By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK, May 4 (Reuters) – Reuters won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, one for national reporting for stories on U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign of political retribution, and a second for beat reporting for investigations revealing how social-media behemoth Meta knowingly exposed users, including children, to harmful AI chatbots and fraudulent advertisements.
The Washington Post took home the prestigious award for public service for its reporting on the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk’s sweeping cuts to federal agencies. The New York Times won three awards, including the investigative reporting prize for its probes into how Trump, his family and his allies have profited from the presidency.
The national reporting award, shared by Reuters staff, notably Ned Parker, Linda So, Peter Eisler and Mike Spector, was based on a series of stories detailing Trump’s extraordinary efforts to use the levers of government to punish his political enemies.
The investigations examined how Trump has wielded executive power to exact retribution against hundreds of targets; among them federal prosecutors, military leaders, former U.S. officials, law firms, universities and media companies. The reporters also documented the way that Trump’s allies, including right-wing media figures and Republican officials, helped support and amplify his mission.
The stories chronicled the sweeping tools of government that Trump brought to bear: launching criminal probes against his political foes, stripping security clearances from former national security officials, firing civil servants seen as opposed to his agenda and canceling research funding for universities.
The winning work for beat reporting, authored by technology investigations reporter Jeff Horwitz with China correspondent Engen Tham, relied on previously unreported internal documents as well as innovative techniques testing Facebook and Instagram accounts to unearth secrets of Meta’s business model.
Horwitz exposed how Meta’s internal guidelines explicitly allowed its AI chatbots to conduct “sensual” conversations with children. A related story detailed how a cognitively disabled New Jersey man died of injuries he sustained in a fall after running away from home for what he believed would be a romantic rendezvous with a young woman following a series of conversations with a Meta chatbot.
Other reports demonstrated the extent to which Meta profited from illicit advertising. Horwitz and Tham subsequently detailed the critical role played by Chinese companies in this business. Another story revealed Meta’s “global playbook” for defeating effective anti-scam regulations around the world.
For one story, Horwitz created an account registered to a fictitious 14-year-old to show the impact of Meta’s decision to give bots the capacity for romantic role-play with minors. For another piece, he placed experimental ads for bogus get-rich-quick schemes on Facebook and Instagram.
The reporting sparked regulatory probes and litigation around the world and prompted Meta itself to reform key practices. In response to the outcry over the chatbot coverage, Meta immediately revised its AI guidelines to stop letting its bots engage in romantic talk with children.
TRUMP IN FOCUS
Many of the winning stories were reports on the Trump administration, which has upended institutional norms and reshaped the United States’ role at home and abroad since he returned to the White House last year.
In addition to the reporting on Trump from Reuters, the New York Times and the Washington Post that won honors, the Chicago Tribune shared the local reporting award for its coverage of the administration’s militarized immigration enforcement operation in Chicago last year.
The Pulitzer committee also issued a special citation to Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown for her 2017 and 2018 reporting that exposed the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s “systematic abuse of young women, the justice system that protected him, and over time, his powerful network of associates and enablers.”
In her opening remarks, Marjorie Miller, the administrator of the prizes, emphasized the importance of the First Amendment and an independent press.
“Unfortunately, this bears repeating now, as media access to the White House and Pentagon is restricted, free speech is challenged in the streets, and the president of the United States has filed lawsuits for billions of dollars for defamation and malice against multiple print and broadcast media,” she said.
In addition to its two wins, Reuters also had finalists in two other categories. A team of photographers was among the finalists for breaking news photography for images that vividly documented the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration across the U.S. Other Reuters journalists were finalists for illustrated reporting for a project that used graphic-novel techniques to explore the scam compounds of Asia, where people were forced by criminal gangs to work in mass fraud operations.
“These extraordinary recognitions reflect the very best of Reuters journalism: fearless, deeply reported, original work that holds powerful institutions to account,” said Alessandra Galloni, editor-in-chief of Reuters.
The Pulitzer Prizes, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917, are considered the highest honor in American journalism. This year’s awards are the 14th and 15th for Reuters, including eight for reporting and seven for photography, all since 2008.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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