A teenager who recorded the murder of George Floyd in a clear and unrelenting single shot with her cellphone has been recognised with one of the highest honours in US journalism.
People gathering at a memorial at George Floyd Square. Cell phone footage of the death of George Floyd led to protests, and heightened awareness of the Black Lives Matter struggle, and police violence. Photo: AFP
The Pulitzer Board awarded Darnella Frazier a special citation for the video she said had haunted her ever since, showing Floyd's death beneath the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis policeman.
Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd in a trial during which Frazier's video was played repeatedly.
The citation at the 2021 Pulitzer Prize ceremony is a rare instance of the board recognising the journalistic achievement of someone with no professional experience in the field, a striking distinction in the genre sometimes known as citizen journalism.
In 2020, "the nation's news organisations faced the complexity of sequentially covering a global pandemic, a racial reckoning and a bitterly contested presidential election", Mindy Marques, co-chair of the Pulitzer Board, said at the announcement ceremony, which was broadcast online.
Minnesota's Star Tribune won the prize for breaking news reporting for what the board called its "urgent, authoritative and nuanced" coverage of Floyd's murder at the hands of the police. The Associated Press won the breaking news photography award for its images of the protests that followed Floyd's killing, while Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times won for editorial writing for his work on bail reform and prisons.
The Louisville Courier-Journal, and its staff received awards for "unflinching" and "impactful" coverage of the killing of Breonna Taylor and its aftermath, and "the legacy of systemic racism in the police force and other civic institutions".
The New York Times and The Atlantic were honoured for chronicling the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cell phone footage that rocked a nation
Frazier, 18, was recognised for recording a "transformative video that jolted viewers and spurred protests against police brutality around the world", Marques said.
Frazier's video shows Chauvin kneeling on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man in handcuffs, for about nine minutes while arresting him on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill in May last year. Floyd begs for his life before dying on the Minneapolis road.
Frazier has rarely discussed the video she made, but testified for the prosecution at Chauvin's murder trial this year, where members of Floyd's family were sometimes seen averting their gaze each time her video was replayed.
She told jurors that she had been taking her 9-year-old cousin to buy snacks when she saw "a man terrified, scared, begging for his life", and so pulled out her cellphone and hit record. She uploaded the video to Facebook later that night, where it would be watched by millions of people around the world.
Chauvin is due to be sentenced on 25 June.
Frazier could not be reached for comment on Friday, and a lawyer who represented her during the Chauvin trial did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Her video is widely credited with bringing attention to a police killing that might otherwise not even have made the local news.
It has been compared to the similarly galvanising videos made by George Holliday in 1991 of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, a Black motorist, and by Ramsey Orta in 2014 of a New York City policeman killing Eric Garner, a Black man, with a banned chokehold.
The Pulitzer Board called Frazier an example of "the crucial role of citizens in journalists' quest for truth and justice".
Michael Deas, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, said Frazier's video "fulfilled a public service".
"She is fittingly worthy, placing her in the company of past recipients, like Ida B Wells," he said, referring to the pioneering Black journalist.
Even before Friday's awards ceremony there was speculation that Frazier's video might be recognised. In December, it earned Frazier the 2020 Benenson Courage Award from PEN America, presented to her by the filmmaker Spike Lee.
On the first anniversary of Floyd's murder, Frazier wrote about the lingering trauma in a message on Facebook.
"A lot of people call me a hero even though I don't see myself as one. I was just in the right place at the right time," she wrote.
"Behind this smile, behind these awards, behind the publicity, I'm a girl trying to heal from something I am reminded of every day."
-Reuters