Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. This article is the first of three on the work that resulted in The Times’s three Pulitzer Prizes this year.
At one point in Michael Schwirtz’s reporting on Russian efforts to destabilize foreign powers, a source texted to cancel a meeting with a warning: “It’s too dangerous. Somebody’s watching you.”
David D. Kirkpatrick followed Russia’s influence to the front lines of Libya’s civil war, and to a field hospital that was missing a wall after a recent bombing. He left when he heard artillery shells exploding in the distance and knew the battle was returning.
And in the Central African Republic, Dionne Searcey sat down with a warlord for an interview in the nation’s capital. She continued asking him questions about Russia’s involvement in the country and its lucrative diamond trade, while he kept an AK-47 pointed at her head.
But even with the risks to their safety, nailing down the story was a priority.
“I had access to a warlord,” Ms. Searcey said. “I didn’t want to mess that up.”
Those reporters, along with members of The New York Times’s Visual Investigations team, were part of the group that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in international reporting, for exposing the ways President Vladimir V. Putin’s leadership asserts its influence around the world. The Times also won two other Pulitzers, for investigative reporting and commentary.
The team “showed how the Kremlin has staged a shadow war to destabilize the West, chase profits and undermine democracy around the world,” Michael Slackman, the assistant managing editor overseeing international coverage at The Times, said in his remarks to the newsroom after the Pulitzer announcement. “Vladimir Putin dared the world to prove it — and these journalists did.”
Four articles by Mr. Schwirtz were in the winning package, including an interview with a Russian assassin that revealed the inner workings of the country’s intelligence operation and a monthslong investigation that uncovered a secret Russian unit working to destabilize Western governments. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s report from Tripoli explored the ways Russian mercenaries were intervening in the Libyan conflict with snipers and coordinated missile strikes. And Ms. Searcey’s article — a story that three Russian journalists lost their lives pursuing — showed how Russia was profiting from its involvement in the Central African Republic.
The two stories in the winning package from the Visual Investigations team, which uncovered how Russia was intentionally bombing hospitals and civilians in Syria, were particularly time-intensive. The project took about seven months, Malachy Browne, the senior producer, said.
The team members brought on three translators and sifted through thousands of Russian radio transmissions. It became clear early on, Mr. Browne said, that the hospital bombings were deliberate attacks — but Mark Scheffler, the team’s executive producer, pushed them to look further and find who was responsible.
The breakthrough came when they heard specific sets of coordinates in the cockpit recordings: Combined with witness interviews, videos and photos, along with the time stamps in digital photo files to verify when the attacks took place, they had the evidence to prove Russia was behind the strikes.
“They sit on the U.N. Security Council. They get meetings with the president of the United States. They’re an international player, and they’re in on all the discussions,” Mr. Scheffler said. “And if they’re willing to participate in or conduct these kinds of attacks, we felt like they should have to answer for them.”
Mr. Schwirtz’s story on the secret Russian operation working to destabilize countries in Europe — a group known as Unit 29155 — was similarly laborious.
“It was totally maddening. There were weeks that would go by when we would find nothing,” Mr. Schwirtz said. “I spent five weeks in Spain digging around and turning up absolutely nothing — aside from having some great food in Spain — but professionally, very frustrating.”
Much of that time, for him and the other reporters, was spent building trust: finding the right sources and forming a strong enough relationship that allowed them to open up and speak candidly about sensitive information.
“I basically spent a year and a half before I was able to do this 29155 story, going back to the same sources again and again and again and again and basically asking the same questions,” Mr. Schwirtz said. “And at one point, the dam just broke.”
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Danger and Detective Work: How These Journalists Won a Pulitzer - The New York Times
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