WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th May, 2020) The Pulitzer Prize board at Columbia University announced that the New York Times emerged as the big winner in this year's competition with three wins, swelling the newspaper's total to 130 Pulitzers in more than a century since the award was first established.
Brian Rosenthal of the New York Times won the investigative reporting prize "for an exposé of New York City's taxi industry that showed how lenders profited from predatory loans that shattered the lives of vulnerable drivers, reporting that ultimately led to Federal and state investigations and sweeping reforms, the Pulitzer Prize Board said on Monday.
The entire New York Times staff also won the international reporting prize for articles on Russia and what the Prize Board called the "predations of the Vladimir Putin regime."
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier that the New York Times stories pertaining to Russia were fake. In November 2019, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a New York Times article about Russian officials who allegedly delayed an airplane with a sick US military attache onboard was an outright fake story. Zakharova also said the newspaper fabricated the story despite an official Russian Foreign Ministry reply detailing the events.
Later in November, Zakharova said another New York Times article claiming Russia tried to keep UN findings regarding Syrian hospital bombings secret was a very example of fake news. She added Russia regretted the New York Times did not pay attention to terrorists and their actions and instead produced fake news.
The Pulitzer Prize Board said the New York Times also won the commentary prize for an essay in the newspaper's Sunday magazine, which "recognized the 400th anniversary of the moment enslaved Africans were first brought to what would become the United States and how it forever changed the country."
The Anchorage Daily won the public service award for a year-long joint investigation of sexual violence in the US state of Alaska, which included contributions from the non-profit news outlet ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize Board said.
The Washington Post staff won the explanatory reporting prize for a series on global warming, and the Baltimore Sun won the local reporting price for exposing a sweetheart deal for the University of Maryland to purchase a series of self-published children's nutrition books - an expose that forced the mayor from office, the Pulitzer Prize Board also said.
In arts categories, Colson Whitehead won the fiction award for "The Nickle Boys," which explored abuses at juvenile reform schools in the US state of Florida during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, the Pulitzer Prize Board added.
