a series of coverage titled 'Shielded' , which shows how the unclear legal doctrine of 'qualified immunity' protects police use excessive force of prosecution.
Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement that the series of coverage was shaping the debate about how to reform America's police force.
"In a year of tumultuous protests over police killings of black Americans, 'Shielded' is a work of extraordinary moral force on the difficult issues facing the world's most powerful democracy, the legacy of racial injustice," the statement said.
The Pulitzer Prize for Reuters, a unit of Thomson Reuters, is the ninth since 2008, and sixth in the last four years. The Reuters team shared the explanatory reporting award with Ed Yong of The Atlantic, who was praised by the board for "a series of clear and definitive papers on the COVID-19 pandemic."
one caseThe Reuters police news series was triggered by a single case and required lengthy and complex data analysis to complete. In April 2017, the US Supreme Court refused to revive an unarmed suspect's lawsuit accusing a Houston officer of unconstitutional excessive force for shooting him in the back.
Reuters Supreme Court reporters Chung and Hurley teamed up with data reporters Januta, Dowdell and Botts. They analyzed hundreds of cases and found that since 2005, courts have shown an increasing trend of granting immunity in cases of excessive use of force.
They then listed in detail the cases of a number of victims of police violence who had been denied justice even after the court found that the officers had acted too harshly.
The first Reuters news story was published just weeks before the killing of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in handcuffs when a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. The reporting had a far-reaching impact on the national conversation on US policing matters.
"The data we got was cited in almost every major news organization in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd murder," Hurley said, adding it had also been cited in court filings and informally by judges.
Special awardMany of the 2021 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded for coverage of policing and the global protest movement that erupted after Floyd's murder: The Associated Press won the latest news photography award for its protest images, while Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times won for editorial writing for his work on bail and prison reform.
The council also said it gave "special credit" to Darnella Frazier, the teenager who recorded the video of Floyd's killing on her cellphone, which it said highlighted the "important role of citizens in the pursuit of truth and justice through journalism."
The New York Times won the public service journalism award, often considered the most coveted of the 22 awards, for its "intelligent and thorough coverage of the coronavirus pandemic."
The Boston Globe won for investigative reporting for exposing a systematic failure by state governments to share information about dangerous truck drivers that could get them off the road.
The prizes, which are valued at most at $15,000 each, have been postponed since April amid the pandemic. The awards lunch at Columbia University, which usually takes place immediately after the award announcement, has been postponed until the fall.
The Pulitzer Council also recognized achievements in seven categories in the arts, and awarded its fictional prize to Louise Erdrich for her novel "The Night Watchman" about the displacing of Native Americans in the 1950s.
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