This post has been updated.
Center for Public Integrity Director Bill Buzenberg on Wednesday criticized ABC News for demanding credit for an investigative series that won a Pulitzer Prize this week.
“I will say that I don’t take well to being bullied by anybody or threatened by anybody. We just stuck to the facts,” Buzenberg said on HuffPost Live.
After CPI reporter Chris Hamby won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation into coal miners who were denied black lung health benefits, ABC News President Ben Sherwood wrote a letter to CPI asking that two of the network’s reporters receive credit.
The two news organizations went back and forth on the matter before Buzenberg penned an open letter on Wednesday in which he laid out why the investigative series by CPI reporter Chris Hamby was submitted without credit to ABC News.
Buzenberg explained that the Pulitzer committee did not award the prize for broadcast pieces and told ABC to cease its demands.
“The Center is prepared to show in great detail how little ABC’s Brian Ross and Matt Mosk understood about even the most fundamental concepts and key facts and how they repeatedly turned to Chris to advise them or, in some instances, to do their work for them,” he wrote in the letter.
On HuffPost Live, host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin asked Buzenberg about an accusation from ABC News Senoir Vice President Jeffrey Schneider to Politico that CPI “showed a stunning lack of integrity and misled the Pulitzer board with its submission, which diminished our work to the point of non-existence.”
“Mr. Schneider has a number of misstatements in everything he says. I would be very skeptical of any interview that he gives,” Buzenberg responded. “I take nothing away from ABC did, but the Pulitzer Prize does not go to the video journalists for doing video, which is what they did do. It goes to the reporter who did the reporting and the data work.”
Correction: This post originally stated that Peter Hamby received the Pulitzer Prize. CPI reporter Chris Hamby won the Pulitzer.
Watch the full HuffPost Live segment:
It’s on. Oh, it’s on.
Poor Chris Hamby. First ABC wanted to share the credit for his work and now Caitlin Macneal has given his Pulitzer away to Peter Hamby.