On Monday (July 18), the Pulitzer Prize board rejected requests from former President Donald Trump to have the prizes awarded to the New York Times and Washington Post revoked.
In 2018, the Washington Post and New York Times were awarded Pulitzer Prices in National Reporting for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential elections.
Since October, Trump has repeatedly requested the board rescind the awards, calling the prize-winning pieces “totally incorrect,” adding that they “have become worthless and meaningless.”
However, on Monday, after the Pulitzer Prize board commissioned a review on the work being disputed, it concluded it found no reason to pull back the awards.
In a statement, the board, which said the inquiry was prompted by Trump and other unnamed individuals, revealed: “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”
They concluded, “The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.”
The board also noted that the reviews were conducted by independent parties with no connection to either of the outlets or each other.
However, this reassurance may not satisfy Trump, who wrote to the board in May, claiming the papers’ reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election was “a distortion of fact and a personal defamation.”
At that time, Trump asserted that he would file litigation if the Pulitzer Prize board didn’t do “the right thing on its own.”
