The Malaysian Federal Government might have nothing nice to say about the reports published by The Wall Street Journal lately, but the world’s journalistic community seems to be of an entirely different opinion on the matter.
The team of investigative reporters tasked by the WSJ to look into the ongoing scandals surrounding 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) – namely Tom Wright, Bradley Hope, Simon Clark, Mia Lamar and James Hookway – have been named finalists for the International Reporting category of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, far and away the most prestigious award in worldwide journalism.
Nominated for their “masterful reporting that exposed corruption at the highest levels of a fragile democracy”, the Pulitzer Prize committee described the ongoing 1MDB scandal as “Malaysia’s Watergate”, a reference to the early 1970s scandal that resulted in US president Richard Nixon having to resign from office.
The list of articles published by the WSJ that led to the team’s nomination includes “Malaysia Leader’s Accounts Probed”, the July 2 piece that first blew open the issue of Prime Minister Najib Razak receiving a transfer of RM2.6 billion into his personal bank accounts in 2013.
That article in particular also led Najib and his legal team to threaten legal action against the WSJ, although to date no lawsut has been filed against the financial newspaper or its parent company Dow Jones & Co, either in Malaysia or in the US, where the newspaper is based.
Still, being a finalist isn’t the same as actually winning the Pulitzer Prize: this year, the Pulitzer for International Reporting ultimately went to Alisa J Rubin of the New York Times, for her report on the plight of Afghan women in a war-torn country. A much more harrowing subject to write about compared to some silly sovereign investment fund gone haywire.
