'The press doing what it is supposed to do'

This week, journalism’s Pulitzer prizes were handed out. The prize for “a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site” was given to the Guardian and the Washington Post for their coverage of widespread security surveillance by the NSA. The two newspapers won for slightly different reasons, the Post for “authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security” and the Guardian for “helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy”.

The award comes 10 months after the leaks by Edward Snowden, and the series of stories that followed. In a statement Snowden said the decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government, the Guardian reports. “We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognises was work of vital public importance.”

The reporter who led the Post’s coverage, Barton Gellman, is quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying “I'm actually very happy, in a way, that the judgment of the Pulitzer committee was not that we screwed up, frankly…These were really hard calls to make: what to do, what not to do. It's nice to think we got it reasonably close to right.” Politicoreports on the debate over whether the reporting itself was responsible.

Writing for the New Yorker, Amy Davidson calls the reporting “a defining case of the press doing what it is supposed to do”. “The President was held accountable; he had to answer questions that he would rather not have and, when his replies proved unsatisfying to the public—and, in some cases, just rang false—his Administration had to change its policies.” Conor Friedersdorf, for The Atlantic, that some objected to the prize, but says “when public policy is shrouded in secrecy, sparking debate is synonymous with enabling the practice of democracy. Without debate, representative government as we know it is extinguished”.

In the breaking news category, the Boston Globe was awarded the prize “for its exhaustive and empathetic coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and the ensuing manhunt that enveloped the city…” Chris Hamby of the Centre for Public Integrity won for a distinguished example of investigative reporting for “reports on how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease”. That prize has led to a fight with the US broadcaster ABC, which claims it should have shared in the honour, the New York Times reports.

The Prize for fiction was awarded to Donna Tartt for The Goldfinch,which has ruffled some feathers. She told USA Today she was surprised and delighted to win. Alyssa Rosenberg, writing in the Washington Post, says the book “never quite emerges above the haze of chemicals that its main character has consumed”. And here in New Zealand, Danyl Mclauchlan writes that the book suffers from having characters who act out of character to drive the plot. “Aspiring writers like myself always get lectured about having our characters ‘make choices’ because that ‘defines character’. I’m not sure the main character in this Pulitzer Prize winner makes a single meaningful choice in the entire book.”