NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for documenting the use of slave labor in Southeast Asia to supply seafood to American tables — an investigation that spurred the release of more than 2,000 captive workers.
The Los Angeles Times was awarded the breaking news prize for its coverage of the shooting rampage by husband-and-wife extremists that left 14 people dead in San Bernardino, California, and The Washington Post received the national reporting award for an examination of killings by police in the U.S.
Besides recognizing some of the biggest national and international stories of the year, the awards also spotlighted deep dives into a chilling rape case, the long arc of school segregation, and the mistreatment of psychiatric patients. The New Yorker was honored in the criticism and feature writing categories, which only recently were opened to magazines.
The New York Times won the international reporting award for detailing the plight of Afghan women, and the breaking news photography prize for images of refugees. Thomson Reuters was also honored in the same photography category, for its pictures of migrants covering hundreds of miles.
The Boston Globe was likewise honored twice: It won in the feature photography category with pictures showing the life of a poor, 6-year-old boy who survived a horrific beating by his mother’s boyfriend, while the newspaper’s Farah Stockman took the commentary prize for her work on the legacy of school busing in the city.
The Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune received the investigative reporting prize for demonstrating that years of budget and staff cuts and overall neglect had resulted in a dramatic uptick of violence in Florida’s mental hospitals.
The Tampa Bay Times also won in local reporting for detailing the harmful effects of ending school integration in Pinellas County, Florida, the most concentrated site of academic failure in Florida. Officials responded by increasing funding and teacher training in the mostly black school system.
ProPublica and The Marshall Project received the award for explanatory reporting for exploring a rape case in which authorities initially didn’t believe the victim, prosecuted her for lying, and years later came to realize she was telling the truth.
The New Yorker was awarded the feature reporting prize for a story on the enormous Cascadia fault line under the Pacific Ocean, while the magazine’s Emily Nussbaum won in the criticism category for her TV reviews. Magazines became eligible for the criticism award this year and the feature writing prize last year.
In editorial writing, John Hackworth of Sun Newspapers of Charlotte Harbor, Florida, was honored for his pieces about a deadly assault on an inmate by guards. Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee took the editorial cartooning prize for what judges called work that conveys “wry, rueful perspectives through sophisticated style.”
The awards marked the centennial of the Pulitzers, American journalism’s highest honors.
AP journalists Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza and Esther Htusan chronicled how men from Myanmar and other countries were being imprisoned, sometimes in cages, in an island village in Indonesia and forced to work on fishing vessels. The stories also detailed the use of slave labor in processing shrimp.
The 18-month project involved tracking slave-caught seafood to processing plants that supply supermarkets, restaurants and pet stores in the U.S.
“If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us,” Hlaing Min, 30, a runaway slave from the Indonesian island, told The AP. “There must be a mountain of bones under the sea.”
The stories, photos and videos led to freedom for thousands of fishermen and other laborers, numerous arrests, seizures of millions of dollars in goods and crackdowns on Thai shrimp peeling plants.
AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll commended all of AP’s journalists, saying they “stand up for people who don’t have a voice” and “use the tools of our craft to inform the world and, occasionally, right wrongs that need to be righted.” The award marked the news cooperative’s 52nd Pulitzer and its first for public service.
Htusan, a native of Myanmar, said: “The best prize is that all the men from my country who were trafficked came back home.”
The Post, meanwhile, explored an issue that has prompted protests and debate around the U.S. in recent years. The newspaper found that in 2015, on-duty police officers shot and killed 990 people nationwide — and that unarmed black men were seven times more likely to die at the hands of police officers than unarmed whites. More than 50 of the officers had killed someone before.
Established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the prizes were first given out in 1917. Public service award winners receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $ 10,000 each.
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Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela and Adam Geller contributed to this report.
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Online:
The AP’s “Seafood from Slaves” series: http://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/
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This story has been corrected to show that the first Pulitzer was awarded in 1917, not 1916.
