Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for NSA spying revelations; Guardian also honored

A team of 28 Post journalists, led by reporter Barton Gellman, won the public service award, as did Guardian US, which also reported extensively about the NSAs secret programs. Gellman and Glenn Greenwald, then the Guardians lead reporter on the NSA pieces, based their articles on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who has fled to exile in Russia, lending a controversial edge to this years awards.

The Posts Eli Saslow also won a Pulitzer newspaper journalisms highest award for a series of stories about the challenges of people living on food stamps. Saslow, 31, was cited in the explanatory-journalism category by the 19-member Pulitzer board in an announcement at Columbia University in New York, which administers the prizes.

The Boston Globe won in the breaking-news category for its extensive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings last April.

The New York Times swept the two photography categories. The award in breaking photography went to Tyler Hicks for his photos of a terrorist attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, and the feature-photography prize went to Josh Haner for his photos of a Boston Marathon bombing victim who lost most of both legs.

The prize for investigative reporting went to Chris Hamby of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity in Washington for articles about lawyers and doctors who rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black-lung disease.

NSA reporting

The awards to The Post and the U.S. arm of the British-based Guardian newspaper for their NSA reporting are likely to generate debate, much like the Pulitzer boards decision to award its public service medal to the New York Times in 1972 for its disclosures of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

In both the NSA and Pentagon Papers stories, the reporting was based on leaks of secret documents by government contractors. Both Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to Times reporter Neil Sheehan were called traitors for their actions. And both the leakers and the news organizations that published the stories were accused by critics, including members of Congress, of enabling espionage and harming national security.

But Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said Monday that the reporting exposed a national policy with profound implications for American citizens constitutional rights and the rights of individuals around the world.

Disclosing the massive expansion of the NSAs surveillance network absolutely was a public service, Baron said. In constructing a surveillance system of breathtaking scope and intrusiveness, our government also sharply eroded individual privacy. All of this was done in secret, without public debate, and with clear weaknesses in oversight.

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Washington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for NSA spying revelations; Guardian also honored