Pulitzer Prizes Reflect New Low For U.S. Media
No award was given by Columbia University's Pulitzer Prize Committee for coverage of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, probably because Western media did not really cover the two-year pogrom.
It’s hard to imagine what the bottom could look like for U.S. media if it wasn’t reached on Monday.
When Columbia University’s Pulitzer Committee announced the Pulitzer Prizes for 2025, there was no award to a U.S. media outlet for reporting on the two-year siege of Gaza, the death of more than 52,000 Palestinians (mostly women and children), the effective obliteration of international law by the U.S. to protect Israel, or the continuing attack on the free speech of U.S. college students protesting the genocide.
There also was no recognition of the 176+ Palestinian media workers who were killed in Gaza after Israel told the U.S. media it couldn’t go into Gaza except in “escorted” tours by the military.
“We are here to celebrate American excellence, American greatness in journalism, the arts and letters,” said Marjorie Miller, administrator, Pulitzer Prizes.
The Pulitzer Committee bestowed Pulitzers on the staffs of the New York Times (NYT), Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal for covering the U.S.’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan, the fentanyl crisis, and the attempted assassination of then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, respectively.
The Pulitzer for International Reporting went to the NYT and Declan Walsh for a “revelatory investigation of conflict in Sudan” and included “chilling forensic accounts of Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine.”
All of these are worthy efforts, but they were hardly the big story in 2024. Israel’s siege of Gaza has garnered virtually worldwide condemnation, and arguably has made the United States, Israel’s chief sponsor, an international pariah.
‘Israel has relentlessly and mercilessly turned Gaza into an inferno of death and destruction’ - Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy, and Campaigns at Amnesty International.
One Pulitzer touched on Gaza. The Commentary Award was given to a Palestinian poet and essayist, Mosab Abu Toha, who contributed essays to The New Yorker. Miller said Toha’s essays were “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza… to convey the Palestinian experience after more than a year and a half of war with Israel.” (Note: The Pulitzer Committee’s characterization of Gaza as being at war with Israel ignores the fact that Israel has refused to allow food or medicine into Gaza for more than two months and is literally starving Palestinians to death.)
The Guardian, a British publication, reports that Toha, 32, was detained in 2023 by Israeli forces as he tried to flee his home in Gaza, along with his wife and their three young children. He said soldiers “separated me from my family, beat me, and interrogated me.” He was finally able to leave and escape to the U.S. after friends abroad applied pressure for his release.
‘Unbowed Media’
Miller complained about legal harassment of the media by Pres. Trump and the “banning of books” (presumably referring to elementary school books on the joys of transgenderism). However, she said, “despite all of this, today is a day for celebration… for courageous reporting … from unbowed news media.”
Unbowed media? Is this the same U.S. news media that didn’t go into Gaza because Israel said it couldn’t, except for occasional media tours arranged, escorted and supervised by the Israeli military to disseminate propaganda?
The only real reporting for the U.S. audience about Gaza was from Palestinian journalists, some of whom were targeted for death, along with their families.
Al-Jazeera journalist, Wael al-Dahdouh, lost his wife, two children and a grandson as a result of Israeli bombing in 2023, endured a drone attack himself that killed his cameraman in late December, and lost another son, also an Al-Jazeera journalist, along with another journalist, in an Israeli drone strike targeting their car on Jan. 7, 2024. One could say that Wael al-Dahdouh was unbowed.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists since it began collecting data almost three decades ago, with almost 70% of the 124 journalists and media workers killed that year by Israel.
The Pulitzer Committee, like the American media, simply ignored the carnage visited upon the Palestinian journalists. That’s disappointing. And that’s the state of the U.S. media in 2025.
The Unbowed Decision Makers
Receiving a Pulitzer was once thought to be the highest honor in journalism. In reality, the Pulitzer Committee has always been a highly political and tight-knit club that trades awards among its members. A review of the 2025 awards shows this remained unchanged.
Still, one hoped that at least one of the so-called professionals below would step up and champion the Palestinian journalists assassinated in Gaza while New York editors and reporters lunched at fancy restaurants in Manhattan.
Alas, no.
Below are the 2024-2025 Pulitzer Board includes:
Elizabeth Alexander, President, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York, NY.
Anne Applebaum, Author and Staff Writer, The Atlantic.
John Archibald, Reporter and Columnist, AL.com.
Nancy Barnes, Editor, The Boston Globe. (No relation)
Nicole Carroll, Executive Director, Local Journalism Initiative and Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University.
Sewell Chan, Senior Fellow, Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, University of Southern California.
Gina Chua, Executive Editor, Semafor.
Jelani Cobb, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia University.
Gabriel Escobar, Editor and Senior Vice President, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Carlos Lozada, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times.
Kelly Lytle Hernández, Professor of History, African American Studies & Urban Planning and Thomas E. Lifka Chair of History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Kevin Merida, Former Executive Editor, Los Angeles Times.
Marjorie Miller, Administrator, The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California.
Emily Ramshaw, Co-Founder and CEO, The 19th.
David Remnick, Editor and Staff Writer, The New Yorker.
Claire Shipman, Acting President, Columbia University.
Ginger Thompson, Managing Editor, ProPublica.
Natasha Trethewey, Board of Trustees Professor of English, Northwestern University.
I really like your writing style Patricia. I originally subscribed because I was left permanently disabled as a result of workplace abuse and you were the first (and only) person who writes about it. But your talent really reaches beyond that. This piece is really tight and succinct; it stays on point and makes its point quite elegantly.
Thank you, Sally!