New York Times, New Yorker Win Pulitzer for #MeToo Watershed

The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service on Monday for explosive reporting that brought down Harvey Weinstein and spawned a cultural watershed on the issue of sexual harassment.

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The prestigious prize was awarded to the Times team led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that disgraced the Hollywood mogul and sparked an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men.

Farrow, 30, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, and something of a prodigy who has previously fronted his own television show, worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, and formerly advised then Hillary Clinton on global youth issues when she was secretary of state.

The former Rhodes scholar, who graduated from Yale Law School at just 21, has sided with his sister Dylan's claims that Allen molested her when she was seven. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations.

"So so so proud," tweeted Mia Farrow minutes after her son's award was announced. Ronan Farrow paid tribute to his co-winners and The New Yorker. "This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power. Thanks to all who keep doing so," he wrote on Twitter to his nearly half a million followers.

The 102nd edition of the Pulitzer Prizes was announced at Columbia University in New York by administrator Dana Canedy at a time when the U.S. news media still under assault from the White House for peddling "fake news." Canedy praised the winners but also counseled the media to do more to improve trust with a skeptical public and to work harder to include more varied gender and racial perspectives.

The Washington Post won the Pulitzer in the investigative category for relentless reporting seen as having influenced the outcome of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, revealing Republican candidate Roy Moore's alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls.

Moore's opponent Doug Jones won the race last December, becoming Alabama's first Democratic senator in 25 years and dealing a humiliating blow to President Donald Trump's Republican administration.