New York Times Leads Pulitzer Pack, Washington Post Honored Despite Correction

NEW YORK -- The New York Times came out ahead of its colleagues on Monday, receiving three Pulitzer Prizes, the top journalism honor awarded annually by Columbia University. Meanwhile, The Washington Post was honored for its coverage of the Secret Service's security lapses, despite a major correction to one of its scoops on the subject.

The Times' staff won the International Reporting award for its two-month investigation of the Ebola outbreak, and Times freelance photographer Daniel Berehulak received the feature photography award for images from West Africa. In addition, The New York Times' Eric Lipton won in the Investigative Reporting category for reporting on the way lobbyists and lawyers aggressively court state attorneys general, a story that prompted follow-up investigations by outlets in several states.

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig won the National Reporting award for work that helped shake up the Secret Service after a series of security lapses. But the Pulitzer Board's decision may prove controversial given that Leonnig erroneously described a security guard who rode in an elevator with President Barack Obama as a convicted "felon" in one of the articles submitted. The Post didn't correct Leonnig's report for more than a month after publication, ultimately doing so only a day before Kenneth Tate, the security guard who accompanied Obama in the elevator, revealed himself in The New York Times and provided a much different account than Leonnig's anonymous sources had.

Another one of Leonnig's prizewinning stories was a May 2014 report about Operation Moonlight, a Secret Service operation in which agents were reportedly diverted from their jobs to protect a personal friend of the agency's director. Leonnig's sources said that the operation went on for more than two months, but an Inspector General report later found "no evidence" that it lasted more than a few days.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/2015-pulitzer-prizes_n_7101286.html