Martha Mendoza

Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press journalist

Martha Mendoza (born August 16, 1966) is an Associated Press journalist whose reporting has helped free over 2,000 enslaved fishermen and prompted action by the U.S. Congress and the White House.[1]

She earned her first Pulitzer Prize in the Investigative Reporting category in 2000 as part of a team of Associated Press (AP) journalists that uncovered the massacre of Korean civilians by U.S. soldiers at the No Gun Ri bridge during the Korean War.[2] Her second Pulitzer in 2016, for reporting that revealed seafood widely available in U.S. stores was being processed by slave labor in Southeast Asia, was the AP's first Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in its history.[3] On September 21, 2020, Mendoza won an Emmy Award for her collaboration documentary "Kids Caught in the Crackdown"[4] produced by Frontline and PBS.[5]

As of 2017 she was an AP national reporter based in Northern California and a member of AP's Global Investigative Team.[1] She has specialized in reporting on human trafficking in Asia since 2015.[1]

## Early life and career

[edit]

Martha Mendoza was born on August 16, 1966, in Los Angeles, California, to parents of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Her grandfather, Theodore E. Cummings, served as the United States Ambassador to Austria in 1981.[6] Mendoza'a father, Harry Snyder, is an attorney who served as Peace Corps director in Nepal and Western Samoa and as associate Peace Corps director in India. Harry Snyder is now an Advocacy Leader in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley.[7] Mendoza graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1988.[8] In college, Mendoza played soccer for the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, wrote for the school newspaper City on a Hill Press and played French horn in the school symphony. She became an Associated Press reporter in 1995, starting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has since reported from Silicon Valley, New York, New Mexico, Mexico City and Bangkok, covering everything from human trafficking to cyber security.[9]

In 2001, she was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and a Ferris Professor of Humanities at Princeton University in 2007.[10] She has taught in the University of California Santa Cruz Science Communications Program for over a decade.[9]

## 2000 Pulitzer Prize for No Gun Ri Massacre Investigation

[edit]

Between September 29 and December 28, 1999, Mendoza and fellow AP journalists Choe Sang-hun and Charles J. Hanley published nine investigative reports centering on atrocities committed against civilians during the Korean War.[11] This reporting earned the AP team the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting "for revealing, with extensive documentation, the decades-old secret of how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of Korean civilians in a massacre at the No Gun Ri Bridge," according to the Pulitzer award citation.[citation needed]

Until the AP report, South Korean survivors of the bridge massacre "met only rejection and denial" from the U.S. Army and the South Korean government, according to the first investigative piece in September 1999.[12] The articles by Mendoza, Choe, and Hanley "deeply shocked" Americans and prompted then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen to appoint a blue-ribbon panel of American investigators to travel to South Korea and investigate the claims.[13][14]

Mendoza and the AP team faced deep skepticism about the report from senior AP editors and executives, with the executive editor of the AP telling the reporters in March 1999 that he didn't believe the report should be published.[15] The report was not published until six months later. Mendoza called the investigation and internal debate over publication "a difficult and frustrating process."[15]

## 2016 Pulitzer Prize for "Seafood from Slaves"

[edit]

Mendoza earned her second Pulitzer Prize in 2016 as part of the AP reporting team, along with Esther Htusan, Margie Mason, and Robin McDowell, that exposed the use of forced labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia and its connections to seafood sales in the United States.[3][16] This was the AP's first Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in its history.[3] Their work also earned them the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for Investigative business journalism.[17]

The investigation centered on the tiny Indonesian island of Benjina, where men from Myanmar were enslaved, held in cages, and forced to fish.[18] The AP journalists talked to over 40 current and former slaves on the island, used satellites to track a ship that carried slave-processed fish from the island to a port in Thailand and followed trucks carrying the fish to factories.[19] "We were able to search and find the companies in Thailand that were then shipping to the United States," Mendoza told PBS NewsHour, "and go to these American seafood distributors to figure out where their fish ends up."[20] The reporters eventually tracked the fish to major retailers in the United States from Wal-Mart to Whole Foods.[10] The reporting process took over 18 months and the reporters faced dangers from mafia gunmen to angry fishing company officials.[21][3]

"It was a bear to write this story – it was a very long, complicated story," Mendoza later reflected, "How do we do this? How do we convey to people that these could be your brothers and sons, not just some far-off person with a name you don’t understand?"[22] In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, Mendoza highlighted the report and noted that "there is more oversight in seafood to protect dolphins than there is to protect humans."[23]

The expose by Mendoza and the AP team, titled "Seafood from Slaves," ultimately freed more than 2,000 slave fishermen and led to arrests, ship seizures, and legislation in the U.S. Congress.[24][3][8]

## Other investigations

[edit]

In 2011, Mendoza led a major investigation into countries with freedom of information laws as part of the AP global freedom of information project. The investigation involved using freedom of information procedures in 105 countries and the European Union to request answers on expert-vetted questions about terrorism.[25] Mendoza and her team found that over half of the countries don't follow their own right-to-know laws.[citation needed]

Mendoza has also continued her journalistic focus on forced labor and seafood issues. An October 2017 AP report by Mendoza, Tim Sullivan, and Hyung-jin Kim traced salmon available at major U.S. stores like Wal-Mart and ALDI to North Korean forced labor in China.[26] In June 2018, Mendoza and AP colleagues Robin McDowell and Margie Mason reported that the U.S. seafood distributor Sea to Table, which guarantees its seafood is "wild and directly traceable to a U.S. dock," was actually importing some of its yellowfin tuna from abroad and engaging in illegal labor and fisheries practices.[27]

In 2018, Mendoza and fellow AP journalist Garance Burke reported on child migrants forcibly separated from parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. They reported that 14,300 migrant children had been sent to crowded detention centers, including at least three "tender age" shelters in South Texas for young children and babies.[28][29] Their stories were part of a package of AP immigration reporting recognized as a finalist for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize.

## Investigation into Mendoza

[edit]

In 2017 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), through its Counter Network Division, a unit dedicated to tracking terrorists, investigated Mendoza and other journalists including Ali Watkins;[30][31] CBP had been tasked with combating forced labor in the Congo. In 2021, the Associated Press demanded "an immediate explanation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection as to why journalists including AP investigative reporter Martha Mendoza were run through databases used to track terrorists and identified as potential confidential informant recruits."[32]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c "MARTHA MENDOZA, Investigative reporter". AP NEWS. 2017-10-03. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
2. ^ "The 2000 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Investigative Reporting".
3. ^ a b c d e "AP wins Pulitzer Prize for Seafood from Slaves investigation". Associated Press. 18 April 2016. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
4. ^ "Kids Caught in the Crackdown". FRONTLINE. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
5. ^ Stephens, Tim. "Alumna Martha Mendoza wins Emmy for work on child detention documentary". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
6. ^ "Theodore E. Cummings - People - Department History - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 2019-05-09.
7. ^ "Harry Snyder". UC Berkeley School of Public Health. 2016-08-08. Retrieved 2019-05-09.
8. ^ a b "Martha Mendoza: Writing wrongs". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
9. ^ a b "Robert Cribb & Martha Mendoza in Conversation". www.banffcentre.ca. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
10. ^ a b "Martha Mendoza, Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Esther Htusan". The Michael Kelly Award. 2016-04-18. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
11. ^ "2000 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Investigative Reporting".
12. ^ "Ex-GIs Tell AP of Korea Killing". The Washington Post.
13. ^ "BBC - History - World Wars: Kill 'em All': The American Military in Korea". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
14. ^ "The truth about No Gun Ri". The Economist. 2000-02-17. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
15. ^ a b Barringer, Felicity (2000-05-14). "Reporters and Editors Defend A.P. Story on Korea Massacre". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
16. ^ "The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Public Service".
17. ^ Daillak, Jonathan (June 29, 2016). "UCLA Anderson School honors 2016 Gerald Loeb Award winners". UCLA. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
18. ^ Grynbaum, Michael M. (2016-04-18). "2016 Pulitzer Prizes: A.P. Wins Public Service Award; 'Hamilton' Is Honored". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
19. ^ Mcdowell, Robin. "AP Investigation: Are slaves catching the fish you buy?". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
20. ^ "How the AP uncovered secret slavery behind the seafood in your supermarket". PBS NewsHour. 2016-04-20. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
21. ^ "AP Explore: Seafood from slaves". AP Explore: Seafood from slaves. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
22. ^ Staff, Katherine Kemp | (2018-10-12). "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Martha Mendoza speaks on campus". The Daily Californian. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
23. ^ "r/IAmA - I'm Pulitzer Prize-winning AP National Writer Martha Mendoza, and some colleagues and I just reported that slaves in Thailand are peeling shrimp that's later sold in the U.S. -- the latest in our series on slavery in the seafood industry. AMA!". reddit. 14 December 2015. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
24. ^ Grynbaum, Michael M. (2016-04-18). "2016 Pulitzer Prizes: A.P. Wins Public Service Award; 'Hamilton' Is Honored". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
25. ^ "Lecturer Martha Mendoza spearheads AP right-to-know investigation". scicom.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
26. ^ Sullivan, Tim; Kim, Hyung-Jin; Mendoza, Martha (2017-10-05). "Nuclear-armed North Korea profits from US, EU seafood sales". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
27. ^ Mcdowell, Robin; Mason, Margie; Mendoza, Martha (2018-06-15). "AP Investigation: Fish billed as local isn't always local". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
28. ^ "'A moral disaster': AP reveals scope of migrant kids program". Daily Herald. Associated Press. 2018-12-19. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
29. ^ Burke, Garance; Mendoza, Martha (2018-06-20). "At least 3 "tender age" shelters set up for child migrants". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
30. ^ ALEX J. ROUHANDEH (13 December 2021). "Border Agency Accused of Tracking U.S. Journalists With Tech Meant for Terrorists". Newsweek. Retrieved 17 December 2021. "(CBP) unit dedicated to the tracking of terrorists used its technology to investigate up to 20 different American journalists [...] in this instance AP investigative reporter Martha Mendoza"
31. ^ MARK SHERMAN (11 December 2021). "Watchdog: Federal anti-terror unit investigated journalists". Associated Press. Retrieved 17 December 2021. "Dan White, Rambo's supervisor in Washington, told investigators that his unit ran Mendoza through multiple databases, and "CBP discovered that one of the phone numbers on Mendoza's phone was connected with a terrorist,""
32. ^ Jana Winter (11 December 2021). "Operation Whistle Pig: Inside the secret CBP unit with no rules that investigates Americans". Yahoo! News. Retrieved 17 December 2021. "scrutinized by the Counter Network Division. White told investigators that in preparation for speaking with the Associated Press's Mendoza, she was run through multiple databases, and "CBP discovered that one of the phone numbers on Mendoza's phone was connected with a terrorist.""

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Gerald Loeb Award for Investigative Journalism winners

(2013–2019)|

* 2013: David Barstow, Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab, Stephanie Clifford
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* 2017 (tie): Karisa King, Ray Long, Sam Roe
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Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984

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* Eric Nalder, Deborah Nelson & Alex Tizon (1997)
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* Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley & Martha Mendoza (2000)

2001–2025|

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