AP

NEW YORK

THE Pulitzer Prizes showcaåsed American journalism’s power to shine a powerful light on the forgotten or the unknown.

The awards honoured work including stories from The Associated Press revealing the New York Police Department’s widespread spying on Muslims and The Huffington Post’s pieces about the suffering endured by American troops severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The AP won a Pulitzer for investigative journalism, while the national reporting prize went to the Huffington Post’s David Wood. Other journalism winners in the awards announced on Monday included another Pulitzer for investigative reporting awarded to The Seattle Times for a series about accidental methadone overdoses among patients with chronic pain.

In the arts categories, the late Manning Marable won the Pulitzer Prize for history, honoured for a Malcolm X book he worked on for decades but did not live to see published. Quiara Alegria Hudes’ play Water by the Spoonful, which centres on an Iraq war veteran’s search for meaning, won the Pulitzer for drama.

The New York Times won two prizes. David Kocieniewski was honoured in the explanatory reporting category for a series on how wealthy people and corporations use loopholes to avoid taxes. Jeffrey Gettleman received the award for international reporting for his coverage of famine and conflict in East Africa.

The articles showed that police systematically listened in on sermons, hung out at cafes and other public places, infiltrated colleges and photographed people as part of a broad effort to prevent terrorist attacks. Individuals and groups were monitored even when there was no evidence they were linked to terrorism.

The series, which began in August, was by Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley. The stories prompted protests, a demand from 34 members of Congress for a federal investigation, and an internal inquiry by the CIA’s inspector general.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have defended the programme as a thoroughly legal tool for keeping the city safe.