for their newsbreak that the Russian ambassador to the UN had intervened with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Donald Trump's behalf after the UN’s human rights chief criticized the GOP nominee. http://bit.ly/2dzAVHE
When a bomb exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, early on Christmas morning, AP’s local staff upended their holiday plans and sprang into action. They were soon joined by colleagues, many working remotely, who jumped in to help coordinate coverage and piece together what had happened.
The team overcame severely limited access and communications to quickly deliver photos and break stories over several days, including the news that human tissue had been found at the explosion site, and the bomber’s chilling prediction of fame.
The outstanding work attracted heavy play and readership.
For mobilizing quickly and resourcefully over the Christmas holiday, Kimberlee Kruesi, Mark Humphrey, Eric Tucker, Mike Balsamo, Denise Lavoie and Mike Kunzelman share AP’s Best of the Week honors for the last full week of 2020.
for their investigation into the risks posed by medical device industry, documenting industry clout, regulatory shortcomings and human suffering caused by medical devices that have maimed or killed patients. https://www.apnews.com/ImplantFiles
for getting exclusive access to Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as he visited a South Sudanese refugee camp and defended foreign aid in the face of President Trump’s proposal to make deep cuts to U.S. humanitarian aid. http://apne.ws/2oVi945
for revealing that in the turmoil over the government shutdown, a tax that pays for medical treatment for black lung sufferers was quietly cut in half. Lovan broke the story with a muscular multimedia package demonstrating the decision’s impact at its most human, visceral level – and placed that in the context of the Trump administration’s promises to save the coal industry. https://bit.ly/2YkBNYuhttps://bit.ly/2WveFFd
worked sources to report exclusively that criminal charges would be filed against former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and others in the Flint water crisis, one of the worst human-made environmental disasters in U.S. history.White was reporting an unrelated story when he asked a source about any developments in the Flint investigation. That paid off with a tip — confirmed with a second source by Eggert — about the imminent charges.The bombshell exclusive hit a full two days before the official announcement and was AP’s most-used story by customers online that day, widely credited by local and national news outlets, including the Detroit Free Press and the New York Times. https://bit.ly/35T67z6
for breaking the news that the Obama administration, in its final hours, sent $221 million to the Palestinian Authority, enraging congressional Republicans, who had been holding up the money intended for humanitarian, security and other aid. http://apne.ws/2jRHgEr
For years, AP’s Khalil Hamra and Oded Balilty have captured the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through their award-winning photography. This summer they turned their lenses away from the violence and onto a place of refuge for both sides: the stretch of beaches along the Mediterranean Sea.
With Balilty making images from Tel Aviv and Hamra from Gaza, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers produced an evocative essay showing Palestinians and Israelis basking on the beach, separated by 70 kilometers (40 miles) and free from fear of the next eruption of fighting. The photographers have met just once, years ago, but communicated online about what they were seeing, made pictures, shared them and then set out to find similar ones from their respective sides.
The immersive presentation includes an engaging video revealing more about the photographers and how they applied their craft.
For a strikingly unique, creative collaboration that brought, in Balilty’s words, “something positive” from a part of the world beset by conflict, Hamra and Balilty earn this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner award.
uncovered evidence of deep dysfunction inside Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, including criminal cases dropped and seasoned lawyers quitting over practices they say aim to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.The investigation by Dallas-based Bleiberg, based on hundreds of pages of public and confidential records, data analysis and interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees, found numerous examples of an agency in disarray, including efforts to turn cases to political advantage, staff vacancies ballooning and, last month, a series of human trafficking and child sexual assault cases dropped after losing track of one of the victims.Read more
teamed up to put a very human face on the millions in America who are struggling to put food on the table during the pandemic. The pair spent an extended period with Janeth and Roberto, an immigrant couple on the outskirts of the nation’s capital who regularly skip meals to ensure their 5-year-old daughter has enough to eat. Their moving text and photo package, sensitively rendered, brought home how the virus outbreak stalks people on the margins with hunger, as well as disease, and how the social safety net fails many.https://bit.ly/3601QIR
Earmarked for deportation, the immigrant children, some mere toddlers, were parked in nondescript hotels – out of sight and, the Trump administration thought, out of mind. But not out of reach of an Associated Press exclusive.
With an investigation based on source work, court records and witness accounts, immigration reporter Nomaan Merchant exposed how the Trump administration held children in hotels despite federal anti-trafficking laws and court rulings that mandate child-appropriate facilities.
Merchant’s exclusive sparked outrage and accusations of child abuse. Five days later, the Trump administration said it would not expel 17 people, including children, detained at one Texas hotel, and the hotels pledged to stop allowing the practice.
For his investigative story that punctured layers of secrecy and changed the fortunes of all-but-invisible immigrant children, Merchant wins AP’s Best of the Week award.
offered a penetrating, well-researched look at the puzzle behind the disaster we are living: “A nation with unmatched power, brazen ambition and aspirations through the arc of history to be humanity’s ‘shining city upon a hill’ cannot come up with enough simple cotton swabs” to test its people. Woodward looked at the many ways America has fallen short, including a western Massachusetts medical center that was forced to pick up masks more than five hours away using two tractor-trailers disguised as grocery trucks, dodging interference from Homeland Security and taking separate routes back in case one load got intercepted on the highway. https://bit.ly/3bOI2KD
A face transplant: It’s one of the rarest of surgeries, a medically complex, emotionally fraught procedure – and a challenge to cover as a truly revealing news story and not just a sensational headline.
That’s why AP National Writer Sharon Cohen’s narrative of the first face transplant performed at the renowned Mayo Clinic was so remarkable, combining detailed reporting on state-of-the-art medical science with a unique tragedy-to-triumph human story. The narrative, Andy’s New Face, which engaged readers and commanded front pages for days after its release, earns the Beat of the Week.
showed the human side of the national reckoning on race, revealing how a sense of community and purpose has emerged among the small band of demonstrators who have gathered for weeks in search of justice for Breonna Taylor at Louisville’s “Injustice Square.”
The Louisville-based reporters covered the protests that emerged just after Taylor was killed by police in March, and then returned to check in on a small core group of demonstrators who had hung in for the long haul. They found a group that had discovered in themselves a sense of community and purpose greater than many of them had known before.
Galofaro told the story through the eyes of Amber Brown, a Louisville bus driver who feels so connected to Taylor and so committed to justice that she returns day after day to the small public square where the protesters gather.https://bit.ly/32iqHayhttps://bit.ly/3m8Tqq6
revisited the families and friends of 10 people among more than 60 victims of COVID-19 previously profiled by AP in 2020. Over the course of the pandemic, the global cooperative’s journalists have aimed to capture the human toll, one soul at a time. They’ve portrayed the deceased across ages, races, nationalities and social class, and documented the impact of losing someone. For this final Lives Lost story, reporters wanted to know how survivors were coping and ask what they remember most about their lost loved ones. But instead of photos or video, AP made illustrations of revealing objects or other telling details associated with the departed. Even during a very busy news week, the story and illustrations were widely used by news outlets. One family member thanked AP “from the bottom of his heart,” while another said: “I appreciate everything you’ve done for my family.” https://bit.ly/3s1M0bm
had spent years cultivating a rapport with Juan Francisco Sandoval, Guatemala’s special prosecutor against corruption, who had won praise from U.S. officials for work that rattled Guatemala’s most powerful citizens, including President Alejandro Giammattei.Her efforts paid off when Sandoval was abruptly fired, a move that would lead the U.S. to temporarily suspend cooperation with the office of Guatemala’s attorney general. After attending the post-firing news conference, Pérez was ushered into the office of the country’s human rights ombudsman and invited to be the sole journalist to accompany Sandoval in his small convoy of armored SUVs as he fled the country. Across the border in El Salvador, Pérez reported on his comments and took photos and video, agreeing for safety reasons to publish only once he had safely boarded a flight to the United States hours later.Pérez’s story moved early the next morning and was used by major national and international outlets; a competitive agency didn't report Sandoval's exit until later that day and did so citing the human rights ombudsman.https://aplink.news/z1ehttps://aplink.video/mt3
for breaking news, along with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, on one of the most important human rights issues of our time: Secret documents showed, in the Chinese government’s own words, that detention camps for more than a million Muslims are not for “voluntary job training” but rather for forced ideological and behavioral re-education.https://bit.ly/2pShDJ3https://bit.ly/2r4siRo
for being first to report, through persistent reporting and eyewitness visits, that Iraq is closing camps for the displaced and sending hundreds of families to remote, heavily guarded and barbed-wire-ringed outposts that they effectively cannot leave. The story was widely shared on social media and cited by human rights organizations and included rare video from inside the camps as well as photos by Issa.https://bit.ly/2RVpIIZhttps://bit.ly/2MhvcZm
's coverage of Los Angeles County's worst massacre led to an array of stories and visuals that portrayed not only the human suffering and complex cultural significance of the community where the attack occurred, but also held police accountable for their hours-long delay in alerting the public that a mass killer was on the loose.
Bernard Condon, Jim Mustian and Julie Watson reconstructed a detailed timeline of the shooting to confidently report that it took five hours after the shooting for authorities to alert the public that the gunman was on the loose. The story was widely played and was followed by the Los Angeles Times, which played catch-up on its own turf. AP was one of only several outlets to obtain video surveillance footage showing a hero wresting the weapon from the shooter and was among the first news outlets to report details on all 11 victims.Read more.
for bringing new attention to a growing humanitarian crisis with a pair of powerful, complementary stories on the bleak conditions facing migrants forced to wait at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump administration policies. Verza reported that drug cartels and gangs are profiting from the policy by robbing and extorting the migrants, while Merchant revealed the dire medical conditions at a migrant camp just feet from U.S. soil.https://bit.ly/2s0z5M8https://bit.ly/2XFDxvB
