Reuters journalists win Pulitzer for reporting on Philippine ‘drug war’

MANILA, Philippines – For their “relentless reporting” on the Duterte administration’s ongoing “drug war”, 3 Reuters journalists won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.

Columbia University announced the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners in 14 journalism and 7 letter, drama, and music categories on Monday, April 16.

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall, and Manuel Mogato, a Filipino journalist, were behind Reuters’ winning work, a series called “Duterte’s War”, which looks into the “bloody drug crackdown in the Philippines.”

The 3 won “for relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.”

Baldwin is a special correspondent for Reuters who has investigated the Philippine “drug war” since June 2016. Marshall, who also won in the same Pulitzer Prize category in 2014, is Reuters’ Southeast Asia special correspondent. Mogato, meanwhile, is Reuters’ political and general news correspondent in Manila.

Baldwin, Marshall, and Mogato won over two other finalists in the International Reporting category: the staff of the Associated Press, for a series on the human cost of the US-led defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq’s Mosul; and the staff of BuzzFeed News, for their investigation that proved operatives with apparent ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin have engaged in a targeted killing campaign against his perceived enemies on British and American soil.

Read about the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners in other categories here.

The Philippines’ “drug war” began in 2016, shortly after Duterte assumed office. But police began crackdowns on suspected illegal drug users and pushers in communities even before Duterte was officially president.

According to government authorities, the “drug war” has claimed more than 4,000 lives since July 1, 2016. Human rights groups, however, have pegged it at more than 12,000.

While police insist that many of those killed in operations “fought back”, this argument has been disputed. Philippine policemen have been accused of resorting to extralegal means in the name of the anti-illegal drugs campaign. – Rappler.com