The Pegasus Project, a special investigation by the Guardian, Washington Post, and the Forbidden Stories Network of media partners, has won a prestigious George Polk Award in Journalism in the Technology Reporting category.
Established in 1949 by Long Island University (LIU), the George Polk Awards commemorate CBS correspondent George Polk who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The annual awards focus on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results, honouring special achievement in journalism.
The Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation into NSO Group which sells hacking spyware to governments, was an unprecedented leak that revealed how the spyware technology had been used by repressive governments to commit widespread human rights abuses.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media says:
“This award is a huge honour for the Guardian and our reporting partners who helped bring this powerful, global investigation to millions of readers around the world.
Rigorous investigative reporting is the lifeblood of the Guardian and the Pegasus project was one of the biggest and boldest investigations in our history, resulting in major impact around the world. In an age when public interest journalism faces more threats than ever, this is a timely reminder of the power of investigative reporting and the importance of independent, quality journalism.”
Paul Lewis, head of investigations, Guardian News & Media says:
“The Pegasus Project revealed widespread abuse of a powerful surveillance tool – and showed what can be achieved with collaborative investigative reporting. Thanks to Long Island University and the George Polk Awards for this accolade, and recognition of this vital journalistic effort that held both people and power to account.”
This is the third time that the Guardian has won a George Polk Award. The Guardian also won in 2014 for investigative stories on NSA surveillance based on top-secret documents disclosed by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, and in 1960 for a foreign correspondent dispatch. In 2019, Guardian and Observer reporter Carole Cadwalladr was also named as part of the New York Times’s Polk award for her reporting on the Cambridge Analytica Files.
The award win follows the publication of the Guardian’s latest investigation, Suisse secrets, a global journalistic collaboration into a leak of data from the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse.
Notes to editors
About Guardian News & Media
Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, one of the world’s leading English-language news websites. Traffic from outside of the UK now represents around two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience. In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer.
