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The 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner in International Reporting
For a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, using any available journalistic tool, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).

Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty of Associated Press

For a revelatory yearlong series detailing the atrocities of the war in Yemen, including theft of food aid, deployment of child soldiers and torture of prisoners. The reporting was supported by the independent Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.

Maggie Michael and Nariman El-Mofty (with Lee Keath of the Associated Press) accept a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. (Fellow winner Maad al-Zikry was denied entry from Yemen by the United States and appeared via FaceTime on Michael's phone.) (Eileen Barroso/Columbia University)

Winning Work

Biography

Maggie Michael is a Cairo-based Egyptian journalist who joined AP in 2002, covering conflicts across the Middle East with special focus on the political and religious dynamics of a volatile region. In recent years she has been a point person for coverage of the fighting in Yemen and Libya especially, and has conducted several high-impact investigations as a member of AP’s investigative unit, including stories on secret prisons in Yemen and civilian casualties in Iraq.

Maad al-Zikry is a video journalist who played a vital role in documenting Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, US drone warfare, and atrocities committed by all sides of the conflict. His March 2016 photo of a severely malnourished infant, Udai Faisal, at a Sanaa hospital became an iconic image from the near famine caused by the war. In 2018, he and the AP team travelled across Yemen to cover the spread of hunger and the plight of those displaced by the war.

 

Nariman Ayman El-Mofty is a Canadian-Egyptian photojournalist. She started as a photo editor at the AP Middle East photo desk in Cairo. Since 2016 she has worked for AP as a photojournalist covering Egypt, Yemen and other Mideast stories.

 

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in International Reporting in 2019:

Rescinded

The International Reporting Pulitzer jury chose a New York Times story and accompanying podcast, “Caliphate,” as one of three finalists in the category. In 2020, after Canadian authorities charged a figure profiled in the entry with perpetrating a terrorist hoax, an internal Times investigation concluded that the work failed its "standards for accuracy.” The Pulitzer Prize Board accepted withdrawal of the entry as an appropriate resolution of this matter.

The Jury

Ethan Bronner(Chair)

Senior Editor

Brian Carovillano

Vice President/Managing Editor

Jonathan Kaufman*

Director, School of Journalism

Marc S. Lacey

Associate Managing Editor/National Editor

Mark Whitaker

author, journalist and editor, New York, N.Y.

Winners in International Reporting

2017

The New York Times Staff

For agenda-setting reporting on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s power abroad, revealing techniques that included assassination, online harassment and the planting of incriminating evidence on opponents.
2016

Alissa J. Rubin

For thoroughly reported and movingly written accounts giving voice to Afghan women who were forced to endure unspeakable cruelties.
2015

The New York Times Staff

For courageous front-line reporting and vivid human stories on Ebola in Africa, engaging the public with the scope and details of the outbreak while holding authorities accountable.
See All International Reporting

2019 Prize Winners

See All 2019 Winners