for revealing that Detroit would be by far the toughest city to count, based on AP’s exclusive data analysis of the difficulties facing the U.S. Census Bureau in 2020. The team’s multiformat package explained why the city in transition poses such a formidable challenge. https://bit.ly/2EsNGmDhttps://bit.ly/2Z73k0D
used sharp planning and fast election day pivots to put AP well ahead of the competition, delivering unmatched live and edited video coverage of the first round of France's presidential election — a vote with implications for Europe’s future.As the election unfolded Sunday, senior producer Schaeffer recognized leading French broadcasters heavily using AP’s morning live feed from voting stations. Seeing the demand, he and the team quickly committed to live coverage throughout the day. That usage by French broadcasters was particularly telling: They chose AP over their own coverage — and crucially, over AP’s major French competitor, a tribute to the broad, balanced coverage which dominated AP’s live offerings throughout the day.Read more
gained the trust of poll workers in Belarus who gave exclusive, on-camera interviews detailing extensive fraud in the Aug. 9 election. Protesters and opposition politicians have called the election rigged since the moment the results were announced showing authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko won with 80% support. Reports of fraud at the polls have appeared on social media and in some local independent media, but often featured anonymous interviews and piecemeal accounts. Litvinova and Manenkov wanted to go deeper. They reached out to poll workers who at first were too afraid to speak on-the-record and on camera – especially since protesters had been beaten by police and arrested. The pair worked tirelessly to gain the trust of several poll workers, eventually convincing several poll workers to share their stories with the AP, on camera and with still photos by Grits.What the workers told them was stunning: One said she was asked to sign a document summing up the results with the vote totals blank before voting ended for the day. Another who pointed out violations during the vote counting was fired on the spot. A third said he falsified results to favor Lukashenko and was now overcome with guilt for betraying the trust of the voters.
As they worked on this story and continued to cover the protests, Manenkov and AP Russia-based photographer Dmitri Lovetsky were arrested and ordered out of Belarus. Minsk-based photographer Grits and reporter Yuras Karmanau also were arrested and had their press credentials revoked. As a result, the two made the decision to leave Belarus.https://bit.ly/32dyjv0https://bit.ly/2RczmoF
delivered textbook coverage with timely and complete all-formats reporting of Kosovo’s election held amid the pandemic, freezing temperatures, an economic downturn and stalled negotiations with wartime foe Serbia.After weeks of planning for Sunday’s election, video journalist Zhinipotoku offered live coverage of the early vote while Kllokoqi and Bajrami had shots of the top candidates casting their ballots at other polling stations. After the polls closed, the video crew and photographer Kryeziu ran from the city’s main square to the headquarters and offered shots of the winners’ celebration. The following day, correspondent Semini and team were rewarded for weeks of contact building, landing an interview with incoming Prime Minister Albin Kurti, which was carried live by AP.https://bit.ly/3aRQbQphttps://bit.ly/3qRXIUJhttps://bit.ly/3sltZULhttps://bit.ly/2O1rHuQ
worked with statehouse reporters across the U.S. to highlight just how many election deniers are seeking statewide offices that play a role in overseeing, certifying or defending elections.Democracy team reporter Riccardi and his colleagues found nearly one in three Republicans running for governor, secretary of state or attorney general have echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread fraud costing him reelection, according to the AP review. Only 40% would acknowledge that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president.Graphic artist Duckett formatted the data for a series of interactives embedded in the story, which made headlines and found an audience even while much of the media was focused on the death of Queen Elizabeth II.Read more
used journalistic savvy and resourcefulness to overcome both an internet ban and AP’s competitors to deliver outstanding all-formats coverage of Uganda’s Jan. 14 presidential election.Uganda had gone to great lengths to discourage international observation of the polls. Just getting into the country with all-important live broadcast equipment required driving into the country at a less-policed border point.And Uganda was widely expected to cut its internet on election day. When it did, reporter Muhumza was unfazed, having wisely filed comprehensive advance copy to colleagues outside the country. He updated with key quotes and details sent by text message.Despite the internet cut, the video team of Kasire and Mwihia noticed that international roaming data was still working. They promptly switched all the SIM cards in their LiveU unit, delivering an incredible four-hours of agency-exclusive live video showing polls opening and heightened security. Authorities eventually got wise and cut off roaming data too.Meanwhile, Delay’s decision to rent a vehicle with black-tinted windows also paid off, allowing him to move around the capital to make compelling photos of security forces without drawing unnecessary attention.Ultimately, the team used its local contacts and managed to negotiate their way into the heavily guarded state broadcaster, where they continued to discreetly file developments for days via state TV’s still operational fast internet — an enormous edge over our competitors who had to rely on much slower communications. The final triumph was to patch and broadcast, live and exclusive, a clean feed of President Museveni's national address on his win.https://bit.ly/39FxH3Chttps://bit.ly/2KEm8l0https://bit.ly/396i1Hy
AP produced an exclusive photo, won record-breaking video usage and dominated global coverage of far-right firebrand Geert Wilders’ unexpected electoral win, thanks to expert planning, quick thinking and deep knowledge of Dutch politics.Read more
both delivered scoops on the U.S. Department of Justice and election investigations.Balsamo kept hearing rumors of the DOJ looking into election cases, but he knew there were rules prohibiting such investigations during an ongoing election. He kept asking until a source revealed a memo Attorney General William Barr had sent to prosecutors nationwide authorizing federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the election is certified, despite the fact there was no evidence of widespread fraud giving prosecutors the ability to go around the longstanding policy. The scoop reverberated nationwide, especially as concerns grew over Trump’s ability to use the levers of government to hang on to power. The story was widely used, with Politico, Axios and NBC citing AP in their coverage of Barr’s memo. AP’s alert and a full story were on the wire more than 40 minutes before other major news organizations obtained a copy of the memo.Meanwhile, Las Vegas reporter Michelle Price was digging into how the DOJ was pursuing allegations from the Trump campaign that voters may have cast improper ballots in Nevada. Price and Balsamo teamed up with voting reporter Anthony Izaguirre to report out two ongoing investigations, and how they may not hold up to scrutiny. Price used her contacts to get exclusive first-person accounts from U.S. military members who thought they’d been wrongly accused of fraud for voting by mail from out of state by Nevada authorities and DOJ officials.https://bit.ly/2Kqu09ehttps://bit.ly/3lOlxKR
spent a chunk of Election Day documenting George Floyd’s brother in New York.With racial justice a central issue in the election, race and ethnicity reporter Morrison thought it fitting to tell a story through the lens of someone who lost a loved one to police violence. He had met Terrence Floyd, the younger sibling of George Floyd, in Minneapolis over the summer at the spot where a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes. Terrence, who lives in New York, agreed to let Morrison shadow him exclusively as he rode around the city in an SUV calling on a loudspeaker for people to vote, and later while waiting for election results at a watch party. At one point Terrence chanted “Don't forget to vote!” in rhythm with musicians outside a Brooklyn museum, a moment captured by Morrison, photographer Franklin and video journalist Shaffrey.https://bit.ly/38FgXe2https://bit.ly/3kqmQyb
for breaking news of a significant policy change by the FBI: The agency now pledges to alert states of attacks on elections systems and not just the county or local government that is hit. This means that state officials will know about attacks before certifying results in an election. https://bit.ly/2NQIWfC
for breaking news leading up to the 2020 U.S. headcount. Starting with a smart follow-up by Schneider showing that federal government’s attempts to get states to surrender driver’s license information have been a bust so far, and concluding with a weekend spotlight story by Seitz and Lerman showing how new concerns about misinformation and fraud could cause major problems for the Census Bureau.https://bit.ly/36mZDqShttps://bit.ly/2N0gbgI
broke the news that copies of confidential software for a widely used voting machine had been released publicly during an event held by supporters of former President Donald Trump, leading to wider concerns about election security.After a local elections clerk in Colorado leaked confidential information about her county’s voting machines, Cassidy, an Atlanta-based state government reporter, began calling her sources to get a sense of what the breach could mean for other states that used the same voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems. Her source reporting uncovered yet another leak, this time in a county in Michigan where Trump allies had challenged his election loss. The software copies ended up being distributed publicly at a symposium hosted by the CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, a major Trump supporter who has helped spread his lies of election fraud.The software leak from Antrim County, Michigan, had not previously been reported until Cassidy learned of it. Election security experts said taken together, the leaked software could provide hackers with a “practice environment” to probe for vulnerabilities in Dominion machines, which are used in 30 states. https://aplink.news/kj8
In the runup to Super Tuesday, The Associated Press showed why it’s at the top of the class when it comes to elections coverage.
As Super Tuesday neared, the AP had an issue on its hands: how will it call races that night when it would have no VoteCast poll — but the TV networks had their exit polling, which could have put the AP at a competitive disadvantage? Serena Hawkins, data scientist for AP’s Decision Team, got to work.
In just two weeks, she researched, developed, tested and deployed a new approach to race calling that allowed the AP to declare Donald Trump and Joe Biden winners in several states with a very small return of counted votes.
That new model, used by the AP on Super Tuesday, put AP’s race calls ahead in states where the TV networks didn’t have a poll, and only a few minutes behind in states where they did — and with no errors in its calls.
Meanwhile, the AP, for the first time, was able to deliver its vote count directly to news consumers through a new immersive elections experience on APNews.
The effort was captained by development lead Linda Gorman, with team members Ryan Best, Michelle Minkoff Carlson, Chaithra Chandraiah, Shelly Cheng, Chad Day, Phil Holm, Dan Kempton, Humera Lodhi, Maya Sweedler, Pablo Barria Urenda and Robert Weston. On the night of Super Tuesday, the recirculation rate for these pages was, in a word, stratospheric.
For all these reasons, Serena Hawkins and the Elections Data Visualizations Team are Best of the Week — First Winner.
AP journalists combined to produce clear, multiformat explanatory coverage of the complicated electoral process in Nevada, and why it matters. Read more
teamed up on a revealing story about the influence of conspiracy theories on countless Republicans across the country. Election administration reporter Cassidy researched the “Nebraska Election Integrity Forum,” determining the event was indeed part of the election conspiracy movement. Omaha reporter Beck and freelance photographer covered the event, engaging with attendees even as one prominent speaker complained about journalists who are “election fraud deniers.”The result was a comprehensive look at those who are continuing to peddle lies about the nation’s elections and the people who fervently believe those lies. The story also described how violence is woven into the conspiracies — from statements about civil war to calls for putting certain election officials before firing squads. The piece engaged readers online and landed on more than a dozen front pages.Read more
turned seemingly mundane testimony of a legislative hearing into a timely scoop, breaking the news that the Food and Drug Administration had skipped nearly all its inspections of baby formula plants during the first year of COVID, likely contributing to the severe shortage of formula in the U.S. and raising questions about what the federal government could have done to prevent it.Using information he gleaned from Capitol Hill testimony by the three top baby formula manufacturers, Washington-based health writer Perrone identified the companies’ plants in the FDA’s online database and discovered the agency hadn’t inspected Abbott’s plant — responsible for a recall of formula that exacerbated the nationwide shortage — for two years between 2019 and 2021. In fact, the FDA later acknowledged only three of the nation’s 23 formula plants were inspected in the first year of the pandemic.Read more
Justice Department reporter Mike Balsamo has spent months cultivating sources at the Department of Justice, earning a reputation as an objective journalist who reports fairly and accurately.
His relationships paid off with an exclusive interview of U.S. Attorney General William Barr, in which Barr said the DOJ could find no evidence of widespread voting fraud, dramatically undercutting President Donald Trump’s insistence to the contrary.
“I knew ... he had made probably the biggest news he has in his tenure as AG,” said Balsamo. His story topped the news cycle and resonated for days. No other news outlet could match it and AP was widely cited for the scoop.
For persistent, evenhanded reporting on the Justice Department beat resulting in the interview that netted one of AP’s most consequential news coups of the year, Balsamo wins AP’s Best of the Week honors.
followed a straightforward path to reveal flaws in the U.S. Census Bureau’s homeless count: They found the uncounted themselves.Price literally looked beneath the glitter of Las Vegas, in the tunnels beneath the city, to find people who hadn't been counted in a city where an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people are without homes. And Schneider, AP's expert on all things census, leaned on his unmatched national network of sources to show that the problems were widespread. He bolstered the story with reporting on a federal report about flaws in the count — yet another government operation disrupted by the coronavirus — and spoke to an expert who said the problems could make Black and Latinos more likely to be missed in the 2020 count. https://bit.ly/35hmnJF
The source’s text said there was something “really troubling” to pass along.
Tami Abdollah, Washington national security reporter, had just returned to covering cybersecurity – a topic she has followed off-and-on since 2015. What the source told her was big: New election systems purchased across the United States were running on outdated Windows 7 systems, making them vulnerable to hackers.
It was a great tip, but it required a lot of work to determine the scope of the problem. The result was an exclusive text and video package that received huge play and raised alarm among state and national lawmakers. Abdollah revealed that the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.
For combining source reporting with meticulous research to break major news on one of the biggest issues ahead of the 2020 election, Abdollah wins this week’s Best of the States award.
AP landed exclusive access to the intimate moments shared by the winner of a regional election in northeastern Spain.Read more
