for following her instincts, using her sources and monitoring a government website to report that despite officials suggesting otherwise, federal land managers were moving to open up oil and gas leases near an historical park and sites Native Americans regard as sacred. https://bit.ly/2Sgd8V2
for his analysis of tens of thousands of health and safety inspections in a package that exposed for the first time a decade-long decline in living conditions for millions of poor tenants in federally subsidized housing. https://bit.ly/2V7Huu5https://bit.ly/2WUq15N
for acting on an email to the AP Fact Check team from the Nevada governorâs office, alerting the team to scam ads on Facebook that used photos of politicians to offer unsuspecting homeowners lucrative tax incentives for installing solar panels. Seitz and Anderson uncovered a long-running, widespread scam â connected to a man previously sued by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising â that exposed the threat of harvesting personal data from unwitting users, as well as Facebookâs inability to police political scam ads ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. https://bit.ly/2uYB5CN
for obtaining exclusive details and interviews in seeking to hold police accountable for the death of a man caught growing 10 pot plans on public land. The man was run over by a bulldozer commandeered by state police as they searched thick brush for him, a slow-speed âchaseâ described by an expert on police procedure as âoutlandish.â Rubinkam learned that police had privately apologized to the family for the incident, and he had first word of a federal civil rights lawsuit against state police and others. https://bit.ly/2FBXj3G
Police videos of officers shooting unarmed black men have sparked angry protests in Chicago, Sacramento and other U.S. cities. But APâs Ryan Foley wondered: Is it the norm for departments to release footage from body-worn and dashboard cameras?
Foley, based in Iowa City, Iowa, a member of APâs state government team, investigated and found that many departments routinely deny public access to their videos of officer-involved shootings and other uses of force.
Foley filed open records requests related to roughly 20 recent use-of-force incidents in a dozen states. His letters were met with denial after denial as police departments routinely cited a broad exemption to state open records laws: They claimed that releasing the video would undermine an ongoing investigation. But critics say the exemption is often misapplied to keep embarrassing or compromising video footage from public view.
To tell the story visually, Central Region video journalist Noreen Nasir dug through APâs archives to highlight the moments and emotions that followed the deaths of unarmed black men, including the fatal police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. She also interviewed a woman in North Dakota whose brother died after being shot in the back of the head during a struggle with police, adding a crucial perspective to the video.
At the same time, Panagiotis Mouzakis, multimedia animation producer in London, used the many denial letters Foley had collected to create a video graphic that was incorporated into Nasirâs video, and Beat Team visuals editor Alina Hartounian developed a social plan that helped the package find a huge audience.
For shining a light on how police departments continue to withhold visual evidence and for devising creative ways to illustrate the story, Foley, Nassir and Mouzakis share this weekâs Best of the States award.
For years, the federal government has denied widely sharing its terrorist watchlist with the private sector. But American Muslims have long had suspicions to the contrary, as those mistakenly placed on the list faced everyday difficulties ranging from making electronic bank transfers to boarding airplanes.
Source building and careful document review by Northern Virginia correspondent Matthew Barakat finally revealed that the federal government shares its terrorist watchlist with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities. The governmentâs acknowledgement of the practice, buried in a civil lawsuit, was significant because officials have repeatedly denied that the list was given to private groups. Barakatâs sources and his thorough coverage of the 2-year-old case had him ready to jump on the filing as soon as it became public.
His APNewsBreak on Feb. 19 earned wide attention, including hundreds of members using the story. Others scrambled to catch up, with The Washington Post crediting AP for breaking the story when it ran its own version in the paper.
Over the next two days Barakat was also first to report on a call for a congressional probe, and he was the only reporter in court when a federal judge berated government lawyers, ordering them to disclose the private sector entities to the lawsuitâs plaintiffs.
For his methodical document work and source-building that helped hold the federal government accountable, Barakat wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
for exclusively reporting that every day many millions of gallons of contaminated water flow from mining sites under federal oversight, a torrent that is poisoning aquatic life, tainting water supplies and costing taxpayers billions of dollars in cleanup costs. https://bit.ly/2Ua9FVz
for careful planning and quick reaction on verdict day, putting AP ahead of all media with the news that notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin âEl Chapoâ Guzman was convicted at his closely watched federal drug-trafficking trial. AP was credited with breaking the highly competitive news at outlets around the globe. https://bit.ly/2VhusqD
for being ahead on the news that federal prosecutors are investigating whether the National Enquirer had violated its cooperation and non-prosecution agreement by allegedly engaging in blackmail and extortion of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. https://bit.ly/2Ear7nuhttps://bit.ly/2S4t2gS
for staying on top of the lingering effects of the record-long federal government shutdown, revealing that agencies still had not given back pay to thousands of workers nearly two weeks after the shutdown took effect. https://bit.ly/2SPgmiA
for breaking the story of how a Texas town was given a federal contract to operate a controversial family detention and in turn gave a hefty management contract to a private prison company, retaining a portion of the money for itself. https://bit.ly/2JjTkJx
From the first blasts, gunfire and panicked phone calls, the Nairobi bureau immediately assumed a terror attack, aggressively mobilizing resources in a textbook example of cross-format journalism that put the AP ahead on every element of a major breaking story: an extremist attack on a hotel complex that left 21 people dead, in addition to the five attackers.
Senior video producer Khaled Kazziha called freelance video journalist Joe Mwihia, who slipped into the scene with Kenyan special forces, filming exclusive footage as officers cleared rooms, guns drawn, and ran down rumors of a grenade. His three hours of exclusive reporting earned him the byline on the text story based on his detailed contributions.
Meanwhile, staff video journalist Josphat Kasire rushed to the scene with a LiveU and quickly scooped competitors with the first live shot showing burning cars, injured people, survivors fleeing in droves and witness accounts. His compelling footage became the heart of the text story, and the live images continued overnight as the attack unfolded.
Contributing to the outstanding video coverage were freelance cameraman Idi Ali Juma, freelance camera assistant Moses Ndungu and freelance producers Geoffrey Kaviti and Desmond Tiro.
âSheer bravery,â international editor Ian Phillips said later of the teamâs work.
Around the same time, Nairobi photographers Ben Curtis and Khalil Senosi captured gripping images of people fleeing the mayhem and security forces aiming weapons at attackers, among their standout photos.
The play for the photos, video and text was off the charts, including major client Sky News running live and packaged videos on a day busy with Brexit news.
For their formidable breaking news coverage across all formats, the Nairobi team of Kazziha, Curtis, Senosi, Mwihia, Kasire, Ali Juma, Tiro, Kavita and Ndungu wins APâs Best of the Week.
Special Citation
The Best of the AP committee has also awarded a special lifetime citation to Libya freelance photographer and video journalist Mohamed Ben Khalifa, who died Jan. 19 when the military convoy with which he was traveling came under missile fire in southern Tripoli.
The committee honored Ben Khalifa for the body of his work, carried out with integrity and courage for The Associated Press and his other media clients.
The Au Pair cultural exchange program provides U.S. families with low-cost child care, but former au pairs said they were also asked to feed chickens, help families move and do gardening â all while working at below minimum wage. That prompted a judge to grant class-action status to 11 former au pairs last February and drew the attention of Denver breaking news staffer Colleen Slevin, who spent the next 11 months learning all about the world of au pairs and conducting interviews, such as one with a former au pair who said she felt like a slave.
Slevin also built a relationship with the attorneys for the au pairs and negotiated with them for exclusive notice when the $65.5 million settlement was filed last week.
The result was an APNewsBreak on the settlement that went unmatched for hours and received play around the world.
For her perseverance in building sources and tracking a story of international interest while covering breaking news over a three-state region, Slevin wins the weekâs Best of the States award.
John Flesher, correspondent, Traverse City, Mich., and Brady McCombs, correspondent, Salt Lake City, for their work discovering a nationwide flurry of stopgap efforts by nonprofit groups, state agencies and businesses to protect national parks from an onslaught of litter and other damage as the federal government shutdown left most open. https://bit.ly/2TJKUPz
for a creative approach to frame newly released body-camera footage showing Milwaukee police shooting an unarmed black man, contrasting the way that encounter ended in violence against the peaceful resolution that officers achieved with a white man who confronted officers in the same neighborhood while holding an assault rifle. https://bit.ly/2TIR8iE
For several intense weeks, APâs all-formats Paris team had been contending with the violent street protests of the yellow vest movement. But a new threat to Franceâs peace suddenly arose when a man opened fire near the well-known Christmas market in Strasbourg.
On the evening of Dec. 11, the gunman shot and fatally wounded five people and injured a dozen more at the market. French authorities soon identified the suspect and said that the attack was being investigated as an act of terrorism. With that, France and Benelux Bureau Chief Angela Charlton and her all-formats crew quickly pivoted from the street protesters to focus on the attack, just as a massive manhunt was getting under way.
After AP confirmed that that police in Strasbourg had shot and killed the suspect on Dec. 13, Charlton scoured online white pages for potential witnesses, reaching a neighbor who, amazingly, was able to share images from directly across the street.
The exclusive video and photos that they negotiated were the result of teamwork and lessons learned from covering past attacks in identifying sources and deploying AP forces. And the close-up images told the story: the shooterâs body is seen slumped in a doorway as police and forensic officers move in.
The content, which had not yet appeared anywhere, was heavily used by broadcast and online clients around the world, both as video and for screengrabs.
For their resourceful, determined efforts to obtain exclusive images on this breaking story, the team of Angela Charlton, Alex Turnbull, Chris Noelting, Mstyslav Chernov, Jeff Schaeffer and Masha Macpherson receives the APâs Best of the Week award.
for being first to report that acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker made a glaring error when he told an audience of law enforcement officials that a terrorist who set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey had two co-conspirators overseas and that one was in custody. They checked it out and found none of it was true. The Justice Department was forced to issue a correction and the reference to Rahimi having co-conspirators was taken out of a transcript posted on the Justice Department website. https://bit.ly/2DS1k3r
for seeking comment from Chief Justice John Roberts after President Donald Trump made disparaging remarks about judges on a federal court circuit. Robertsâ response, an unprecedented rebuke of Trump, scored a major scoop on what quickly became the top story in the United States. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and most, if not all other news organizations, mentioned that Robertsâ statement was the result of APâs inquiry. https://bit.ly/2PGAUsK
for scoring an APNewsBreak on one of the most important details of how Olympic leaders in the United States are handling sexual abuse cases, finding that $2.2 million in key federal funds could not be used for the most pressing need of investigating any cases, with a backlog of more than 800 to be resolved. https://bit.ly/2TbqAqE
News of a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue broke on a Saturday morning with first word of the attack reaching AP at around 10:30 a.m., just as many staffers were still covering the spate of pipe bomb attacks against prominent critics of President Trump.
Within minutes Pittsburgh photographers Gene Puskar and Keith Srakokic rushed to the scene, providing some of the first images and text feeds.
Meanwhile, with spotty early reports on the extent of casualties â and competitors reporting various numbers â Washington law enforcement reporter Eric Tucker and Harrisburg reporter Marc Levy worked sources. Between them, they enabled the AP to break word that at least 10 had died â the final toll would be 11 â in what would become the worst attack on Jews on American soil.
It was just one highlight of a seamless and extraordinary effort by colleagues around the country, resulting in impressive customer engagement with AP text, photos and video. Though the shooting happened on a Saturday, it accounted for three of the top dozen video downloads of the week, highlighted by a chilling interview by New York videographer Robert Bumsted and Philadelphia newswoman Maryclaire Dale with a survivor who hid in a closet.
Photos received wide use as well, including a poignant series of images by Philadelphia photographer Matt Rourke who raced to cover the first vigil for victims that night, while APâs strong relationship with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ensured the hometown paper shared its strongest images from the scene.
For headlining an extraordinary multiformat collaboration that kept the AP in a commanding position on a second straight major breaking story, Puskar, Srakokic, Rourke, Tucker, Levy, Dale and Bumsted share Best of the Week honors.
