The Pulitzer Prizes are once again taking on Trump

Barcelona“Let me state what should not need to be stated: the Pulitzer Prizes support the First Amendment of the Constitution.” With these grave words, Marjorie Miller made it clear from the first minute that the country is living in a time of exceptionality. The administrator of the most prestigious awards in American journalism recalled that this protection for the press adhering to the Magna Carta implies the ability to scrutinize political power and institutions, but that in recent times “the access to the White House and the Pentagon has been restricted.” With this assessment, it is not surprising that the verdict has leaned towards journalistic pieces that challenge Trump's opacity and scrutinize him in a time when the hunger to expand his power seems endless.

The New York Times has once again been one of the clear winners of the night, with three awards (and six mentions as a finalist) including one of the most important prizes: investigative journalism, awarded for its coverage of how Trump has abused the power he holds to enrich his family and allies. The newspaper is, by far, the most awarded media outlet for these recognitions established in 1917.

The second newspaper with the most Pulitzers accumulated in its display case, the Washington Post, has received two recognitions from the jury, one of which is especially relevant: the public service award. This pat on the back comes after the outlet has gone through a reputation crisis following the decisions of its owner, Jeff Bezos – also owner of Amazon and Blue Origin, companies dependent on public contracts – to interfere with the editorial line of this historic publication regarding the opinion section (but not the news section). Thus, the jury recognizes its merit for having “pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the Trump administration” and also for having “delineated a detailed chronicle of the human impacts of the applied cuts and the consequences they have entailed for the country.”

Without deviating from this more or less open opposition to Trump, the ability to overcome the barriers imposed by the President of the U.S. to allow journalism to be done around his figure has also led the staff of the Reuters agency to win the national reporting award for the report titled: “Trump's Retribution Campaign: At Least 470 Targets, and Counting.”

Regarding local journalism, the award was given ex aequo. One of the recognitions went to the journalists of the medium ProPublica –an entity that operates on a non-profit basis– for an investigation into the towing service in Connecticut that allows unclaimed cars to be resold in just fifteen days from their removal from public roads. The other awardee was the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, for their coverage of a large-scale federal operation initiated in September 2025 to detain undocumented individuals.

And with Trump as a background figure, the uninhibited or arbitrary pursuit and detention of immigrants by ICE and other police forces has been awarded or a finalist in other categories. Associated Press, for example, has received a Pulitzer for an international investigation into the mass surveillance tools created in Silicon Valley and perfected in China for use by American border patrol.

The 'big-tech' companies, under scrutiny

The tension between traditional media and big tech companies has also been felt in the awards. One of the prizes, for reporting, has honored the work of journalists Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham, of the Reuters agency, for pieces based on internal documents that evidenced the great business Meta –owner of Facebook and Instagram– has made from advertisements for fraudulent products and services that even showed minors.

The newsroom of San Francisco Chronicle has won one of the awards for a report on the failures of a home insurance system that affects millions of properties and leaves their owners less covered than they think. In the current affairs category, the Minnesota Star Tribune has emerged as the winner for its chronicle of a shooting at a Catholic school that left two dead and seventeen injured. And the in-depth report goes to Aaron Parsley, of Texas Monthly, for his first-person account of the survival and losses suffered as a result of the floods in the central part of his state.

Opinion also has its prize on this night dedicated to journalism: Mark Lamster of the Dallas Morning News wins the criticism award for his texts on architecture and urbanism. M. Gessen, of the New York Times, takes the opinion column award for articles on authoritarian regimes. And the illustrated reporting prize goes to Anand RK, Suparna Sharma, and Natalie Obiko Pearson of Bloomberg, for trAPPed, the striking narrative of a neurologist in India whose phone keeps her in disturbing digital arrest.

As for the photography awards, they go to New York Times contributor Saher Alghorra, for the extremely harsh images of devastation and hunger in Gaza as a consequence of the war with Israel, and to Jahi Chikwendiu of the Washington Post for a moving photographic essay on the birth of the first child of a family where the father is dying victim of cancer.

The awards close with audio reporting, which has gone to the newsroom of Pablo Torre Finds Out, a journalistic podcast that investigated how the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented salary regulations by channeling money to one of their stars under the guise of setting up an environmental start-up.

The Pulitzer Prizes for Culture

In addition to journalistic awards, the Pulitzer Prizes also honor cultural works in various categories. This year the recipients have been Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (fiction), Liberation by Bess Wohl (drama), We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (History), Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill (Biography), Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Memoir), Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr (Poetry), There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Non-fiction), and Picaflor: A Future Myth by Gabriela Lena Frank (Music).