for a New Delhi-datelined investigation that uncovered a systematic lack of transparency in the multibillion-dollar study abroad industry. http://bit.ly/2uXFzsm
for reporting exclusively that the New York Police Department had installed bullet-resistant glass in patrol cars, but not in mobile command vehicles like the one in which an officer was shot to death. http://bit.ly/2tkTDtD
The approach to Vatican Correspondent Nicole Winfield came from a member of a task force that had investigated care at Italy’s foremost pediatric facility, known as “the pope’s hospital.” The contact feared that serious concerns raised by the task force hadn’t been addressed two years later.
That tip, in late 2015, set the AP on a 20-month investigation of the Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital. Winfield teamed up with London-based Medical Writer Maria Cheng to reveal a dark chapter in the facility's history. They found that children sometimes paid the price as administrators tried to make the money-losing enterprise turn a profit, and Vatican officials took pains to keep the concerns quiet.
Their work earns the Beat of the Week.
for their smart planning and riveting work, under highly dangerous conditions, in covering the final phase of the battle against the Islamic State group in Mosul. http://bit.ly/2uf89aY
Statehouse reporters know to follow the money, that to hold government accountable we need to know where taxpayer money goes and how it is used. Nevada temporary legislative reporter Alison Noon did just that recently and helped bring about a promised change in policy that will make the workings of the state capital more transparent.
Noon first began reporting a story that rural health clinics offering family planning services to low-income women had slashed services and were turning women away for lack of funding after federal grant money dried up.
In the course of her reporting, Noon learned the program’s federal funding had been cut after a scathing federal review that showed widespread mismanagement and poor medical practices at the rural clinics. That highly critical federal report went unmentioned when the program’s administrator sought additional state funds during the legislative session.
Noon set out to learn why. She found Nevada did not require state administrators to share the results of such federal reviews with anyone – not the governor, not department heads, not state auditors. Her reporting led to a recently proposed requirement that such reviews be shared with Nevada auditors.
For her unmatched APNewsBreak, Noon wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for landing an exclusive telephone interview with a South Carolina prison inmate who calmly confesses his role in the deaths of four fellow prisoners. https://apnews.com/f939c602fe9f40e3a33ebe78331a08e...
for breaking major developments in the Senate Republicans’ struggles to get a health care bill, from the first word of the Congressional Budget Office’s report that 22 million would be uninsured under the bill, to a key senator’s defection, to plans to delay a vote until after the July 4th recess. http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-pol...
for their exclusive reporting revealing how local and federal authorities in North Carolina dragged their feet investigating a complaint about an assault lasting nearly two hours at the Word of Faith Fellowship church, a pattern of reluctance that has spared the church any real consequences. https://www.apnews.com/38b9d91484424429b629bc0a275...
for being the first to report the rules governing who would be barred from entering the United States after the Supreme Court allowed President Trump's travel ban to go into effect in modified form. https://apnews.com/9c3d06565daf40cc86f0f80f5ad0eff...
for getting photos of prison inmates moving furniture at the New Jersey statehouse and defending press freedom. Corrections officers erroneously told Catalini such photos are illegal and ordered him to remove the images from his phone. Catalini stood his ground and saved the images in his deleted photos folder. After receiving a letter from an AP lawyer, officials conceded the officers were wrong. AP had already moved the images. https://apnews.com/348a45a1135843468642d420be093de...
Jon Krawczynski and Tim Reynolds, for keeping AP out front during NBA free agency, combining for 28 bylines on trades deals, including news that Blake Griffin would stay with the Los Angeles Clippers on a $175 million five-year contract.
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/ap-sources-...
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/sports/ap-sou...
Iraqi Humvees wind their way through the pockmarked streets of Mosul. The rattle of gunfire and thud of a nearby airstrike fill the air. Terrified civilians scurry across the road to safety.
In the APs first long-form 360 video project, Middle East Photo Editor Maya Alleruzzo teamed up with video editor Claudia Prat to produce a riveting and harrowing video, "House to House: The Battle for Mosul." The 8-minute video earns Alleruzzo the Beat of the Week.
for cross-format teamwork and exclusive coverage of alleged labor abuses at a shoe factory in China making Ivanka Trump-branded items. Kinetz and Ting managed to talk to workers who complained of overtime that stretched past midnight, steep production quotas and crude verbal and even physical abuse. Shih and Ting closely followed the story of three activists detained while investigating the plant, including getting exclusive photos and video when they were later released.
https://apnews.com/6cfff3ca3c7d422594556044369bfb8...
https://www.apnews.com/d120059433fd4767b2e3a1c2477...
New York City police reporter Colleen Long was taking the elevator at police headquarters on a quiet Friday afternoon before the Fourth of July weekend when she overheard a couple of patrol officers suddenly talking with alarm. “Oh my God,” one of them said. “Something’s going on at Bronx Lebanon Hospital. I think an active shooter.”
Long got off on the next stop and immediately called a source as she took the stairs down to her office in the second-floor press room, known as “the shack.” By the time she got to the desk, she had enough information to call the New York City bureau with a barebones APNewsAlert: “NEW YORK (AP) — Police are responding to a report of shots fired inside a New York City hospital.”
So began a bureau-wide reporting effort on a story that would unfold in unusual detail, even in the long litany of American gun violence. For leading a team effort that put the AP out front and kept us there, Colleen Long wins the Best of the States Award and the $300 that goes with it for the second week in a row.
for revealing the extent of the United Arab Emirates' network of secret prisons in southern Yemen – at least 18 black sites – and the pervasiveness of torture. Her work forced U.S. officials to confirm for the first time that American interrogators have questioned detainees from the prisons, a potential violation of international law that would counter efforts to disassociate the U.S. war on terror from the use of torture. http://apne.ws/2s5h22B
for being one of the first journalists on the scene when a man drove a van into a group of worshippers after late-night prayers outside a London mosque. Negas streamed live images via the Bambuser app beating AP's competitors by at least 45 minutes and even supplied live video to AP's U.K. Partner SKY News before they went live from the scene. http://bit.ly/2tpWx40
for breaking the news that a live Asian carp had been caught in a Chicago waterway beyond a fortified electric barrier designed to stop the voracious fish, and about nine miles from Lake Michigan where its presence would threaten the ecosystem. http://wapo.st/2sqcvXU
for revealing the curious tale of a former Iranian-born CIA gunrunner and his business interests around the globe. They shed a light on the relationship between a prominent journalist and the mysterious figure he had cultivated as a secret source. http://apne.ws/2sla51H
for heading to the southwestern city of Mianyang as soon as news broke that a landslide had engulfed a village and capturing dramatic photos and video from the site. http://apne.ws/2t4urt7
for landing a scoop about an effort by a broad group including the 28-nation European Union, the United States, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Israel and four other countries to pressure China to scale back plans for intensive inspections of imports that they say would hamper access to its fast-growing market. http://on-ajc.com/2skMfTt