Wiretap: The Pulitzers, the passenger, and the police

The 2017 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded Monday and among the winners was the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold “for persistent reporting that created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities.”

Include in your must-reads among the list of Pulitzer winners, Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which won the prize for general nonfiction, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which won for fiction.

In news that has people talking, United Airlines’ CEO is not winning any prizes in PR for his defense of the dragging of a passenger who refused to get off an oversold flight from the plane. Video shot by fellow passengers features the jaw-dropping sight of a security officer heading toward the cockpit, dragging the limp form of a bleeding passenger behind him. The Internet erupts into the obligatory “well, whose fault is that?” debate. At last check, outrage at United prevails.

Also in the chatter department, the Alabama governor has, as the saying goes, “resigned in disgrace.” You can read that everywhere, but see what the locals are saying here.

Advertisers continue to flee Fox’s Bill O’Reilly show in the aftermath of a New York Times piece about multiple payouts to women who accused him of sexual harassment. The paper’s Upshot vertical turns to social science to answer the question of why women don’t report sexual harassment. Short answer. One word. Starts with the letter R.

Speaking of the New York Times, the paper has a new(ish) feature called “Right and Left: Partisan Writing You Shouldn’t Miss.” Add that to your morning reading as well. Today’s begins with two different points of view from the right on the Trump administration strike on Syria.

A lot of people have a lot of things to say about Trump’s Syrian policy. A lot of people except Trump. Via the NYT.

Victor Davis Hanson goes after Susan Rice in the National Review.

Vox takes a look at the impact of the current 654 miles of walls along the Mexican border upon the environment, including migratory patterns, as a sign of what may come with more wall building.

The Washington Post on an unexpected rescue mission in a Kansas Congressional district where a Democratic candidate – a Democrat!, a Democrat in a district that went for Trump by 27 points!, a Democrat in the hometown of Koch industries! –has posed an unexpectedly difficult challenge for the Republican challenger in a special election.

The Tampa Bay Tribune has received much-deserved kudos for its “Why Cops Shoot” package, an exhaustive examination of every police shooting in the country’s third largest state over a six-year period. An equally excellent, which is to say, powerful and eye-opening way, to catch up with this story is at Radiolab. The two-part podcast starts here.

Photo via www.pulitzer.org