On May 6, ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, which is the Pulitzer board’s highest honor, for the “Friends of the Court” investigative series on influence and ethics at the U.S. Supreme Court. The award was ProPublica’s seventh Pulitzer in 16 years of operation.
Addressing reporters and editors over video conference and in our New York office, senior editor Jesse Eisinger, the leader of the reporting team, said:
“What buoys me is that everyone in this room knows that our work is undoubtedly about more than prizes. We are in a privileged position in this world. We can orient ourselves entirely around the search for truth. We aren’t perfect, and we don’t have a monopoly on the truth, but we care about it more than any other value. It’s a dangerous moment for our profession, the most dangerous of my lifetime, and I think in the country’s modern history. But I remind myself that we have no loyalties, belong to no groups, call for no prescriptions, believe in no creeds above the truth. And for that, I am grateful.”
We are continuing to track the impact of this groundbreaking investigation. This month, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow, which were first revealed by ProPublica. The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not need to disclose such gifts. “Justice Thomas’s critics allege that he failed to report gifts from wealthy friends,” his lawyer previously said in a statement issued on the justice’s behalf. “Untrue.” In the new filing released Friday, however, Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019, writing that he “inadvertently omitted” the trips on his previous reports.
The Pulitzer board also recognized a collaboration between The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE as a finalist in the explanatory reporting category. The investigation of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, revealed that states across the country are providing law enforcement officers with devastatingly insufficient training on mass shootings.
Read about our impact in the areas of housing, health, criminal justice, environment and more in ProPublica’s Impact Report for January-April 2024.
