FOR THEIR COVERAGE on the Philippines’ drug war, Filipino journalist Manuel Mogato and his Reuters colleagues Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall are among this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners, as announced by the esteemed awarding body on its Web site.
The Reuters journalists won for international reporting while its photography staff won in their category for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh. It was the first time Reuters has won two prizes in one year.
Mr. Mogato and his colleagues were recognized for exposing the methods of police killing squads in Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s war on drugs. The said journalists “demonstrated how police in the President’s ‘drug war’ have killed with impunity and consistently been shielded from prosecution,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said.
The coverage included a report that revealed how a police anti-drug squad on the outskirts of Manila had recorded an unusually high number of killings. Many members of the squad came from a distant place that was also Mr. Duterte’s hometown, where the campaign’s brutal methods originated during his time as mayor there.
The Pulitzers are not a new distinction in Philippine journalism. In 1941, journalist Carlos P. Romulo, who thereafter became distinguished in diplomacy, won a Pulitzer for distinguished newspaper correspondence, according to an entry on Mr. Romulo in the Encyclopedia International.
Malacañang congratulated Mr. Mogato for his citation but also defended the drug war as a “legitimate” operation.
The Reuters photography staff was honored for images of the violence endured by the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, as they fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. “The extraordinary photography of the mass exodus of the Rohingya people to Bangladesh demonstrates not only the human cost of conflict but also the essential role photojournalism can play in revealing it,” Mr. Adler said.
Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been jailed in Myanmar since Dec. 12, charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, while investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in Rakhine state.
In the United States, major media took other Pulitzers for reporting that shaped the political and cultural agenda. The New York Times and the New Yorker magazine shared the honor for public service for their reporting on sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
The Washington Post won the investigative reporting prize for breaking the story that the Alabama US Senate candidate Roy Moore had a history of courting teenage girls. The Moore report came as stories of men abusing their power over women abounded, contributing to changing public attitudes. Moore, a Republican backed by President Donald Trump, had been favored to win the special election but lost to Democrat Doug Jones.
The Times and the Washington Post shared the honor for national reporting for their coverage of the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.
The Pulitzers have been awarded since 1917, after being established in the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. The 17-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chose the winners in 14 journalism categories plus seven that recognize fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry, general nonfiction and music.
Kendrick Lamar became the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize, taking the music award for his album DAMN. — main report by Reuters

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