The Washington Post and The Guardian won the Pulitzer Prize in public service Monday for revealing the United States government's sweeping surveillance efforts in stories based on thousands of secret documents handed over by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The winning entries about the NSA's spy programs revealed that the government has collected information about millions of Americans' phone calls and emails based on its classified interpretation of laws passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, the WSJ reported.
The stories were written by Barton Gellman at The Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, whose work was published by The Guardian US, the British newspaper's American operation, based in New York, according to the WSJ.
Snowden, a former contract employee at the NSA, has been charged with espionage and other offense in the U.S. and could get 30 years in prison if convicted, the WSJ reported. He has received asylum in Russia.
Sig Gissler, who administered the prizes at Columbia University, said the reporters on the NSA story "helped stimulate the very important discussion about the balance between privacy and security and that discussion is still going on," according to the WSJ.
Journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzers are given out each year by Columbia University on the recommendation of a board of distinguished journalists and others, according to the WSJ.
The New York Times won two Pulitzers in photography: Tyler Hicks was honored in the breaking news category for documenting the Westgate mall terrorist attack in Kenya, and Josh Haner was cited for his essay on a Boston Marathon blast victim who lost his legs, the WSJ reported.
The Center for Public Integrity's Chris Hamby won the award for investigative reporting for his reporting on how lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung disease, according to the WSJ.
The Pulitzer for explanatory reporting was given to The Washington Post's Eli Saslow for reporting on food stamps in America, the WSJ reported. No award was handed out for feature writing.
The prize for national reporting went to David Philipps of The Gazette of Colorado Springs, Colorado, for an investigation that found that the Army has discharged escalating numbers of traumatized combat veterans who commit crimes at home, according to the WSJ.
The Pulitzer for international reporting was awarded to Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall of Reuters for their reports on the violent persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, the WSJ reported.
