The Pulitzer Prize has been accused of “desecrating the memory” of Oct 7 victims after awarding a journalist who suggested Israelis could not be hostages.
Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, was recognised by the Pulitzer committee for his “essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza”.
However, Honest Reporting, a watchdog that monitors for anti-Israel bias, found Mr Toha had posted a string of social media posts in which he disparaged Israeli hostages.
In one he questioned how British-Israeli citizen Emily Damari, who was shot and abducted on Oct 7 2023 in the Kfar Aza kibbutz after Hamas gunmen stormed her home, could be considered a hostage.
“So this girl is called a ‘hostage?’ This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a ‘hostage?’,” he wrote.
Mosab Abu Toha questioned how Emily Damari could be considered a hostage – Facebook
Ms Damari, who was released in January after more than 500 days held captive, responded by accusing Pulitzer of having “chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered”.
“Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer. He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honouring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial,” the 29-year-old wrote on X.
“This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.”
Mr Toha is one of several controversial journalists recognised by Pulitzer in this year’s awards, which The Washington Free Beacon, a Right-wing website, said indicate the body’s “obsession with woke politics”.
Other critics pointed out that none of the prize-winners tackled the alleged mental decline of Joe Biden, the former US president who ended his re-election campaign last year following a disastrous debate performance.
The Hill’s Robby Soave praised the “good work” of newspapers including The New York Times and Washington Post but was “struck by what’s missing”.
Ms Damari spent more than 500 days being held captive by Hamas
“There is not a single winner that focuses on president Joe Biden’s cognitive decline… was it not one of the biggest stories of 2024?” he continued.
Mr Soave continued: “The Pulitzer Prize board perhaps was overlooking good reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline because of its own bias.
“Or perhaps there wasn’t enough good journalism on this subject to evaluate because everyone ignored it. Neither thought is particularly comforting to me.”
Tim Graham, executive editor of the Right-wing blog NewsBusters, wrote in an opinion piece: “The 2025 Pulitzer announcement underlined that there was not a single reporting prize over the last four years for exposing anything about President Biden or his administration’s actions.”
Award for abortion bans investigation
Four prizes were awarded for investigating Donald Trump during his first term in the White House, notably for allegations about Russian collusion with his 2016 presidential campaign, he added.
ProPublica, an investigative news outlet, was also given a Pulitzer for its series on how abortion bans in several states, in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v Wade, had led to preventable deaths.
While judges praised its “urgent reporting”, the conservative National Review said the work suffered from “misrepresentations stemming from the authors’ evident bias for abortion rights’”.
Two women who died after taking mifepristone and were featured in the series were not killed by “pro-life legislation”, it argued, but because the abortion pill is “incredibly dangerous” in the first seven weeks of a pregnancy.
Criticism over Mark Warren award
The choice to award Mark Warren, who earned Esquire magazine its first-ever Pulitzer Prize, also came in for criticism.
Warren’s piece, described by Esquire as “a deeply moving account” told the story of Bubba Copeland, a “beloved Baptist pastor and mayor in a small town in Alabama”.
Copeland took his own life after being exposed by a Right-wing news website for posting pictures of children from his community online and encouraging them to transition.
The pastor, of whom cross-dressing pictures were also posted, is also said to have shared images of local women to porn websites.
Posting on X about the award, Genevieve Cluck, founder of the satirical website Reductress, wrote: “Hey @PulitzerPrizes. You’ve just given an award to an article that lionises a sexual predator.
“A man who preyed on women in his own community, and made ‘sissy captions’ using photos of minors.”
Ann Telnaes, the former Washington Post cartoonist who resigned after her sketch depicting Jeff Bezos – the newspaper’s billionaire owner – grovelling before Mr Trump was not published, also received an award.
Ann Telnaes’s cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos grovelling before Donald Trump
Ms Telnaes, who had worked for the liberal newspaper for almost two decades, said it was the first time she “had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at”.
She was praised for her “piercing commentary” and “fearlessness” by the Pulitzer board.
Meanwhile, Percival Everett won in the fiction category for James, a “reconsideration” of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the slave’s perspective, while Susie Ibarra won the Pulitzer Prize for music for Sky Islands, a “musical call to action” about climate change and biodiversity.
The Telegraph has contacted the Pulitzer Prize for comment.
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