Columbia Journalism School Dean and Pulitzer Prize Board member Steve Coll reflected on the outcome of Robert Mueller's report and its implications for investigative journalism in the pages of The New Yorker, where he is also a staff writer.
"President Trump, for all his demagoguery, has yet to marginalize professional reporting. In many newsrooms, investigative journalism is enjoying a renaissance, and it is having a strong impact, within and beyond Washington," Coll writes.
Although Mueller's investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election cleared President Donald Trump and his campaign of collusion with Moscow, Coll commends the role of journalists in investigating allegations of wrongdoing — including the New York Times and Washington Post, which shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for their coverage of the subject.
"Investigative reporting can change politics, as it did in Alabama, in 2017, when voters elected the Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate after the Washington Post, and others, revealed the alleged misconduct of his Republican opponent, Roy Moore. The First Amendment protects all political journalism, even when it serves merely as a megaphone for particular candidates, but voters will benefit most from legions of reporters working without fear or favor," he continues.
In 2018, the Pulitzer Prize Board recognized the New York Times and Washington Post "for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration."
Read the full New Yorker piece here.
Read The New York Times' and Washington Post's National Reporting prize-winning entry here.