for finding that the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year dropped its inquiry into a financial company a month after it gave White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm a $180 million loan. http://bit.ly/2FcyNHL
When a South Carolina Army veteran died last month, his family decided to invite The Associated Press to take one of the few spots the funeral home would allow for people at the service. His loved ones knew this funeral and their mourning would look different from the usual rituals, and they wanted to share that with other families faced with grief in the coronavirus outbreak.
North Carolina-based journalist Sarah Blake Morgan took on the delicate task. She shot photos and video from an appropriate social distance, not only to stay safe but out of respect for the family. In her images and words, she painted a picture of a ritual that once brought people comfort but now brings new tension and challenges.
For her sensitive work delivering a moving Only on AP package on a human angle of the virus outbreak, Morgan wins this week’s Best of the States award.
for landing the scoop that China had granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for the president’s family to potentially develop a host of branded businesses in the country. http://apne.ws/2mxjueE
delivered an exclusive on the Royal Foundation, revealing that the conservation charity founded by Prince William, an outspoken environmental advocate, keeps its investments in a bank that is a major backer of fossil fuels. And more than half its investments are in a “green” fund that owns shares in multinational food companies that buy palm oil from companies linked to deforestation.Based on a tip, Davey spent months poring over the charity’s public filings. The London-based climate accountability reporter also interviewed experts on environmentally responsible investing, connected the foundation’s investments to cases of deforestation and sought comment from all the principals, ensuring that any critique of the Royal Foundation’s investment practices would be fair and accurate.No news organization came close on the widely played story — others either used the AP piece or cited AP in their own reporting.Read more
for his exclusive report that the Kushner family real estate business has amassed over a half-million in unpaid fines for New York City sanitation and building violations.https://bit.ly/2x977gihttps://bit.ly/2CNbWly
for examining the Trump family's renewed interest in a luxury resort project in the Dominican Republic and weighing that against the president's promise not to engage in any new foreign business deals while in office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/re...
First word came from a trusted source cultivated by AP investigative reporter Garance Burke – Customs and Border Protection was holding 250 migrant infants and children at a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, without enough food, water or basic sanitation. “Are you available today?” the source asked, and AP swung into action.
El Paso, Texas, correspondent Cedar Attanasio met with attorneys who had just interviewed the children, while investigative reporter Martha Mendoza set to work contacting lawmakers and government officials. Burke, with the help of attorneys, found parents of the young children who were locked inside and inconsolable. The trio worked through the night, drafting a story focused on the fact that girls as young as 10 were caring for a toddler handed to them by a guard.
The story had enormous impact almost immediately. National outlets scrambled to match the story, citing AP extensively. The reporters’ next-day story was about lawmakers’ calls for change, and on Monday Mendoza and Burke again broke news: The Trump administration was moving most of the children out of Clint.
For a highly significant scoop that dominated the news cycle on multiple days and returned world attention to the border crisis, Mendoza, Burke and Attanasio win AP’s Best of the Week award.
for revealing that Dow Chemical pushed the federal government to ignore the findings of federal scientists who point to a family of widely used pesticides as harmful to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species. https://www.apnews.com/a29073ecef9b4841b2e6cca0720...
Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades is a tragedy of epic proportions as more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence.
Beyond the enormous scope of the exodus are the individual harrowing stories of life, death and the struggle for survival. Reporter Todd Pitman and photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe from Bangkok, videojournalist Rishabh Jain from Delhi and photographer Dar Yasin from Kashmir teamed up to produce a riveting package that reconstructed the heartbreaking journey of one Rohingya man and his family from Myanmar to Bangladesh.
Their package earns the Beat of the Week.
teamed up for an powerful, bittersweet portrait of a family struggling to cope with an unexpected and unrelenting responsibility faced by thousands during the pandemic: caregiving for an elderly parent in the wake of nursing homes ravaged by COVID.For this final installment of the 2021 series “Scars of COVID,” the pair spent days in Rotterdam Junction, N.Y., with Susan Ryder and her mother, Betty Bednarowski — who had been in desperate condition when the family brought her home from a nursing facility in lockdown. National writer Geller and photographer Wong sensitively chronicled the family’s exhausting routine of daily care as well as the uplifting moments of shared time with 79-year-old Betty.Wong also recorded audio and worked with producer Samantha Shotzbarger on an evocative audio piece that brought another layer of humanity to the journalism. And Shotzbarger brought all the elements together in compelling online presentation.Discharges from nursing homes are up during the pandemic, and Geller sought out other families that have made the decision to take on caregiving. In most cases the story was the same: Happy moments tinged with incredible stress for adult children whose lives were upended by the hours of care their elderly loved ones require.https://aplink.news/k3xhttps://aplink.photos/dsf
for a sensitive portrayal of the family of a 24-year-old Pennsylvania mayor whose cause of death a year ago had been kept under wraps. The family gave a detailed and heartbreaking account of his heroin overdose, enabling a hugely compelling story and beautiful portraits that generated high praise and AP chart-topping engagement from readers across the country, and front-page play in papers from one end of the state to the other. https://bit.ly/2Lh2jvU
for providing an exclusive, all-formats look at a rare trip to Mexico by young undocumented immigrants to reunite with their long-lost family members just days before the start of the presidency of Donald Trump and his promised crackdown on immigration. http://apne.ws/2kXD0S3
for his assessment of how President Trump’s businesses have fared in the first two years of his presidency, determining that his family business has taken a major hit. https://bit.ly/2s7EPR2
An arrest in a decades-old Idaho cold case started Boise correspondent Rebecca Boone digging, aiming to tell a broader story about the victim, the suspect and the colorful — and at times shady — pro rodeo and gambling circuit.
Forty years ago, Dan Woolley was shot in the parking lot of a small-town bar in the Idaho mountains. The shooter crossed the street to the only other bar in town, ordered a drink and declared, “I just killed a man.” Then he disappeared. But late last year an 87-year-old man was arrested in Texas for the slaying — a former pro rodeo rider.
Boone spent months building trust with Woolley’s son and other sources, talking to long-time central Idaho residents and historians. All while juggling her state coverage of breaking news, the pandemic and the 2020 election.
The result of her efforts, an engaging 1,900-word Saturday piece, was among AP’s top stories for the weekend. For an absorbing read that is a textbook example of a general assignment reporter chipping away at a challenging enterprise piece, Boone earns this week’s Best of the States award.
for breaking the story of how a Texas town was given a federal contract to operate a controversial family detention and in turn gave a hefty management contract to a private prison company, retaining a portion of the money for itself. https://bit.ly/2JjTkJx
for information obtained through records requests that allowed him to report exclusively on what happened inside the home of New York-New Jersey bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami during a family dispute in 2014. http://abcn.ws/2dymw09
for a story that revealed how former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s turn against President Trump wasn’t enough to convince blacks to let her return to the family fold. https://bit.ly/2MJbjwW
for finding a new angle on the 9/11 anniversary, reporting on people who were so shaken after the 2001 attacks that they decided to move from the New York and Washington areas. They included a man who moved his family to Florida, only to see his children live through the Parkland school shooting. https://bit.ly/2PT14En
An exclusive analysis conducted for AP showed that in the shadow of the pandemic, a quiet surge in non-COVID “excess deaths” in U.S. nursing homes could top 40,000 above and beyond what is normal.
To find out why, the AP team of reporters Matt Sedensky and Bernard Condon, with video journalist Allen Breed and colleagues, interviewed nursing home authorities and family members, documenting severe cases of neglect and prolonged isolation for residents not infected with the virus, much of it due to chronic understaffing. The text story and video piece received prominent play and were among the most widely viewed on the AP News app on the day of publication.
For exposing a grim consequence of the pandemic affecting an already vulnerable population, the team of Sedensky, Condon and Breed earns this week’s Best of the States award.
revealed in evocative text and photos the challenges of a severe COVID case and a long rehabilitation. Their compelling work was made possible by building trust and access with one Indiana man and his family. Murphy heard about Larry Brown, an Indianapolis man who finally came home after nearly 80 days in the hospital – some 50 of those days on a ventilator – and realized even local outlets had not done justice to the story.With expertise as a health writer, Murphy learned about the case and safely navigated spending time with Brown to see what his life is like now. Photojournalist Darron Cummings spent several days with the family, vividly capturing how Brown interacts with the kids, and how his hand therapy and neurology appointments work.Brown sometimes became apprehensive over the story; the AP pair earned his trust by explaining their plan and the importance of sharing his story of recovery and the long-term effects of COVID. https://bit.ly/3d6v1gOhttps://bit.ly/2FgorrM
