Winner – The Wall Street Journal: The fall of Steve Wynn
- Contributors – Alexandra Berzon, Chris Kirkham, Elizabeth Bernstein, Kate O’Keeffe
- Judges’ Comments – The Wall Street Journal’s reports on Steve Wynn’s “decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct” laid bare what had been an open secret among those working for the Wynn Resorts CEO. It took the Journal’s meticulously documented report, however, to trigger Wynn’s resignation as finance chair at the Republican National Committee and as the casino giant’s CEO — the first major public-company CEO to be felled by #MeToo claims. The Journal went beyond the alleged salacious acts and sexualized atmosphere that Wynn normalized at Wynn Resorts to document how top managers pressured employees to be quiet and ignored complaints about Wynn’s activities, explaining how such an atmosphere is perpetuated. “It also didn’t stop at the eye-popping tales from the victims but also explored the ineffective work culture which allowed the abuse to exist, wrote one judge. “Tough, persistent, memorable reporting. Clear writing. I still remember reading each of these stories the day of publication,” wrote another.
Honorable Mention – The New York Times and The Guardian/The Observer of London: Facebook, disinformation and privacy
- Contributors – New York Times staff with contributions from Carole Cadwalladr for The Guardian/The Observer of London, Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, Paul Mozur, Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang and Jack Nicas
- Judges’ Comments – The New York Times’ Facebook series peeled back the covers on previously unreported aspects of Facebook’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, how its executives responded to criticism over that role and how the social network was weaponized in another country, Myanmar, to incite ethnic cleansing. The authoritative reporting of this hugely important story included good use of documents, and called the company to account for being slow to acknowledge the issues and deal with them rather than “Delay, Deny and Deflect,” as one of its stories was titled.
