Mollie Hemingway spots Pulitzers 'doubling down on prizes they gave to propagandists' who pushed Russia collusion hoax

Doug P. | 1:07 PM on July 18, 2022

In 2018 The Pulitzers gave journalism prizes to reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post for their “Russia collusion” pieces:

Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post

For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)

You know what happened with that “Russia collusion” narrative that the Hillary Clinton campaign was behind, and as a result the Pulitzers received complaints and decided to launch a review.

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway has passed along the results of the probes, and you most likely won’t be surprised:

Even as media credibility craters, Pulitzers are doubling down on the awards they gave to propagandists for perpetrating the false, dangerous, and damaging Russia collusion hoax. https://t.co/gJuRpV5b6c

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 18, 2022

The Pulitzer Prize Board’s press release about the results of reviews of winning entries in 2018 is simply amazing, though frankly not very surprising:

The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign–submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.

These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.

The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.