Awards Recipients

OPC President Pancho Bernasconi, in his remarks in Dateline magazine said “I am delighted that Maggie Steber is here in person to accept the President’s Award for lifetime achievement. I have always believed that the very best photographers have a preternatural ability to get into a story subject’s life in a way that most cannot. This gift allows Maggie to tell the most thoughtful, impactful and empathetic stories on a range of subjects that have brought her to more than 60 countries in her career.”

Best newspaper, news service or digital reporting from abroad

In an era where great reporting is often associated with mobilizing massive teams and multi-media packages, Sudarsan Raghavan’s Yemen package reminded us that sometimes all it takes to deliver outstanding work is one talented reporter with in-depth knowledge of the subject and the courage to go digging in the field. The breadth and scope of the stories—from inside a hospital to interviews with Houthi commanders and U.S. and regional allies funding and weaponizing the war—illustrated a complex and important conflict. Classic intrepid solo reporting matched with beautiful writing, human faces and big picture analysis.

Award Page (with links to the winning work) >> 

Citation for Excellence: Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty
The Associated Press, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
“Yemen’s Dirty War”

Citation Page >>

Best newspaper, news service or digital interpretation of international affairs

The courageous reporting by two Reuters reporters who were arrested while investigating a massacre in the Myanmar village of Inn Din, and the fierce commitment of their news organization to complete their journalistic mission, led to an outstanding series of articles exposing and explaining the government’s atrocities against the Rohingya. Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo and their colleagues discovered a mass grave, obtained photographs of the victims, interviewed family members and identified some of the perpetrators of the slaughter. They used the incident to open a window on the larger forces that enabled the massacre, including the infantry divisions that spearheaded the attacks, the use of social media to incite hatred, and government leaders who turned a blind eye. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo remain in prison. This award for “Myanmar Burning” is a tribute to their spirit.

Award Page (with link to the winning work) >>

Citation for Excellence recipients: Tamer El-Ghobashy, Louisa Loveluck, Liz Sly and Alice Martins
Affiliation: The Washington Post
Honored Work: Syria: Reflections from a Shattered Land”

Citation Page >>

Best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise published in any medium

Through a year of making monthly visits to document the stories of people at different stages of their trek north through Central America, Carolyn Van Houten brought a deep level of humanity and empathy to a story that saturated the news media. Courage in storytelling is not only defined by proximity to violence and danger, but also by having the guts to go where others are not, and to look beneath the surface to understand the true impact of these crises. Van Houten’s work demonstrates this, but more than that, she embodies this ethos as a storyteller and a person. This award is not just for her talent as a photographer, but for her compassion and courage in storytelling.

Award Page (with a slide show of the winning images) >> 

Citation for Excellence recipients: Khalil Hamra
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “Conflict in Gaza”

Citation Page >>

Best photographic news reporting from abroad published in any medium

The jury saw several strong portfolios from Yemen—a country that, until last year, had been severely neglected by the mainstream media. Nariman El-Mofty’s work stood out. We were moved by her clear commitment to the subject, but also by her thoughtful and surprising use of light, color and framing to capture a conflict zone that has almost always been depicted through a darker lens. The variety of scenes that El-Mofty documented—from malnourished children to crumbling infrastructure to snippets of daily life—convey the complexity of a country and a conflict that the world still struggles to understand.

Award Page (with a slide show of the winning photos) >> 

Citation for Excellence recipient: Spencer Platt
Affiliation: Getty Images
Honored Work: “Looking for Home”

Citation Page >>

Best feature photography on an international theme published in any medium

Shiho Fukada’s quiet, intimate glimpse into the lives of elderly female Japanese prisoners is both striking and surprising. It presents a sweet, empathetic portrait of a group of women who had to be photographed under challenging circumstances to protect their identities. These photos are a humanizing point of entry into any number of broader conversations: about aging, about loneliness, about society’s role in caring for its elderly and the challenges we will increasingly face with growing elder populations. We don’t know these women, but through Shiho’s photos we understand them and their uncertain future.

Award Page (with a slide show of the winning photos) >> 

Citation for Excellence recipients: Kadir van Lohuizen and Yuri Kozyrev
Affiliation: The Washington Post, with support from Fondation Carmignac
Honored Work: “Arctic: New Frontier”

Citation Page >>

Best radio, audio or podcast coverage of international affairs

Impressive in scope, depth, and rigor, Caliphate uses an effective mix of access, story arc and analysis to tell a nuanced and complex story about ISIS: how it recruits, how it functions, how and why it could draw a young middle-class Canadian guy to travel to Syria to join the effort to create an Islamic Caliphate, and what impact it continues to have, including in the hearts and minds of those who return home. This podcast series also demystifies the reporting process, transparently showing how reporter Rukmini Callimachi and producer Andy Mills question how they know what they know, who and what they can trust, what more they need to learn and question, and what can still surprise them. This transparency was not only engaging, it earned the listener’s trust.

Award Page (with a link to the winning program) >>

Citation for Excellence recipient: Amy Martin
Affiliation: “Threshold,” with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Honored Work: “’Threshold’ Season Two: Cold Comfort”

Citation Page >>

Best TV or video spot news reporting from abroad

The VICE team brought us to a place nobody else went and found a story we had not heard. The first international news crew to film inside an apparent Iraqi execution room in the Old City of West Mosul,  VICE News Tonight on HBO presented viewers with horrific video evidence of an atrocity that raised serious questions about how the battle for Mosul was fought and who should be held accountable for the killings. Despite intimidation from Iraqi military intelligence officers and stonewalling by the top Iraqi military commander on camera, Vice’s commitment and resourcefulness in getting the story led to even more international coverage and to international human rights observers obtaining access to the site themselves.

Award Page (with link to the winning piece) >>

Citation for Excellence recipients: Nic Robertson, Nima Elbagir, Nick Paton Walsh, Waffa Munayyer and Salma Abdelaziz
Affiliation: CNN
Honored Work: “The War in Yemen”

Citation Page >>

Best TV, video or documentary interpretation of international affairs with a run time up to 30 minutes

Al Jazeera offers a heartbreaking look into lives that have been ripped apart by U.S. immigration policies. With meticulous reporting and careful treatment, the documentary tracks every step of the process, detailing the confusion, cruelty and pain, without slipping into a tone of outrage or blame. Instead, viewers are drawn into the lives of real people faced with impossible choices as they try to flee violence. The three characters linger in viewers’ minds long after the documentary has ended.

Award Page (with link o the winning piece) >> 

Citation for Excellence recipients: VICE News Tonight on HBO
Honored Work: “Rebuilding Mosul”

Citation Page >>

Best TV, video or documentary about international affairs with a run time over 30 minutes

Four years in the making, this unique film tells the exclusive story of two groups of Nigerian girls who are trying to recover from their kidnapping and years of captivity by Boko Haram. Years after the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, the filmmakers share the young women’s stories with dignity and humanity, giving voice to these previously silent survivors.

Award Page (with link to the winning piece) >> 

(No Citation of Excellence given for 2018 in this category)

Best print, digital or graphic journalism on international affairs

Patrick Chappatte’s cartoons for The New York Times were a model of the form. One, in particular, stood out: a scene inside a Saudi Arabian classroom that highlighted the changing face of that country and the dangers inherent in one particular profession – journalism. Like so much of Chappatte’s work, it economically and elegantly conveys the idea in a dynamic way—concisely and with nuance, illustrating the kinds of freedom that democracy needs and autocracy fears. It manages that feat with humor—no easy task, considering the seriousness of the topic and the gruesomeness of the event that inspired it. It is, simply, a remarkable accomplishment.

Award Page (with a slide show of winning cartoons) >>

(No Citation for Excellence in 2018)

Best magazine-style, long-form narrative feature in print or digital on an international story

“Tell the story of your village,” the Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri once said. “If you tell it well, you will have told the story of the world.” Anand Gopal is not from the war-torn Syrian village of Saraquib, but he immersed himself in the life and soul of the place during six years of brave and brilliant reporting. The result was a masterpiece. Gopal distilled the scope of the savagery and complexity of the Syrian war into a compelling, coherent narrative. He painted an unforgettable portrait of citizens who clung to their ideals amid death and devastation. Gopal’s elegant writing brought alive characters such as the accountant Osama al-Hossein, who withstood peril and suffering to lead the first election in Saraquib. This tragic yet heroic saga told an important story about a place and its people—and a larger story about humanity at its best and worst.

Award Page (with link to the winning work) >> 

(No Citation of Excellence for this award given for 2018)

Best international business news reporting in any medium

It’s no secret that authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are gaining influence around the globe. The surprise is who is helping them: American consulting firms, British public relations shops and Western political operatives all looking to make a buck. With its intrepid series “The Enablers,” The New York Times exposed how the brightest minds in the West are linked to some of the darkest deeds of strongmen and plutocrats. In exchange for multi-million dollar paydays, these fee-seekers have helped Saudi Arabia jail dissidents at home and starve civilians in Yemen. They have strengthened China’s military, helped a Russian oligarch evade U.S. sanctions and assisted South Africa’s leaders in gutting the tax agency investigating them for tax evasion—just a few examples uncovered over months of reporting that was powerful, sobering and impressive in its sweep.

Award Page (with links to winning work) >> 

Citation for Excellence recipients: Cam Simpson, Gavin Finch and Kit Chellel
Affiliation: Bloomberg
Honored Work: “The Brexit Short”

Citation Page >>

Best non-fiction book on international affairs

“No Turning Back” is an extraordinary feat of reporting—a searing account of the lives of Syrians from all sides caught up in a catastrophic war. A fluent Arabic speaker, Abouzeid draws on her years of often dangerous reporting inside the conflict zone and the deep ties she has built up with people of all political and religious persuasions. This allows her to describe and explain in detail Syria’s tragic descent from the optimism of the first peaceful democratic uprisings in 2011 to the sectarian slaughter of civilians and brutal and misguided foreign interventions. Abouzeid spares nothing in describing the appalling torture and endless mass killings of civilians by the Assad regime. But her use of personal narratives and her fluid writing never let us lose track of the humanity of the Syrians suffering on all sides.

Award Page >>

Citation for Excellence recipient: Barbie Nadeau
Affiliation: Oneworld Publications
Honored Work: Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast

Citation Page >>

Best international reporting in print or digital showing a concern for the human condition

This superbly written piece breathes new life into the timeless story of thwarted romance, taking readers into a daring young couple’s elopement in rural India and the myriad obstacles against them. The saga unfolds with a novel’s pacing and deep character development as the newlyweds fight through caste, custom, violence and exploitation in their quest for the most universal of human yearnings: love.

Award Page >>

Citation for Excellence recipients: Finlay Young, Kathleen Flynn
Affiliation: ProPublica and TIME
Honored Work: “Unprotected”

Citation Page >>

Best international reporting in the broadcast media showing a concern for the human condition

Through an intimate portrait of one family, we experience the impact on 287 million Chinese migrant workers who live apart from their families. In a country known for restrictions on the media, VICE follows a couple working in a coastal city during their 40-hour journey home to their rural village for the Lunar New Year. We are with them as they sleep upright in a packed train car and during their reunion with their excited young son and sullen 15-year-old daughter, who refuses to embrace them after a year of separation. Through words (translated) and a camera (that is often close up and sometimes undercover), we recognize the tradeoffs forced on families by economic hardships— the regret of hardworking young parents missing their children, the weariness of a grandfather doing his best to raise them, and uncomfortable silences as the family pinches dough for dumplings for a once-a-year holiday meal. While many of us knew about this massive migration, we only came to understand it through this cinematic depiction of one family living a universal story.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: Adam Ellick, Taylor Adams, Kristin Bye and Leah Varjacques
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “’It’s an Act of Murder’: How Europe Outsources Suffering as Migrants Drown”

Citation Page >>

Best international reporting in any medium dealing with human rights

In-depth reporting across continents traced the creation of a precision missile made by Raytheon in Tucson, Arizona, which was bought by the Saudi government and ultimately dropped on some innocent villagers in Yemen who had been outside celebrating a plan to dig a new well near their homes. Jeffrey Stern traced the missile from beginning to end: interviewing Raytheon workers, Human Rights Watch staff, explaining just how the Department of Defense helps U.S. corporations export deadly weapons and describing the business-as-usual tone of Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy on an earnings call with financial analysts. Stern returns to the Yemeni village where lives, bones and dreams were shattered. The forensic, thorough, diligent reporting of Stern brought home the human toll of all those actions and gave voice to people who are little-heard. With a calm sense of moral outrage, Stern shows us how the U.S. government and businesses have blood on their hands.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: Associated Press Staff
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “China Clamps Down”

Citation Page >>

Best reporting in any medium on international environmental issues

A profoundly reported work on multiple levels, “Fuel to the Fire” dissects a man-made ecological disaster: how a U.S. biofuels policy engineered mainly to serve corporate interests combined with Indonesian political corruption to devastate Southeast Asian forests and trigger a surge in carbon emissions. Abrahm Lustgarten embraces a complex issue, attacks its many dimensions head on, lucidly enlightens the reader, and offers the public a possible roadmap for action.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: Maurice Tamman, Matthew Green, Mari Saito, Sarah Slobin and Maryanne Murray
Affiliation: Reuters
Honored Work: “Ocean Shock”

Citation Page >>

Best reporting in any medium on Latin America

Venezuela is an extremely difficult country for journalist s right now. News organizations across the Americas produced gutsy, deep and harrowing coverage of Venezuela’s economic and social collapse. The Reuters’ Caracas bureau excelled in telling compelling stories of the wrenching decision taken by millions of Venezuelans to leave their country in order to survive. Also impressive was the Reuters investigation chronicling a Chinese company’s collaboration with the Maduro government on new, high-tech national ID cards that enable the regime to track citizens’ receipt of government services. Finally, the deep dive on the chaos within the country’s state-run oil company provided a road map to the country’s economic collapse. How a country that holds the world’s largest reserves of oil could be suffering a drop in oil production is one of the mysteries that confound outside observers; this Reuters analysis explains why, and makes it clear that increased military involvement in running the oil giant ties the armed forces ever closer to the Maduro administration.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: David Luhnow, Samantha Pearson, Juan Forero and Jose de Cordoba
Affiliation: The Wall Street Journal
Honored Work: “Silent Slaughter”

and

VICE News Tonight on HBO
“Walking to America”

Citation Page >>

Best story or series of stories on international affairs using creative and dynamic storytelling techniques

When 20-year-old medic Rouzan al-Najjar was killed by an Israeli bullet in Gaza last June, she instantly became a symbol of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this 5-month interactive investigation, the New York Times not only captured the complex life and death of a charismatic young woman from Gaza, but also revealed how the shot that killed her was potentially a war crime. Collecting and analyzing more than 1,000 images from the site of the killing, Times reporters partnered with the British research agency Forensic Architecture to create a 3D reconstruction of the fatal shot from six angles. Reporters made multiple trips to Gaza, visited Israeli sniper positions, analyzed ballistic evidence, and interviewed legal experts, government officials, eyewitnesses, and those who knew al-Najjar best. The resulting evidence challenged the Israel Defense Forces’ claim about the shot that killed al-Najjar, and prompted a criminal investigation. Judge Mansi Choksi, a friend and reporting partner of Kim Wall, said it was exactly “the kind of ambitious story Kim would have liked to do,” particularly because it “challenged gendered cliches about empowerment and victimization.”

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: Michelle Mizner, Katie Worth, Carla Borras, Raney Aronson and Andrew Metz
Affiliation: FRONTLINE and GroundTruth
Honored Work: “The Last Generation”

Citation Page >>

Best investigative reporting in any medium on an international story

For sheer breadth, depth of research and astonishing findings, Implant Files is in a class by itself. Reported by 350 journalists around the globe, the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Associated Press and NBC News Investigative Unit exposed deadly flaws in the global regulation of medical that have left thousands disfigured, disabled or dead. By mining buried U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records, reporters reached the shocking conclusion that during the last decade alone defective implants have caused 83,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries around the world. The investigation also showed how regulators are bowing to industry pressure to rush products to market and then covering up reports of injuries and deaths when those devices fail. Anecdotal stories have long surfaced about medical devices gone wrong. But the ICIJ-led probe showed that the failures are a systemic problem that authorities have refused to confront. The series sparked immediate pledges for reform from health authorities in North America and Europe.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation for Excellence Recipients: Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty
Affiliation: The Associated Press, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Honored Work: “Yemen’s Dirty War”

Citation Page >>

Best commentary in any medium on international news

Trudy Rubin had a splendid year, the latest in a run that deserves a lifetime achievement award. (And the Inquirer should get one for keeping a first-rate foreign affairs columnist on the staff when so many dailies have retrenched.) Rubin writes in clear, plain English informed by a career of travel, deep curiosity and calm analysis. In 2018 she was an excellent guide to the rising tide of populism and the lurches of the America-first president. As one juror put it, “Anyone who reads her regularly cannot help but have a clear and thoughtful understanding of the wider world.”

Award Page (with links to work) >>

(No Citation for Excellence)

Best newspaper, news service or digital reporting from abroad

In a series of powerful and unforgettable stories, rich with detail and dogged reporting, a team of Associated Press journalists documented the horrific crimes unfolding against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. The AP brought together an impressive talent pool with different skills, from investigative reporter to narrative writer and local insight, to take readers to the front lines of this conflict. The stories exemplified foreign correspondence at its best: exposing and chronicling human rights violations, putting a human face on conflict and providing a road map for future investigations into what world powers are calling genocide. Simply put, it was an incredible package that you want to urge everyone to read.

Awards Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation Recipients: Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall, Manuel Mogato and Reuters team
Affiliation: Reuters
Honored Work: “Duterte’s War”

Citation Page >>

Best newspaper, news service or digital interpretation of international affairs

No story captured world attention in 2017 like North Korea’s claim to have developed a nuclear-armed intercontinental missile capable of unleashing a once-unthinkable war. Of the multiple media projects that explored and analyzed Kim Jong-un’s objectives, The New York Times most effectively harnessed the expertise of its correspondents around the world. Their stories explained the failed Western strategies for containing Kim, looked beyond the cartoonish portrayals of the determined young leader and detailed his success in circumventing sanctions to bankroll “parallel advance”—the loosening of constraints on private enterprise that both improved North Korea’s economy and helped Kim realize his dream of turning his nation into a nuclear power.

Award Page (with links to stories) >>

Citation Recipient: Borzou Daragahi
Affiliation: BuzzFeed
Honored Work: “Iran and the US at a Crossroads”

Citation Page >>

Best published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise

Guzy’s entry offered an intimate and unconventional perspective of a civilian population ravaged by war. Carol trained her camera on the most vulnerable inhabitants of Mosul’s civilian population amid the Iraqi Army’s fierce battle to tear the city from the grasp of the Islamic State. She stepped outside the bounds of covering a hostile story and offered an intimate, sensitive and haunting coverage of the innocents we often do not see reflected in images from amid the gore of wartime.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Ivor Prickett
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “What ISIS Left Behind”

Citation Page >>

Best photographic reporting from abroad in any medium

Covering one of the biggest stories of the year, the photojournalists endured clouds of tear gas, petrol bombs, water cannons and live ammunition while attempting to portray the volatile economic and political turmoil in Venezuela. The images show unprecedented scenes of a once prosperous nation unraveling into chaos. The entry, condensed to twelve dizzying images, showcased one of the most visually hostile stories of the year. The potent and strikingly violent images invoked an auditory response from the jury as they rolled across the screen.

Click here to see winning photos >>

Citation Recipient: Mohammad Ponir Hossain, Danish Siddiqui, Hannah McKay, Damir Sagolj and Cathal McNaughton
Affiliation: Reuters
Honored Work: “Rohingya Flee Violence in Myanmar”

Citation Page >>

Best feature photography published in any medium on an international theme

One of the most comprehensive picture packages of the year, Kevin Frayer’s images documented the Rohingyas’ grueling and deadly exodus from Myanmar. Frayer’s images struck the jury with their haunting beauty, sophistication and breadth. Amid the chaos, his images managed to convey a strong warmth and sympathy for his subjects and their struggle.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipient: Meridith Kohut
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “As Venezuela Collapses, Children are Dying of Hunger”

Citation Page >>

Best radio, audio or podcast news or interpretation of international affairs

At the heart of good journalism is an honest reckoning with how we know what we know, and what more we need to know. Such was the case with the NPR podcast Rough Translations’ episode: “The Congo We Listen To.” It featured Laura Heaton, a freelance reporter who decided to revisit the 2010 story of mass rape by militia groups in a Congolese village, wanting to know whether that brief period of saturated international media attention had a lasting impact on the village and its women. What she found was that the real story was different from what had been reported, and she worked to find out why village women had chosen to hide the full story. Heaton, with Rough Translation host Gregory Warner, produced a complex and compelling tale about what stories are told, what stories are hidden, and how journalists with good instincts, time and patience, can find a much richer story by listening for what hasn’t been said.

Hear the award-winning work: “The Congo We Listen To,” an episode of the Rough Translation podcast

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Marlon Bishop, Maria Hinojosa, Nadia Reiman and Stephanie Lebow
Affiliation: Latino USA
Honored Work: “A Border Drawn in Blood”

Citation Page >>

Best TV or video spot news reporting from abroad

CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh and Arwa Damon brought viewers directly into the final fight to push the ISIS terrorists out of their strongholds in Iraq and Syria while at the same time revealing its terrible human cost. Paton Walsh and his team witnessed the fight for the Al-Nuri mosque in Mosul and the closing hours of the battle when ISIS fighters emerged from the ruins and gave themselves up. Damon’s reporting and particularly poignant narrative on the dead and injured is so strong it is hard to watch. An Arabic speaker, Arwa encouraged survivors of a U.S. bombing that killed over 100 people in Mosul to talk about the agony and death that surrounded them. Judges felt the complementary stories by Paton Walsh and Damon were extraordinary examples of the psychological cost to the victims of prolonged ISIS rule and the fighting that brought it to an end.

Award Page >>

Watch a sample of work from “Fall of ISIS” >>

Citation Recipients: Ian Pannell, Matt McGarry, Rym Momtaz, Nicky DeBlois and Jenna Millman
Affiliation: ABC News
Honored Work: “The War Against ISIS”

Citation Page >>

Best TV, video or documentary interpretation of international affairs less than one hour

The world has been riveted in horror by the brutality of ISIS and the long, bloody campaign to defeat it in Syria and Iraq. The climactic showdown was the 9-month-long battle of Mosul. In Mosul, filmmaker Olivier Sarbil follows a squad of Iraqi Special Forces as they fight their way house by house through Mosul. His documentary stands out for the way it connects viewers with the characters of four Iraqi soldiers, putting human faces on an inhuman conflict. Sarbil shows how the mostly Sunni civilians fear the predominantly Shiite Iraqi soldiers, who in turn are wary of ISIS fighters trying to hide among the civilians they meet – this is the fundamental root of the conflict. We hear the crunch of broken glass under the soldiers’ boots as they approach a doorway, the whispered warning not to move a curtain which could give away their position, the boom of a car bomb that kills one of their comrades. This is the ugly, unpredictable but relentless face of war, seen from up very close through Sarbil’s lens—and clearly at substantial risk to himself.

Award Page >>

Watch “Mosul” >>

Citation Recipients: Steve Kroft, Draggan Mihailovich, Laura Dodd and Matthew Lev
Affiliation: CBS 60 Minutes
Honored Work: “Isle of Eigg”

Citation Page >>

Best TV, video or documentary about international affairs one hour or longer

This remarkable documentary, “Cries from Syria”, serves as an important contribution to the reporting on the Syrian crisis, one of the most challenging conflicts for foreign journalists to cover. By combining footage shot by activists and ordinary citizens with interviews with Syrians who have survived the war, the film masterfully captures a story that is both personal and comprehensive. The filmmaker sheds light on the human toll of the Syrian conflict and highlights the extent of the Syrian government’s war crimes against its own people. It is a film that not only informs and raises awareness of the ongoing war but also memorializes the Syrians who were on the front lines of the conflict.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser, Jim Gilmore, Philip Bennett, David E. Hoffman and Raney Aronson-Rath
Affiliation: PBS FRONTLINE
Honored Work: “Putin’s Revenge”

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Best magazine reporting in print or digital on an international story

Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal spent almost two years visiting about 150 bomb sites in northern Iraq, often at great personal risk, for this powerful story that showed civilian casualties caused by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes were considerably higher than previously reported. With acompelling main character in Bassim Razzo, whose home and family in Mosul were obliterated, indefatigable sleuthing by Khan and Gopal that challenged U.S. statistics, and an impressive use of photography and videography, “The Uncounted” provided a horrifying accounting of the true cost of America’s war.

Read the award-winning work: The Uncounted

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Ben Mauk, Laura Kasinof, George Butler and Diana Markosian
Affiliation: Virginia Quarterly Review/Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Honored Work: “Paths to Refuge”

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Best cartoons on international affairs

Clay Bennett’s deceptively simple cartoons, often without captions, drive home strong, perceptive messages on topics ranging from global warming, immigration, North Korea’s nuclear program and Vladimir Putin, to Donald Trump’s handling of complex foreign policy issues. Clever ideas and an engaging style make for a memorable portfolio.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Kevin Kallaugher
Affiliation: The Economist

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Best magazine international business news reporting in print or digital

Puerto Rico lives in a limbo. As a territory of the United States, its people have American citizenship. But lacking statehood, the island lacks clout in Washington, as became tragically evident in 2017, when a hurricane devastated the island-and Puerto Ricans were largely left to their own devices. Monte Reel’s engagingly written account of the aftermath, “How to Rebuild Puerto Rico,” is a sweeping, moving and financially literate account of Puerto Ricans’ struggle to recover. Refusing to bow to cynicism and commending the islanders’ grit, Reel nevertheless realistically examines the obstacles, in Washington and home-grown, to not only recovery but also to a lasting prosperity for this perennially troubled land.

Read “How to Rebuild Puerto Rico”

Award Page >>

(No Citation)

Best international business news reporting in newspapers, news services or digital

In industry after industry companies with big lobbying budgets have managed to control and even dictate regulations without being seen. In “The Phillip Morris Files”, a team of Reuters’ reporters takes us inside that world: the behind-the-scenes maneuvering; the strategic targeting of weakest government links; and the congratulatory high-fiving when the mission is accomplished. This eyeopening series shows just how sophisticated and determined the tobacco industry has been in fighting anti-tobacco forces in government and at international agencies. The team of reporters took powerful leaked documents, followed it up with shoe-leather reporting, and brought home a series with impact.

Read the award-winning work: The Philip Morris Files

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Lauren Etter, Benjamin Elgin, Sarah Frier and Michael Riley
Affiliation: Bloomberg News
Honored Work: “Facebook and the Assault on Democracy”

Citation Page >>

Best non-fiction book on international affairs

American journalist Suzy Hansen moved to Istanbul to better understand the Muslim world. Her highly insightful and engaging book weaves her own background—white, small-town America, elite college—with an awakening on why the U.S. is often hated overseas amid decades of American intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. She takes aim in particular at how the abiding myth of “American exceptionalism” has blinded American policymakers, journalists and citizens to an often sordid reality. Hansen has produced a sweeping and powerful corrective to the way
most Americans view U.S. foreign policy of the past 70 years.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipient: Joshua Kurlantzick
Affiliation: Simon & Schuster
Honored Work: A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA

Citation Page >>

Best international reporting in print or digital showing a concern for the human condition

AP reporters covering the collapse of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate struck the right balance between aggressive reporting and sensitive writing on the horrors endured by Mosul residents. The result is gripping, timely coverage that evoked ghastly images, but also showed the determination of ordinary Iraqis to retain their dignity and humanity in the worst of circumstances. Overall, a sophisticated package of stories that illuminate a human condition the world should not ignore.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipients: Cynthia Gorney, Amy Toensing and Kathryn Carlson
Affiliation: National Geographic
Honored Work: “Life After Loss”

Citation Page >>

Best international reporting in the broadcast media showing a concern for the human condition

“The Kill List” is a personal and riveting behind-the-scenes insight into the Philippines drug war as seen through the eyes of people involved. The viewer is taken on a journey by hunters and the hunted. The quest by the police to rid the streets of drug users results in the hunted left lifeless. We are taken inside a morgue where a young man is asked to identify a body. He pulls back the sheet and sees the corpse of his father. The moment is raw and emotional. Visible are the bullet wounds and the cuff marks on his wrists. Ed Ou’s spell-binding camerawork is strikingly powerful. Kudos to the video team for taking a back seat and letting the characters and the visuals own this powerful story.

Award Page >>

Citation Recipient: Jordan Kronick, David Scott, Fernando Villegas and Daniel Litke
Affiliation: HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel
Honored Work: “The Strongman—Ramzan Kadyrov”

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Best international reporting in any medium dealing with human rights

In a year filled with horrific violence in many parts of the world, the war in Yemen did not get the attention it deserved. The AP series on the secret torture taking place fills out much of what was unknown about the war in Yemen led by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. Maggie Michael took great personal risks, with her video colleague, driver and fixers, to tell the story of the 18 secret prisons in Yemen where detainees are tortured by men from the UAE. Chillingly, eyewitness reported seeing Americans in U.S. Military uniform assisting with interrogations. Michael also documented other effects of the proxy war waged in Yemen including malnourished children and economic pressures that result in more childhood marriages as families seek to offload their daughters. Michael and her team documented all of this and more in a chilling package that included charts, video and compelling graphics. The response was immediate and included calls by U.S. senators and the government of Yemen for an investigation.

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Citation Recipients: Dionne Searcey and Sarah Topol
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “Hell’s Children”

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Best reporting in any medium on international environmental issues

This illuminating four-part radio documentary is the result of six months of exhaustive reporting, in which Evans-Brown and McCarthy explore the consequences of a Massachusetts decision to cut carbon emissions by 25%. Their investigation takes them into remote native communities in northern Quebec, where livelihoods have been devastated by giant hydropower projects. Hours of audio include interviews in indigenous languages, decades of history, dissection of Canadian government documents, and the sounds of rushing rivers that immerse listeners in a real sense of discovery. The judges especially liked the team’s ambition, as well as its conclusion that no energy source, no matter how clean, is free of victims—a fact that is too often lost in the coverage of climate change.

Award-Winning Work: “Outside/In” podcast

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Citation Recipients: Douglas Fox, Laurent Ballesta and Camille Seaman
Affiliation: National Geographic
Honored Work: “Crisis on the Ice” and “Under Antarctica”

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Best reporting in any medium on Latin America

Through rigorous investigation and compelling writing, Richard Marosi of the Los Angeles Times exposed the origins of a $100 billion scandal that has littered Mexico with shoddy housing projects and the broken aspirations of millions of would-be homeowners. Conceived at the turn of the century as a public-private initiative to build affordable suburbs across the country, the program raised billions from global investors and sparked the largest residential construction boom in Latin America. But instead of lifting up working-class families, the Times found, the program set off a “slow-motion social and financial catastrophe.” Drawing on documents, interviews and inspection of 50 developments from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico, Marosi chronicled how corruption, poor planning and impunity trapped thousands of Mexicans in unhealthy, sub-standard housing many could not afford. The Times series skillfully explored themes of poverty, inequality, corruption and accountability. It is a powerful example of investigative reporting and lucid writing arrayed against a major public issue hiding in plain sight.

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Citation Recipient: Almudena Toral, Maye Primera, Oscar Martinez and Carlos Martinez
Affiliation: Univision News Digital/El Faro
Honored Work: “From Migrants to Refugees: The New Plight of Central Americans”
(Judge Carlos Dada recused himself from the citation selection.)

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Best story or series of stories on international affairs using digital storytelling techniques

What does it feel like to be occupied in 2017? To answer this question, The Washington Post produced an intimate, immersive series that transports readers into the worlds of three Palestinians: an everyman construction worker; a matriarch in the final stages of cancer, and an idealistic tycoon striving to build a model city amidst turmoil. Fusing powerful writing, photos, maps and raw footage, “Occupied” captures the slow grind of thousands of men inching through a single checkpoint, and what it means to seek cancer treatment in an area where only 16 oncologists serve a population of more than 4 million. In doing so, journalists William Booth, Sufian Taha and Linda Davidson bring to life the continued human costs of Israel’s military occupation that has now lasted 50 years.

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Citation Recipients: Aryn Baker, Lynsey Addario and Francesca Trianni
Affiliation: TIME, supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Merck for Mothers
Honored Work: “Finding Home”

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Best investigative reporting in any medium on an international story

Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines in 2016 on a promise to eradicate the scourge of drugs. Since then, his police forces have pursued that aim with a bloody vengeance, killing more than 9,000 people. The government has described the raids as legitimate law enforcement operations. In the series “Duterte’s War,” Reuters reporters Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall demolish that defense. Reuters dispatched Baldwin and Marshall to train a microscope on the mayhem. Aided by Manuel Mogato, they combed through law enforcement’s own records to pinpoint operations and identify the officers who conducted them. They examined video surveillance, interviewed scores of witnesses, debriefed emergency room physicians, reviewed leaked documents and obtained crucial testimony from senior police commanders themselves. Their exhaustive, meticulous reporting exposes the scope of the state’s role in the slaughter of its own citizens, making the unanswerable case that the Philippine police have been acting as death squads and using a variety of ruses to cover their tracks.

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Citation Recipient: Iona Craig

Affiliation: The Intercept

Honored Work: “Death in Al Ghayil: Women and Children in Yemeni Village Recall Horror of Trump’s ‘Highly Successful’ SEAL Raid”

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Best commentary in any medium on international news

In an outstanding field of deeply reported and intelligent entries, Gideon Rachman’s range of subjects, reported insight and refreshing opinions was the most impressive. He was particularly forceful on the rising tide of nationalism facing Europe and the U.S. One reader summed it up this way: “A tour de force on the political challenges of our age by Gideon Rachman, possibly the best world affairs writer of the day.”

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(No citation.)

In insightful, enduring, and richly detailed reports, Dreier chronicled the unraveling of a nation. Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis is not the story of a people overlooked by progress; it is the story of a once-prosperous society, with the largest oil reserves in the world, driven by its leaders to the brink of starvation. Dreier bore witness to a collapse of middle-class life — food riots, collapsing health care, the dawn of mob justice –and then unearthed its origins, a combination of mismanagement, political delusion and corruption. Throughout, she also exposed a less visible realm of ruin: the loss of empathy among neighbors, the corrosion of the soul. Her efforts had consequences. U.S. senators called for sanctions against corrupt officials. Readers donated money to pay for a child’s medical treatments. At the same time, she received threats from Venezuelan intelligence officers and government supporters. Hannah Dreier’s brave and revealing reporting exemplifies the legacy of Hal Boyle and the best of foreign correspondence. It is not only a rendering of recent history but also a warning for the future.

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Citation Recipients: Ben Hubbard, Mark Mazzetti, Carlotta Gall, Scott Shane and Nicholas Kulish
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “Secrets of the Kingdom”
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In “Beyond the Firewall,” Washington Post reporters confronted a subject of vast dimensions and epic implications: the Internet in China. The idea of the Internet as an inherently democratizing force for good has run up against the reality of China’s campaign to censor in cyberspace. The team took readers into the fascinating and bizarre world behind the “Great Firewall.” They explained how the authoritarian regime in Beijing has utilized social media and web usage to create an Orwellian surveillance tool, the “social credit rating,” to punish and reward every citizen. They interviewed dissidents who test the boundaries of an implacable crackdown that has succeeded in blocking tens of thousands of websites, yet tolerates certain loopholes for a globally connected minority. The series was smart, vivid and effective, bringing alive a difficult subject. It explored a frontier where geopolitics and technology converge, presenting counter-intuitive questions about how governments manage ever-sprawling societies that have the potential to affect vast numbers of people, far beyond China and far into the future.

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Citation Recipients: Tom Burgis, Pilitia Clark, Michael Peel, Charlie Bibby and Kari-Ruth Pedersen

Affiliation: Financial Times
Honored Work: “The Great Land Rush”

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Bryan Denton and Sergey Ponomarev showed exceptional courage, advancing with Iraqi Special Forces and Kurdish fighters into Islamic State-occupied areas, and they captured intimate views into the lives of those affected by war. The images were artful as well as powerfully journalistic.

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Citation Recipient: Goran Tomasevic, Zohra Bensemra, Mohammed Salem and Ahmed Jadallah
Affiliation: Reuters
Honored Work: “Battle for Mosul”
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Daniel Berehulak’s riveting photographs captured, intimately and in depth, the lives and deaths of those affected by the Philippine drug war. It was visual story telling at its best: images that one judge described as a “journey through hell.” The work also brought wide attention to a story that had been largely overlooked.

Click here to see winning photos >>
Citation Year: 2016
Citation Recipient: Aris Messinis
Affiliation: Agence France Presse
Honored Work: “Desperate Journey”

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Meridith Kohut’s moving images brought attention to the plight of people in Venezuela’s state-run psychiatric hospitals, places that have been all but forgotten in that country’s disintegration. The stark, powerful photographs from inside the halls of those institutions grimly cast a light on endemic suffering and malnourishment.

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Citation Year: 2016
Citation Recipient: Tomas Munita
Affiliation: The New York Times
Honored Work: “Cuba on the Edge of Change”
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What causes people to change their minds, their beliefs, their view of the forces shaping their lives? These four powerful and nuanced stories describe such pivotal moments for people living in the middle of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Emily Harris introduces us to a Palestinian man whose empathy transforms him from revenge seeker to peace activist. Then we meet a Palestinian woman, long involved in peace activism, who becomes alienated from the process and from her former Israeli friends. An Israeli woman changes from settlement opponent to West Bank settler. And a former Israeli soldier, once a proud defender of the nation, suddenly sees himself as “occupier” when he smiles at a young Palestinian girl and catches her look of fear in response. These profound transformations, pulling in different directions, deftly remind listeners of the many facets of this conflict, and they presage the challenges of finding a lasting peace.

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Citation Recipient: Jasmine Garsd
Affiliation: PRI’s The World
Honored Work: “Women of Colombia’s War”
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In a year marked by brave and courageous reporting, Clarissa Ward and her team at CNN stood out for the incredible risk they took to bring their stories from Syria to light. The images, editing, and writing brought jarring resonance to a critical story. With poignant interviews, CNN’s team told difficult stories without resorting to hype. It didn’t just address the what, but the why, including why doctors don’t leave and the implications for institutions under direct attack. This report exemplified international television reporting at its finest.

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Citation Recipient: Morgan Till, Jane Ferguson, Jane Arraf, Jon Gerberg and Sara Just
Affiliation: PBS NewsHour/Pulitzer Center
Honored Work: “The Fight for Iraq”

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This documentary transported the life-and-death war for women’s rights in Afghanistan right into American living rooms. In a crystal-clear story about an all-girls school northeast of Kabul, the PBS team brilliantly illuminated the lives of the girls, their families and the courageous teachers and administrators striving to survive constant cultural, economic and political challenges.

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Citation Recipient: Morgan Till, Jane Ferguson, Jane Arraf, Jon Gerberg and Sara Just
Affiliation: PBS NewsHour/Pulitzer Center
Honored Work: “The Fight for Iraq”
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HBO’s documentary, the first recipient in this new OPC category, exemplified the core values of Peter Jennings’ reporting: commitment to covering international stories, unflinching dedication to the craft of journalism, consistent inquiry to uncover all aspects of a story, and the courage to follow the story no matter the consequences. “The Lord of the Rings” was an ambitious, unique and riveting expose that explained the painful human and environmental cost of the Olympic Games and the unethical practices of its organizing body, the International Olympics Committee, the wealthiest sports organization in the world. Reported over two years from nine countries with four correspondents, the 75-minute long program aired on the eve of the 2016 Rio Games and revealed that the IOC pursues wealth, privilege and glory for its members at a staggering cost to people around the world. This complex and disturbing story shed new light on the IOC and uncovered graft and corruption at a great cost to human rights and dignity at the Olympic Games.
 

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Best magazine reporting in print or digital on an international story

AWARD DATE: 2016

AWARD NAME: 10 The Ed Cunningham Award

AWARD RECIPIENT: Anand Gopal

AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: The Atlantic

AWARD HONORED WORK: “The Hell After ISIS”

AWARD SPONSOR: Ford Motor Company

Anand Gopal’s “The Hell After ISIS” is a beautifully written account of the consequences of war. His narrative, based on 13 months of reporting, recounts the suffering of one Sunni family in Iraq, fleeing ISIS jihadists only to fall prey to unforgiving Shia militias. Gopal was detained and expelled from Iraq, but managed to return to complete this compelling narrative that sheds light on both the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.

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Citation Recipient: Scott Anderson
Affiliation: The New York Times Magazine
Honored Work: “Fractured Lands”
 
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Steve Sack successfully harnessed all the cartoonist’s tools – caricature, composition, biting wit and solid journalism – in his impressive portfolio. Visually engaging and often smile-inducing, Sack covered a wide variety of subjects, from the erosion of coral reefs to the suffering of Syrian civilians, with skill, style and aplomb.

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Citation Year: 2016
Citation Recipient: Adam Zyglis
Affiliation: The Buffalo News
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Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel’s engaging piece about a multi-billion-dollar deal between Goldman Sachs and Qaddafi’s Libya was a feat of storytelling. The careful and vivid selection of details — a banned novel resting on the table, a late-night call to a prostitute in Dubai, the long wait for an elevator in Tripoli — brought a cinematic quality to the writing. The reporting was equally impressive. The story, drawn from court documents and interviews, created three-dimensional characters and offered readers a rare glimpse into how secretive financial deals are sealed. It was a thrilling collision between two of the biggest news themes of the past decade — the financial crisis of 2008 and an autocracy on its last legs before the Arab Spring.

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Citation Year: 2016
Citation Recipient: Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley and Andrew Willis
Affiliation: Bloomberg Businessweek
Honored Work: “How to Hack an Election”

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Using documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm, this highly innovative global coalition of news organizations shocked the world with detailed accounts of how political and business elites, arms dealers and others hid their wealth in secretive webs of more than 200,000 offshore banking entities. More than 400 journalists from nearly 80 countries took part in the remarkably complex project. The sheer scale of the project, lasting over a period of years, surpassed the best efforts of any single news organization.

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Citation Recipient: Rob Barry, Christopher S. Stewart, Mark Maremont, Margaret Coker and Benoit Faucon
Affiliation: The Wall Street Journal
Honored Work: “Accounting For Terror”
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Grippingly told and brimming with brilliant insights, “The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War” explained the past 60 years of Russia’s turbulent political development. Arkady Ostrovsky, a veteran Russian-born journalist who has been on the scene at historical events, immersed himself in years of Russian newspapers and TV programming, and conducted candid interviews with dozens of Russia’s leading politicians, oligarchs and media kingmakers. The result was a fascinating and compelling insider account of how power has been won and lost among Russia’s ruling elite. Ostrovsky highlighted the outsized influence of the Russian media, from the pioneering newspaper Kommersant to the national TV networks and their often amoral news anchors. In one chilling anecdote, political reformer Boris Nemstov visits the office of Russia’s newly elected president, Vladimir Putin, and sees nothing on Putin’s desk except a TV remote control. Putin would soon establish complete power over Russian media; years later, Nemstov would be assassinated.

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Citation Year: 2016
Citation Recipient: Robert F. Worth
Affiliation: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Honored Work: “A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS”

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Robyn Dixon’s vivid dispatches from Nigeria and South Sudan read like novellas, with strong central characters presented not in archetype but in all their complex humanity as they struggle against corruption, terrorism and civil war. Thorough, revelatory news reporting undergirded these tales, but Dixon kept the focus on ordinary people in unimaginable circumstances: a big-hearted father of 25, a driving teacher on perilous roads, a teenage girl traded for cattle. The lyrical storytelling offered a fresh look at African lives that have slipped from view as U.S. news outlets shrink foreign coverage. A concern for the human condition was embedded in Dixon’s journalism — her subjects are survivors, and their capacity for resilience lingered with the reader. Dixon’s work was a master class in foreign reporting that preserves the dignity and voices of the people who trust us with their stories.

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Citation Recipient: Kathy Gannon
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “Honor Bound”

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This was a captivating piece of documentary-making. While there have been many stories on the Syrian refugee crisis, PBS produced a lovely, layered story of tragedy and hope that added context to the migrant story. The team perfectly captured the emotion of a family dealing with war and its effects. The focus switched from person to person seamlessly, building rich pictures of each family member. When the family arrives in Germany, each member is seen coping in different ways with their new lives. The eldest daughter makes German friends, shedding her hijab for lipstick and for the first time in her life feeling free. Her mother, however, seems adrift without her husband of 21 years, lonely and confused in a strange country. The cinematography was first rate.

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Citation Recipient: James Blumeil, Dan Edge, Andrew Metz and Raney Aronson
Affiliation: PBS Frontline
Honored Work: “Exodus”

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AP’s “Savage Legacy” series was a powerful reminder of the role that the basic business of journalism – getting the facts – still plays in the battle against human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The series also underlined how the reach of a global news agency can tell a story that goes beyond one country or region, showing the patterns that reflect systematized atrocities. The series is also a testament to the spirit and endurance of public service journalism. While officials were slow to document the deaths and destruction of the Islamic State, AP reporters, often at great personal risk, took an active role collecting evidence of the tragedies and despair. The AP documented the existence of 72 mass graves and the destruction of cultural and religious sites by corroborating survivor testimony with satellite imagery, on the ground reporting and reports from local rights groups. The result was a series of stories that established not just the terrible facts, but gave voice to the survivors of atrocities, implicitly challenging the international community to ensure that the perpetrators are eventually held to account.

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Citation Recipient: Rachel Nolan
Affiliation: Harpers
Honored Work: “Innocents: Where Pregnant Women Have More to Fear than Zika”

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In a raw and unique tale from the Central African Republic, Woods described in vivid detail how three 20-somethings run the remote, 38,000-square-mile Chinko wildlife preserve. In his lone, intrepid journey, Woods captured the chilling terror and life-threatening peril the small team endures in the course of their work, including how they stave off murderous gunmen and spend months in an overcrowded jail. All this in order to keep alive one of Africa’s most pristine habitats, with herds of elephant, antelope, rhinos and a multitude of other animals. The story, written with sensitivity and attentiveness, cast a light on the grueling, back-breaking effort needed to protect wildlife in a country with no resources, rampant corruption, and brutal horrors.

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The PBS NewsHour team took on a difficult and at times dangerous assignment about a complex issue and succeeded in obtaining unique access to produce a series of reports that enlightened and informed. The reporting reflected courage, nuance, big-picture analysis and observed details. At the core of this team were two independent journalists who dedicated themselves to being on the ground to cover the story. They teamed up with a prestigious national news organization that allowed them to produce a powerful body of work that reached a wide audience on television and online. It was a partnership that represented the very best of international news in the digital age.

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Citation Recipient: Jon Lee Anderson
Affiliation: The New Yorker
Honored Work: “The Distant Shore”

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In a category dominated by the global refugee crisis, “The 21^st Century Gold Rush” charted fresh territory in a well-traversed international issue by digging deeply into those who have profited from the refugee crisis. Spanning four countries, with characters from warlords to sex slaves, Huffington Post reporters Malia Politzer and Emily Kassie worked tirelessly to uncover a hidden side of the economics of global migration, and told it through powerful digital storytelling. Integrating text, photography, ambient video, documentary video and animations, the story was a seamless and searing window into a dangerous ecosystem that is only just coming to light.

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Citation Recipient: Evan Ratliff
Affiliation: The Atavist Magazine
Honored Work: “The Mastermind”

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The war in Syria has generated headlines around the world, many of them focusing on atrocities committed by the militant group, Islamic State. Less understood is the saga of torture and murder going on in every corner of the Syrian government’s security and intelligence apparatus. In an exhaustively detailed account, Ben Taub of The New Yorker laid bare the horrific campaign to stamp out opposition, sanctioned by top levels of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Based on a heroic international effort to gather documentation of these war crimes, Taub’s account took the more than 600,000 photos, internal memos and witness statements collected thus far and wove a powerful and heartbreaking story of a government waging war on its own citizens. Taub spent months poring through the war crimes files to collect evidence of at least 11,000 victims mutilated, cut, burned, shot, beaten and strangled by the powerful apparatus of the Syrian state. His meticulous review of the documents was supplemented by his own unforgettable interviews with one of the regime’s torture victims, and the dramatic saga of the war crimes investigators themselves — lending a powerful humanity to the document dive. The result was a piece that deployed the best traditions of investigative journalism to achieve a chilling and unforgettable narrative that truly holds power to account.

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Citation Recipient: Chris Hamby
Affiliation: BuzzFeed News
Honored Work: “Secrets of a Global Super Court”

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If ever a year summoned commentators to think outside the conventional boundaries, it was 2016. The world’s last superpower elected an impetuous, self-absorbed reality TV star to be its commander in chief. His campaign evidently was assisted – in what measure we still don’t know – by a Russia that remains a virtual dictatorship. It was a year made for Masha Gessen. In essays written for The New York Review of Books, the Russian-born journalist and author brilliantly deconstructed the Trump-Putin relationship, confronted unquestioned assumptions about how power works, and described a profound crisis of democracy. Some of her dark forecasts (a stock market crash if Trump won) have not come true (yet), but there is much she got right, not least the ascent of Trump. “It’s time to force ourselves to imagine the unimaginable…Trump being elected president.” That was in July. Whether or not you shared her deep pessimism about a Trump presidency, she made you think.

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Citation Recipient: Trudy Rubin
Affiliation: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Honored Work: “Columns from hots spots and home on US foreign policy challenges of the new era”

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In a series of powerful, touching and scrupulously reported stories and videos, a team of Associated Press reporters exposed an ugly truth behind much of the inexpensive seafood on our tables—it is produced by people held captive for years and even decades in Thailand’s seafood industry. The use of slaves to fish for seafood in some parts of the world was widely suspected. But the AP team doggedly located and interviewed captive slaves and followed specific loads of slave-caught seafood to supply chains of particular brands and stores. The effort resulted in the freeing of more than 2,000 slaves, the jailing of a dozen people, the shuttering of businesses and the seizing of ships worth millions of dollars. It spawned calls for action and promises of reform from some of the world’s largest food retailers. The series exemplified foreign correspondence at its best: bearing witness, uncovering the truth and making a difference in people’s lives.

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Citation Recipients: Patrick McDonnell, Christopher Goffard, Laura King, Kate Linthicum and Henry Chu
Affiliation: Los Angeles Times
Honored Work: “Fleeing Syria”
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This expose of how China has created a secret, national broadcast network within the United States is fresh, original and a significant contribution to an increasingly important subject. Time and again the reporters’ questions took even the interviewees by surprise. The in-depth investigative reporting had impact by bringing a previously hidden operation to light, using a crisp, clear, well-edited and well-written style.

Read “The Long Arm of China” >>

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Citation Recipient: The Washington Post Staff
Affiliation: The Washington Post
Honored Work: “Confronting the Caliphate”
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Bassam Khabieh’s images put into perspective the tremendous danger and difficulty of being a photojournalist in current-day Syria, and they shine a spotlight on the exodus from the region. Further setting this entry apart from the others was the courage and enterprise required not only to cover but live day in and day out in one of the most hostile and unpredictable environments on the planet.

“Field Hospital Damascus” Slideshow >>

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Citation Recipient: Jerome Delay
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “Burundi Unrest”
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The overall body of work is extremely compelling, and the quality and presentation of the book are impressive. Stephen Dupont offers historical context that could only come from a commitment and dedication to documenting life in a war-torn nation for nearly two decades.

Slideshow >>

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Citation Recipient: David Guttenfelder
Affiliation: National Geographic Magazine
Honored Work: “Damming the Mekong: Harnessing a River or Killing It”
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This series of images on the migrant crisis contains strong elements of emotion and conflict, and offers engaging variety. As a package, the images are not only beautifully shot and edited but tell the broad story of the plight of the migrants and what they endured crossing border after border in hopes of a better life.

Slideshow >>

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Citation Recipient: Santi Palacios
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “Coming Ashore”
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These images convey grief, humanity and the scale of the tragedy. The photographer was able to tell the story from different perspectives and get close enough to connect readers with his subjects and communicate their emotions and loss.

Slideshow >>

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Citation Recipient: Mario Tama
Affiliation: Getty Images
Honored Work: “Brazil’s Afflictive Prison System”
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Radio Lab’s Molly Webster and her team took a fascinating story about a gay Israeli couple on a quest to contract for a surrogate baby and turned it into a human, complex and surprising international tale of intolerance, economics and—ultimately—love. They followed the story to Turkey and Nepal, where they discovered a cottage industry of Indian surrogate mothers carrying babies conceived with East European eggs and Israeli sperm. The story showed how cultures cross-fertilize, brought together by different needs and sometimes to each others’ symbiotic benefit. It had no easy answers and challenged listeners’ assumptions about exploitation, risks and benefits of the most intimate—and ethically challenging—of industries.

Listen to “Birthstory” >>

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Working in a medium relatively new to the organization, journalists at The New York Times conveyed the terror, confusion and pain of the Paris terror attack almost contemporaneously by simply allowing eyewitnesses and victims to tell their stories, in their own words. The fact that these narrated accounts were spoken in French (and subtitled) did not detract at all from their power—a testament to the strength of this approach. Sensitive photography and lighting and effective use of ambient sound highlighted the stakes of the narration. The Times also judiciously used music, graphics and B-roll to highlight the reporting without overwhelming it. Especially noteworthy was the piece “An Improbable Survivor.” During the live coverage of the attacks, much of the world had been transfixed by the image of a man dangling outside a window at the Bataclan Concert Hall. The Times tracked him down and told his story.

Watch the Times video coverage of the Paris attacks >>

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Citation Recipient: Charlie D’Agata, Heather Abbott, Erin Lyall and Lynne Edwards
Affiliation: CBS News
Honored Work: “Desperate Journey: Europe’s Migrant Crisis”
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The growing global threat of ISIS, a defining story of 2015, was further revealed by this chilling FRONTLINE documentary tracking a correspondent to a remote Afghan village to see how ISIS is brutally displacing the Taliban. Najibullah Quraishi’s courageous reporting shows how ISIS offers recruits $700 a month as they outbid the Taliban and gives a glimpse of ISIS education: tutorials in beheading, grenade tossing and death chants to the United States and Israel.

Watch “ISIS in Afghanistan” >>

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Citation Recipient: David Scott and Chapman Downes
Affiliation: HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel
Honored Work: “The Killing Fields: The Plight of the African Elephant”
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Through dozens of interviews and forensic detail, McConnell delivers an epic retelling of the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi in September 2013. Tracking down survivors, first responders, police and neighborhood security, McConnell pieces together a minute-by-minute account of the attack by four Somali Al-Shabaab operatives, which resulted in at least 67 deaths, including their own. Through the eyes of those who lived through the horror, McConnell takes readers into the heart of the events, as though they were in the midst of the violence. The result is a wrenching and breathless experience, in which each person is left to weigh life-and-death decisions in a split second. Through much of it, McConnell shows, police officers stood impotently outside, failing to act to save lives; the military’s glacial response amounted mostly to looting. A heartbreaking and damning story.

Read “Close Your Eyes and Pretend to be Dead” >>

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Citation Recipient: Matthieu Aikins
Affiliation: Harper’s Magazine
Honored Work: “Gangs of Karachi: Meet the Mobsters Who Run the Show in One of the World’s Deadliest Cities”
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Chappatte showed a consistent level of high quality visual journalism in his body of work. Graphically well-composed, his cartoons are clear, stark and direct, sometimes using one word, sometimes none at all to create an immediate impact for the reader. He is a master at capturing the current international political climate in a way that leaves the reader somewhere between laughing and crying.

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Christina Larson chronicles the rise of 23-year-old Zhao Bowen, who abandoned China’s state-run scientific research institutions to join the country’s emerging entrepreneurial class. Larson documents how the emergence of venture capital opportunities is changing the face of business at the intersection of science and capital markets and throws fresh light on the continuing evolution of China as a leading economic power.

Read “The Zhao Method” >>

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Citation Recipient: Nizar Manek and Jeremy Hodge
Affiliation: Africa Confidential/Angaza Foundation for Africa Reporting
Honored Work: “Opening the Black Box of Egypt’s Slush Funds”
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This project checked all the boxes: stellar reporting, terrific writing and fantastic use of storytelling tools traditional and nontraditional. It is an excellent example of enterprise business reporting that captured the big picture while focusing on the interest of the powerless. We were struck at how each entry distinctly exposed a layer of this shameful, globe-spanning enterprise. The impact of the story was impressive, achieving what many in our industry think is impossible or difficult to do.

This series was awarded both the Hal Boyle and the Malcolm Forbes Awards.

Read “Seafood from Slaves” >>

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Citation Recipient: Wei Lingling
Affiliation: The Wall Street Journal
Honored Work: “A Changing China”
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Exceptionally detailed reporting on a critical topic: how resource-rich African countries have been looted by their political leaders working hand-in-hand with international corporations. Burgis carries out remarkable on-the-ground investigations to identify the government and corporate officials who, in country after country, collude to amass tremendous fortunes while leaving their citizens impoverished and powerless. The book is a must-read for those eager to understand the problems plaguing a wide swath of Africa today.

AWARD PAGE >>

The Times dispatched reporters to seven countries to report and write the heartbreaking narratives that helped readers understand the struggles of Syrians looking for safe refuge from the terrors of their nation’s civil war and ISIS. We were incredibly moved by the mother who had to leave her two sick children behind while she tried to make a new home for them in Sweden. The despair of the refugee camp in Jordan also struck us. The articles were translated into Arabic. The photographs were remarkable. The editing was excellent. For their intrepid reporting to show the human condition in the form of a refugee crisis that has unsettled the world, especially Europe, we commend the team that produced this series.

Read “Fleeing Syria” >>

AWARD PAGE >>

“Escaping Isis” offers an exclusive, inside look at a secret underground cell working to free women and children from captivity. It was noted for its extraordinary access and carefully detailed depiction of daunting efforts to carry out extremely dangerous rescue work. One judge described the film as restorative journalism at its best, revealing the positive, successful efforts of those who have chosen to risk their lives to win freedom for less fortunate others. Beautifully written and edited, the film is a sensitive, humanizing portrayal of suffering and redemption.

Watch “Escaping ISIS” >>

AWARD PAGE >>

Citation Recipient: Marine Olivesi
Affiliation: PRI/The World
Honored Work: “Trauma and the Syrian War”
Citation Page >>

The team’s superb reporting addresses one of America’s biggest human rights failings: the continued existence of the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay. Among other revelations, they broke new ground about the prevalence of torture in Guantanamo Bay and the CIA’s sexual abuse of prisoners. Rohde and Levinson dug through thousands of pages of legal files to unearth information that had not been published previously. The series also explains why Guantanamo Bay still has not been closed and provides new information about the Military Commission, how a court meant to supervise Guantanamo was open to manipulation and how the transfer of prisoners was delayed by the Pentagon even after countries had been found to take them. This depressing and provocative series did what the best reporting should do: report unflinchingly what had been hidden.

Read “Guantanamo Bay” >>

 
AWARD PAGE >>

Projects funded by the World Bank physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people over the past 10 years. More than 80 journalists from over 20 countries worked for more than a year documenting tragedies that occurred as bank-funded projects failed to abide by the institution’s principles and policies. The investigation was led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Huffington Post. Days after being informed of the reporting team’s findings, the World Bank said it would address the problem of “involuntary resettlement.” The investigation combines searing local reporting for both written and visual media, instructive data visualizations and a rigorous analysis of 4,000 World Bank files related to some 1,500 bank-funded projects.

Read “Evicted and Abandoned: The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor” >>

AWARD PAGE >>

Citation Recipients: Ian James, Steve Elfers, Steve Reilly
Affiliation: The Desert Sun/USA Today
Honored Work: “Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater”
Citation Page >>

This powerful project examined the most urgent issue confronting Mexico and Latin America: impunity. Eduardo Castillo and Christopher Sherman used the notorious case of the abduction of 42 students in Iguala, Mexico, as the premise for a larger, more ambitious story about the pain and despair of a society in which 26,000 people have gone missing. The reporters explored a landscape of mafias, violence and corruption with skill, courage and empathy. The comprehensive series painted vivid human portraits: a cartel killer discussing his trade with grim nonchalance; the ordeal of a grandmother and her family in the labyrinth of the kidnapping industry; the dogged, dignified survivors who scour the mountains searching for the clandestine graves of missing loved ones. The result was a moving tale about Mexico’s national nightmare—and a stern indictment of a state that seems alternately complicit, overwhelmed or indifferent.

Read “Thousands of Mexican Families Mourn the ‘Other Disappeared'” >>

AWARD PAGE >>

This unprecedented and ambitious multimedia project investigates Australia’s vast, unchecked footprint in the African mining industry to expose the massacres, torture, incarceration, negligence, displacement and hundreds of deaths ignored by the world for more than a decade. It lays bare how the quest for profits kept the industry poorly regulated and how ordinary men, women and children across Africa have paid the price. Compelling multimedia storytelling allowed viewers to see and hear directly from these victims and their families, whose voices are rarely heard by the outside world.

Read “Fatal Attraction: Australian Mining in Africa” >>

AWARD PAGE >>

Citation Recipients: Ken Dornstein, Brian Funck and Michelle Mizner
Affiliation: PBS investigative series FRONTLINE
Honored Work: “My Brother’s Bomber, Inheritance, The Libya Dossier, A Brother’s Quest”
Citation Page >>

This powerful and revealing series turned a spotlight on the inner workings of one of the most opaque and dangerous organizations in the world. This groundbreaking investigation into ISIS’s oil trading and financial operations was based on resourceful, brave and deep reporting into where the extremist group gets its revenue and how it exploits and extorts from just about everyone in the territory it controls. The crisp, well-organized stories were aided by excellent explanatory graphics.

AWARD PAGE >>

Read “Isis Inc.” in the Financial Times >>

Citation Recipient: Ken Dornstein, Brian Funck and Raney Aronson
Affiliation: PBS investigative series FRONTLINE
Honored Work: “My Brother’s Bomber”
Citation Page >>

This is a rare case where a panel of journalists looked outside its own tribe and picked an academic: Mark Lilla’s masterful articles on France are a taxonomy of French politics, ideas and intellectual currents, all of it illuminating a year that began with the traumatic terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo. In trenchant prose, his work combines a shrewd assessment of French current events with an impressive command of French history and literature—a rare example of commentary that is at once journalistic and scholarly, and deeply informed.

Read Mark Lilla’s work in The New York Review of Books >>

AWARD PAGE >>

Citation Recipient: Bobby Ghosh
Affiliation: Quartz
Honored Work: “What the Iran Nuclear Deal Means for the Middle East”
Citation Page >>

When the world’s attention focused on the devastating spread of Ebola in West Africa, reporters for The New York Times delivered, day after day, foreign correspondence at its best. In a series of powerful stories, Times correspondents captured the crisis in all its dimensions – writing lyrically about the human drama and delivering smartly analytical pieces about the global effort to stop the disease’s spread and where that effort went wrong. They also dug beneath the surface of the unfolding disaster with stories that showed a deep understanding of the continent, writing sensitively about the toll the disease was taking on African cultural traditions such as hand-holding in church and kissing friends and relatives. In the tradition of Hal Boyle, for whom this award is named, Times reporters never shied away from the front lines despite the risk. In one memorable piece, the Times wrote about the death of a star basketball player in Liberia and several generations of a household destroyed. In another, a 4-year-old orphaned by Ebola roams a clinic looking for someone to take her home, another soul adrift.

Read some of the winning stories:

Fear of Ebola Breeds a Terror of Physicians >>

Ebola’s Cultural Casualty: Hugs in Hands-on Liberia >>

Those Who Serve Ebola Victims Soldier On >>

A Family Shattered:
Loving Care Turns
Into a Deadly Risk >>

Ebola Victim Went From Liberian War to a Fight for Life >>

Cuts at W.H.O.
Hurt Response
To Ebola Crisis >>

An Ebola Orphan’s Plea: ‘Do You Want Me?’ >>

The Los Angeles Times coverage of the Ukrainian conflict stood out from the rest for its guts, credibility, originality, depth and sophistication of interpretation, and its engaging writing style that made every story a gripping and compelling read. The intimacy of detail – the shattered glass of the airport terminal, the magic helmet, the bullet hole described to the second decimal point, the minibus from hell – combined with sophisticated analysis of how the economic effects disrupted everyone’s daily lives. The reporters’ bravery took us to places we hadn’t seen before.

L.A. Times – Ukraine: A nation Torn Apart

Marcus Bleasdale viscerally captured the brutal violence in the Central African Republic at a time when the world’s attention was focused on ISIS, Ukraine and other crises. His menacing, unnerving images of chaos had a profound impact on the judges. The images place the viewer in the moment in a way that demands and holds attention.

See winning photos >>

Jérôme Sessini’s photographs of the wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines jet shot down over eastern Ukraine last year captured imagery that is profoundly elegiac. There is a quiet strength that propels the narrative and shows the horrors in a manner that doesn’t make the viewer turn away from what is a difficult scene to process.

See winning photos >>

Bulent Kilic brings viewers right into Ukraine’s revolution, capturing the chaos of the moment. His work is inspired visual reporting under difficult conditions. Each image can stand alone, and together they form a strong narrative.

See winning photos >>

Rodrigo Abd shines a light on an underreported subject, the threat looming for 20,000 wildcat gold miners in Peru. His photographs are intimate and straightforward, documenting the subject without stylistic trickery, enhancing their journalistic value.

See winning photos >>

In a series of stories for PRI, Marine Olivesi describes the ordinary people whose lives have been torn apart by extremism around the Middle East, from a young Libyan freedom fighter desperately searching for a brother who has joined jihadis in Syria to the fellow who regrets bringing Chechen fighters into Syria. Olivesi is a brave, enterprising, creative young reporter who took on an extremely ambitious assignment that goes way beyond the headlines to examine the origins and outcomes of extremism.

Listen to the winning stories:

The Death of a Teen Activist Marks a New Low in Benghazi’s Violence >>

Getting This Man’s Brother Back Alive From Syria Would Be ‘Nothing Short of a Miracle’ >>

Why This Syrian Man Regrets Bringing Al-Qaeda Fighters Into His Country >>

This Is Breakdancing 101, Tunisia Style >>

The reporting of Nick Schifrin and his crew from Gaza for Al Jazeera America distinguished itself in a field crowded with excellence. It offered a seamless shifting of perspective from both sides of the border; empathy shown by reports from, in some cases, the living rooms of the ordinary people caught in the crossfire; and brevity and wit in writing.

Watch the submitted clips on Al Jazeera America >>

A surprising story that takes the viewer to an unexpected place and introduces unconventional characters. “Big Men’’ unpacks a single oil deal, in the Republic of Ghana, and examines it, Rashomon-like, from the points of view of oilmen, venture capitalists, militants, human-rights activists, politicians and citizens of other countries who have endured the same plight. It reveals a farrago of politics, corruption and greed that attends the commercialization of natural resources in developing nations. Deeply reported and compellingly told, this is investigative journalism of the highest order.

In the best tradition of wartime storytelling, Aikins’s vivid characters offer a truly fresh window into the Syrian conflict. The wisecracking, passionate young men, a volunteer rescue team in Aleppo, remain with us long after reading. In an inspirational and even funny story, Aikins captures the friends’ longings and doubts with astute empathy. Despite intense risks to himself, Aikins keeps himself out of his understated prose, which is enriched by the quiet photographs of Tomada. A reminder that the essence of war lies in these intimate moments, far from the halls of diplomatic power. Aikins is a freelance journalist and Schell Fellow at the Nation Institute.

Signe Wilkinson wades into the big story and emerges with fresh ideas, delivering an alternative take on events explored by others. Her original treatment provokes thinking on many of the most important issues of the day. The missile targeting terrorists also targets people living near them; the search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is made even more difficult by an ocean full of floating junk. Signe is often irreverent – and funny.

Six years after Robert Mugabe brutalized the opposition to win re-election in 2008 as president of Zimbabwe, Bloomberg reporters Cam Simpson and Jesse Westbrook set out to trace a $100 million cash infusion originating from a U.S. hedge fund that helped prop up his dictatorial, financially hard-pressed regime at a crucial moment. In this well-written, diligently researched page-turner, Simpson and Westbrook raised the veil on a series of financial transactions involving the Wall Street hedge fund, bankers and mining companies headquartered in London, shell companies and a rich platinum mining claim in Zimbabwe controlled by the government. Their account shows how global investments can end up in treacherous hands with terrible unintended consequences. Much of the reporting was done from afar after Simpson went to Zimbabwe with a valid visa, only to have government officials there threaten his arrest and force him to flee.

This series of nine stories showed how President Vladimir Putin and his billionaire friends control the Russian economy and siphon off billions of dollars for themselves. Reuters was the first news organization to document how contracts and money moved through offshore tax havens because it was able to obtain access to confidential bank and travel databases. The corruption extended even to the supply of a Russian rocket to the U.S. space program.

A powerful look into the soul of China as its 1.3 billion inhabitants clamor for economic and spiritual success after decades of deprivation. The book is distinguished by Osnos’s ability to penetrate Chinese society at all levels and tell revealing stories about the country’s breakneck transformation. The writing is elegant, and the first-hand reporting breaks new ground in explaining the trajectory of today’s China.

The Madeline Dane Ross Award goes to the best international reporting in the print medium showing a concern for the human condition. That requirement is impossible to quantify – it must be felt. Of the nearly 40 submissions to this category, “The Ghosts of Rana Plaza” evoked the deepest of feelings, of sympathy for and outrage over the horrendous death of 1,100 workers in Dhaka as a result of a factory collapse on April 24, 2013. The piece renders in heartbreaking detail the humanity of the victims and their would-be rescuers, linking them to all of us through the clothing that Bangladesh produces in vast quantities for the rest of the world. Our cheap jeans come at the cost of their lives. The story was painstakingly reported by Jason Motlagh, movingly photographed by Motlagh and Atish Saha and superbly edited and presented by the Virginia Quarterly Review.

“The Price of Glory” is enterprise reporting at its best from three countries: Josh Fine and team reported from Qatar and Doha’s labor camps building new facilities for the 2022 World Cup; from Bulgaria where an Olympic weightlifting team was purchased wholesale; and followed coffins of migrant construction workers home to Nepal. A Qatar government official is visibly shocked the HBO team got access to labor camps, claims hundreds of 2022 World Cup worker deaths are “normal,” then walks out of an interview. This feature spotlights abusive conditions, needless worker deaths and the immense wealth that covers it up.conditions, needless worker deaths and the immense wealth that covers it up.

A stunning example of what good journalism can do to expose labor abuses, “America’s War Workers” is beautifully filmed with unforgettable images and interviews. The team traveled to India and the Middle East and interviewed dozens of workers, providing irrefutable evidence about the exploitation of contract workers on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. They exposed the intermediaries who charge the poor for menial jobs on U.S military bases and described how the checks put in place by the U.S. government do little to halt the systemic violation of its own laws as well as international conventions on human and labor rights.

In five lengthy and deeply reported stories, Nick Miroff explored the latest rush for resources across South America and the complex and often devastating impacts that have accompanied the hunt for riches. From the quest for oil in Ecuador to gold mining camps in Peru to palm oil plantations in Colombia, Miroff landed us in one often-forgotten place after another, and did so using elegant and vivid prose. He avoided clichés and offered a contextual depth by framing ethnic rivalries against their political and environmental backgrounds, and showed how the pressures brought by industries have not only caused ecological harm but also exacerbated cultural conflicts. In a contemporary twist on the typical boom story, Miroff demonstrated how drops in commodity prices tend to increase dependence on foreign investment, spur still more development to increase commodity volume, and further environmental degradation.

The Los Angeles Times’s intrepid team of reporters and photographers gave a rich and complex picture of the surge of unaccompanied minors traveling from Mexico into south Texas, tracing their journey from Guatemala and Honduras up to the border and showing efforts in the U.S. and Mexico to stop the flow. Reporting from four countries, the Times team provided exceptional context, analysis and details of this immigration crisis. The commitment to the story showed in the quality of the reporting. The first story by Molly Hennessy-Fiske set out the coverage at overwhelmed immigration facilities at the beginning of the crisis.

Don Bartletti’s riveting photographs documented one boy’s journey across the border. Kate Linthicum, Cindy Caracamo and Tracy Wilkinson’s strong writing and reporting rounded out the coverage.

Technically flawless, “Borderland” is a simple idea but brilliant in its approach and execution. This thorough report documents the world that exists on the 2,248-mile U.S.-Mexico border – and tells the stories of those who live in a world of human smuggling, drugs and poverty – through the combined efforts of NPR radio reporters, web developers, data experts, producers and photographers.

Deep reporting, meticulous research, strong writing and the overall craft of assembling data, graphics and photos made The New York Times’s investigative series “Secret Casualties” the hands-down winner for investigative reporting this year. The series established a pattern of secrecy by the U.S. military for hiding from its own soldiers dangerous contamination from chemical munitions.

The series peeled away layer after layer of outrage and injustice – from learning that the U.S. actually cooperated closely with Iraqis in producing the weapons to stating flatly that the government was hiding from its own soldiers the illegal weapons that were at the very heart of the reason the nation went to war.

Matthew Kaminski moved across Eurasia to view the same events from different points of view and offered beautifully written commentary that conveyed the urgency of unfolding history. His writing was engaging, compelling and informative. He weaved personal observations and detailed reporting to the argument and humanized the stories. He is someone we would all love to read again.

AP’s Rukmini Callimachi won both the Hal Boyle and Bob Considine awards for her reporting on a trove of al-Qaida documents uncovered in Mali. She is the first reporter ever to win both awards in the same year.

At great personal risk, Callimachi traversed a desert route through Mali, alone and with militants close behind her, to uncover one of the most significant troves of al-Qaida documents ever made public. Her sly, witty and sharply observed accounts of al Qaida’s operation, goals and mindset — from penny-pinching to public stonings — shed light on an organization that, despite more than a decade of war, remains largely opaque. From one of the most dangerous places on earth, she gave voice to civilians crushed under jihadist rule and followed in the footsteps of fighters at the scene of the biggest battle against al-Qaida in years.

AP’s Rukmini Callimachi won both the Hal Boyle and Bob Considine awards for her reporting on a trove of al-Qaida documents uncovered in Mali. She is the first reporter ever to win both awards in the same year.

Callimachi captured the chaotic aftermath of the takeover of Timbuktu by al-Qaida fighters. The thousands of pages of documents she found strewn in 10 buildings, formerly occupied by the fighters, led her on a painstaking journey of verification, and it resulted in stories that painted a fascinating portrait of al-Qaida’s presence in Africa. Her work —courageous, resourceful, persistent and sensitive—resonated with the authority of a reporter who understood the people and history of Timbuktu. In particular, she vividly captured what came in the wake of al-Qaida’s departure—a brutal, opportunistic mission by Mali’s military to target light-skinned Arabs and Tuaregs who looked like the vanquished invaders. She documented the efforts of family members to find the remains of the victims, and her elegant first-person piece was a model of the form, reported without fear and written with restraint.

Every frame tells the story of a terrifying and dangerous situation. The photographer is at obvious risk, yet he continues to photograph multiple scenarios and stays on scene to document the horrors and aftermath of the attack.

See winning photos >>

The winner displayed an unparalleled commitment to the story and topic. The depth of his years-long reporting shows a unique perspective and helps brings a deeper understanding to a critical geopolitical topic.

See winning photos >>

The highest standards of news photography are displayed in the winner’s work. The images powerfully convey the situation with unflinching directness from this underreported and continuing African conflict.

See winning photos >>

Completely original photographic storytelling executed perfectly. The work is technically superior and each frame is a unique version of the overall story. The flawless edit gave insight into a rarely reported subject.

See winning photos >>

Leila Fadel draws listeners in with engaging reporting and storytelling from Egypt, capturing the complexities of a country in turmoil through a riveting series that puts listeners in the middle of violence on the streets, at a morgue of the unclaimed dead and in a family home to illustrate the anguish of a nation torn.

Correspondent Charlie D’Agata and producer Randall Joyce risked their lives reporting on what was to become one of the bloodiest and most important weeks in Egypt’s history. They were on the front lines with protesters in Tahrir Square as the military regime’s crackdown intensified and the bodies piled up, telling us their harrowing stories. What stood out was this team’s bravery, knowing they could have been killed at any time. They put their lives on the line so the truth about what was happening to the Egyptian people could be known.

Video of the submission >>

In the finest tradition of Edward R. Murrow, this documentary challenges everything you thought you knew about the illegal trade in kidneys and the international campaign to stop it. Through interviews with donors, recipients, go-betweens, doctors and prosecutors from North America to Israel and Eastern Europe to the Philippines, the filmmakers provide a rare look at how an illegally acquired kidney reaches a sick person and how both desperation and good will drive the trade.

Rowan Jacobsen’s beautifully crafted story about a herd of displaced elephants terrorizing a farming community in India is magazine writing at its best. It took us into a world we didn’t know existed and taught us something new about the larger conflict between animal and man in vivid and compelling detail. It’s a testament to the power of his reporting and narrative that the story magically stayed with us long after we read it.

The judges were impressed by Reuters’ ability to piece together how Iran’s top religious cleric, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had amassed a financial empire worth $95 billion, rivaling the wealth of the late Shah. In a three-part series, Stecklow and colleagues drew a devastating portrait of how Khamenei had secured a position in nearly every sector of Iran’s economy through a little-known agency called Setad. Reuters took major risks in investigating the ayatollah. 

Assets of the Ayatollah >>

A riveting first-person account of the Haitian earthquake and the failure of the international relief effort by the former Associated Press bureau chief in Port-au-Prince. Jonathan Katz impressively weaves together the dramatic events of the earthquake and its aftermath, including a United Nations-induced cholera epidemic. He highlights the self-defeating efforts of NGOs to deal with the tragedy and the impotence and corruption of Haiti’s government.

Adriana Gomez Licon ventured deep into an area of Mexico where journalists operate under constant risk of attack. Reporting alone, and with considerable initiative, she pieced together details of the death of a young woman killed in a shootout between the cartels. The result is a compelling narrative, meticulously reported with a fine eye for detail and dialogue, which offers an illuminating look inside the drug wars. The reporter went to admirable lengths to illustrate the human cost of the violence.

“Outlawed in Pakistan” shows how and why it is nearly impossible for rape victims to get justice in Pakistan. This compelling and beautifully filmed Frontline documentary follows 13-year-old Kainat and her family over a period of years as she tries—and fails—to bring to justice the men who allegedly gang-raped her. In the process, the reporters spotlight conditions for women, abuses under Islamic law and serious police failings. Frontline and the filmmakers give the full picture of what a nightmare it is to bring a rape case in Pakistan.

Bloomberg’s series showed the grim reality of the life of workers who make the shiny Apple phones so coveted by the world’s consumers. The stories by Cam Simpson were impressively detailed. He went down the supply chain to write about migration, the tactics of recruiters and life in the Himalayan villages that supplied the bonded labor to Apple’s subcontractors. Simpson also questioned the contractors and Apple about their practices. His eye for detail made the story compelling. Weeks after reading it we still remember the images of the stranded workers in Malaysia forced to eat rice flakes after their contracts were abruptly terminated, then returning home still in debt to the brokers who had sold them the right to jobs at the factories of Apple’s supplier.

The Seattle Time’s five-part examination of carbon’s effects on our oceans represents an extraordinary effort: fresh, important, and dynamic in its presentation and depth. Times reporter Craig Welch and photographer Steve Ringman took on a subject of crucial scientific and environmental importance that is under-covered and classically challenging to convey to readers. They did it ambitiously and gracefully, finding stories that connected their local economy with larger global issues, and with creative images that were engaging and added a sense of wonderment. The Times demonstrated its commitment to the project with excellent video production, an interactive web presentation and prominent placement in print that elevated the overall effort.

Simon Romero’s rich reporting and elegant writing provided readers with compelling stories that shed light on a variety of issues across Latin America. His insights on the factors driving protests in Brazil were deep and were accompanied by relevant stories such as those on public rage catching up with the country’s Congress, outsized pay in the civil service and the fact that the ruling leftist party was perplexed by the protests. His ability to weave cultural and political context into his reporting helps readers better appreciate the events he covered, be it from Venezuela, where his obituary of Hugo Chavez cast a spotlight on the state of the revolution he created; Argentina, for stories on its native son, the new pope; and even tiny Uruguay, to profile the president and his austere lifestyle.

“Planet Money” creators found a way to add an additional layer to its multimedia by not only presenting their findings, but also by producing T-shirts—the actual item about which they are reporting. In doing so, they tackle a subject we might think too familiar and show us much we don’t know. It melds text and video so that they don’t just coexist, they complement and amplify one another, with layers and layers of information adding to the audience experience.

“Secrecy for Sale” is a ground-breaking project in the digital age. It is a true tour de force in which a very large team came together to assess, report and analyze a massive trove of data about a secret world of off shore accounts hidden from the eyes of governments and citizens. Villains were named and shamed, while the underworld in which they thrived was revealed and explained with precision and depth. The project was accomplished through the effective management of many editorial partnerships and Gerard Ryle deserves enormous credit for pulling together the whole team so effectively.

Wolf is not afraid to express a sharp point of view, thoroughly backed up with fact. His depth of knowledge on politics, economics and environmental issues is striking, and it gives his writing a calm authority. His tone is pragmatic in the best way—firm but not strident, convincing but never shrill. And he does more than criticize—he also offers well-thought-out solutions.

This vivid and powerful series of reports from inside Syria range from bomb making lessons to kidnapping and government tactics. The reporter focuses on ordinary people — both fighters and housewives — in extraordinary circumstances. She writes beautifully detailed stories from the conflict zone, giving readers a human portrayal of war.

Vibrant and searing images made under difficult conditions. The photographer effectively used full color palette of the environment to engage the viewer and bring them to the locales documented. The work has a strong visual consistency that carries the story forward from frame to frame.

See winning photos >>

A quiet yet devastating portfolio of images that spans the full range of human emotions. The work draws you into the people and the events captured in the frame. There is a sharp point to the visual story-telling and the work demands that you stop and consider the individuals affected.

See winning photos >>

Beautiful, painterly pictures that hit all the right visual notes. Great photography executed brilliantly that shows not only the photographic talent, but also the journalistic understanding of the subject and the people captured in the work.

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The judges were riveted as they listened to this compelling and beautifully narrated story of recent events and the violent massacre of more than 200 people in the village of Dos Erres in Guatamala more than two decades ago. In 2012 the discovery of a father, still alive, and his son Oscar Ramirez, an undocumented worker in the U.S., each of whom assumed the other dead in the tragedy, prompted reporter Nosheen and producer Reed to devote five months to researching the story, finding victims and perpetrators. As a result, Ramirez was granted political asylum in the U.S. and several implicated soldiers have been apprehended for trial.

Listen to the report >>

CNN’s harrowing reporting from Damascus represents true bravery in the face of danger. The reporter and crew, unable to identify themselves in order to protect their Syrian helpers, uncovered fresh killings of civilians by the Syrian Army. Their work provides an all too important voice to those who have been oppressed and have survived some of the most horrific conditions of war, all the while putting their own personal safety at risk.

Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been central to the battle against terrorism and has played continuously in the background of news coverage on the subject. While we all know the end of the tale, the details of the hunt and bin Laden’s death were not available before this first-hand account and year-long investigation.

Watch “Killing Bin Laden” >>

Peter Bergen brings his decades of reporting and insights to bear in this definitive account of the search for Osama bin-Laden. He captures the tension of the years-long post-9/11 search, weaving history and personality into a brisk narrative. Bergen’s deep familiarity with the subject and years of on-the-ground work demystify the dizzingly complex Al Qaeda network, and give rich texture to the most riveting manhunt of our time.

Peter Bergen’s website >>

Mark Jenkins has captured the breadth of human emotions, motivations, and coping mechanisms in his examination of how one country, Cambodia, has moved forward from the lingering horror of land mines. Many will think they already know this topic well, but Jenkins’ deeply researched and accessibly written report made the subject matter fresh and compelling.

Read “The Healing Fields” >>

Najibullah Quraishi’s reporting in Opium Brides stood out for its exploration of a dangerous, hidden world to reveal a human tragedy: young Afghan girls traded by their opium poppy growing families to pay debts to international drug lords. The subject matter is intrinsically important, highlighting the plight of Afghan farming families caught between drug traffickers who finance their crops and government officials bent on poppy eradication. But what set the entry apart was the way it ventured into the remote Afghan countryside to show the plight of individual families and their children, as they weighed up the demands of the traffickers and then succumbed to them. Brave, beautifully shot and paced, this entry was sensitive in its handling of a tragic human dilemma and harrowing in its impact.

Watch “Opium Brides” >>

“Finding Oscar” is a magnificent journalistic collaboration documenting how prosecutors, forensic anthropologists and human rights activists persevered for 30 years in their quest for justice against the perpetrators of a 1982 massacre in Guatemala. The story begins with the compelling account of a 2011 phone call to Oscar Ramirez, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant living in Massachusetts, from a prosecutor back home, informing him that he isn’t who he thinks he is. What follows, in both written and radio formats, takes us back in time to Dos Erres, a Guatemalan town whose 250 residents were killed by soldiers three decades ago. Oscar, it turns out, was one of two survivors, abducted at the age of three by the commander of the army squad that murdered his family, and he is now evidence of government complicity in the massacre. Recently several soldiers involved in the raid were convicted and the former Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt was indicted on charges of genocide.

Listen to the report >>

We chose to honor the powerful National Geographic piece, Rhino Wars by Peter Gwin, with amazing photographs by Brent Stirton. The topic was enterprising and fresh (of the 3 submissions on African animals killed for horns, it was the earliest piece by quite a few months, with other media following suit). Finally, from an impact point of view, it helped lead to some of the worst South African rhino killers facing long jail terms, one rhino poaching kingpin getting 40 years.

Read “Rhino Wars” >>

One of the most violent countries in the world receives scant media coverage. But Alberto Arce of the Associated Press has displayed a combination of courage, strong reporting and a flair for writing to explain life in Honduras – how this is a country where gangs extort cash from homeowners, where inmates rule its deadly prisons and where the charities of political candidates give away free coffins. Honduras is struggling to maintain political stability three years after its former president was run out of office at gunpoint. Arce goes beyond the standard wire service reporting. His “Letter from Honduras” colorfully recounts difficult life inside the impoverished and dangerous Central American nation. Readers are lured into one story on a father’s quest for justice after his son was killed, allegedly by military officers, with the following lead: “In a capital so dangerous that only the “walking dead” are said to venture out after dark, nothing could draw an obedient son from the safety of his parents’ suburban home into the deserted night. Nothing, that is, but a girl.”

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This entry’s use of video, documents, photographs and news articles was unlike any other project submitted for this year’s awards. The entry combines an excellent narrative with a compelling presentation that includes raw simplicity and sophisticated technology, pointing the way to a truly new form of multimedia storytelling. It gets bonus points for employing a new kind of technology — Popcorn.js, a new HTML5 / Javascript media toolkit created by Mozilla. Its presentation was fresh and arresting. The narrative is excellent, and all the breaking points in the story are very well put together.

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Through painstaking analysis of the families of Xi Jinping and the so-called “Eight Immortals” and ingenious scrutiny of regulatory filings to trace holding companies to these families, the reporters were able to demonstrate for the first time how China’s elite have used political influence for enormous personal gain. In the process, they have fundamentally changed our understanding of the Chinese state.

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David Ignatius’s insightful writing about the Middle East, informed by his original reporting, was refreshing and illuminating. The judges were especially impressed by his brave visits inside Syria to see first-hand the struggles of the rebel movement. Ignatius’s “48 hours in Syria” is not only a compelling narrative about the rebels, but also an impassioned argument for more direct US support, which might prevent Islamic fundamentalists from gaining an upper hand should Assad fall. “The shower of cash and weapons coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and other Arab nations is helping extremist fighters and undercutting any orderly chain of command through the Free Syrian Army,” he warns. In another column, Ignatius reports first hand from Syria on the growing influence of an Al Qaeda-affiliated group. Whether writing about Syria, Egypt or Lebanon, Ignatius provides a level-headed view of the world, while uncovering new information that enhances our understanding . As one judge said, this columnist is “an expert guide” for navigating a complex world full of characters whose motives may be anything but obvious.

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In a year of momentous events and in a category filled with outstanding entries, the stories by Chris Chivers of The New York Times from Libya and Afghanistan stood out as war reporting at its best. His superb and evocative dispatches explained why the Afghanistan war has become so difficult for the U.S., strategically, tactically and politically. Chivers’ war coverage was a remarkable blend of cool, analytical reporting and impassioned first-hand accounts of the suffering experienced by the victims. In January, his story from Afghanistan about the improved survival rates of wounded U.S. soldiers showed, with impressive documentation, an important trend in the waging of war. Later in the year, his story about the civilian victims in Libya belied assurances by NATO that its seven-month air campaign was without unintended casualties. Tough, cool and brave: these were the hallmarks of Chivers’ great reporting in 2011.

By entering Japan’s closed-off nuclear exclusion zone, Guttenfelder shows us ghost towns abandoned by people fleeing the invisible but very real hazards of radioactivity. Feral dogs roam the deserted streets and unmade beds lie as they were when people hastily evacuated their communities. On the flip side he takes us to intimate scenes in makeshift shelters, where despite their predicament, the evacuees cling to their dignity while attempting to normalize their lives.

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Muller took an original approach to documenting a sensitive and difficult story, rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Opening with anonymous but effective portraits of the victims, and then taking us through the makeshift trials that eventually led to convictions and justice for the victims, Muller illuminates a very dark side of human behavior. The glee and satisfaction reflected on the faces of the public after the verdicts were announced is a remarkable and positive ending to at least a part of an endemic abuse of women’s rights.

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In this extraordinary series of articles, Jeremy Page not only connected the dots behind the mysterious death of a British businessman, but provided startling glimpses into the life of one of China’s leading Communist Party bosses before he was fired in disgrace, as well as a look at the privileged lifestyles enjoyed by at least some corrupt politicians in today’s China.

The stories are notable for depth of reporting, an even presentation of the evidence, and a balanced tone. Nevertheless, taken together, they form a damning case that the wife of Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai may have poisoned businessman and family adviser Neil Heywood, a crime for which she was ultimately convicted. Aside from exposing the political scandal of the year in China, Page interprets the events in light of the power struggles taking place in the country just prior to its once-in-a-decade transfer of leadership.

Guttenfelder’s images provide a unique and special vision of a hard to access society. While mainly photographed in the company of government officials, they are a series of special moments taken in a creative and innovative fashion. They show us what daily life is like in a closed-off and isolated society.

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