Celebrating the power of the press: Reporters Committee announces 2026 Freedom of the Press Award winners

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today announced the recipients of the 2026 Freedom of the Press Awards, which recognize the accomplishments of leaders in the news media and legal fields whose work embodies the values of the First Amendment.

The 2026 honorees are:

• Norman Pearlstine, journalist;
• Michele Norris, senior contributing editor, MS NOW; founding director, The Race Card Project; host, Your Mama’s Kitchen podcast;
• The Marshall Project;
• trina reynolds tyler, data director, Invisible Institute; and
• David A. Schulz, director, Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic.

“This year’s honorees demonstrate the powerful impact of reporting that is ethical, bold, and rigorous, and of the legal support that makes great journalism possible,” said Reporters Committee Chairman Stephen J. Adler. “Each one has done extraordinary work to keep the public informed and hold people in power to account — and our democracy is stronger for it.”

The 2026 Freedom of the Press Awards will be held on Oct. 14 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The event is co-chaired by James A. Attwood, Jr., senior advisor at The Carlyle Group, and Steven R. Swartz, president and chief executive officer of Hearst.

“This year’s Freedom of the Press Award winners exemplify the critical role of a free press in helping people all across the country be more informed, more engaged, and more equipped to participate in their communities,” said Reporters Committee President Bruce D. Brown. “Their work shows us that when we protect the rights of journalists to gather and report the news, it is ultimately the public who benefits.”

Pearlstine and Norris will each be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Career Achievement Award, which honors individuals with a long history of upholding the value of press freedom throughout their career.

For more than five decades, Pearlstine has served in reporting, editing, and leadership roles at major news organizations in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Most recently, he was executive editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2020. He also previously served as executive editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he spent more than 20 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, and managing editor, including at The Asian Wall Street Journal and The Wall Street Journal/Europe. He was also executive editor of West Coast/Pacific coverage for Forbes; editor-in-chief, chief content officer, and vice chairman of Time Inc.; and chief content officer of Bloomberg LP. 

Pearlstine is the author of “Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources,” published in 2007. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Lifetime Achievement Award, the Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, and the National Press Foundation’s Editor of the Year Award. A member of the District of Columbia Bar, Pearlstine received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and did postgraduate legal studies at Southern Methodist University.

Norris is a senior contributing editor for MS NOW and an award-winning storyteller across multiple platforms. Her voice is familiar to followers of public radio, where from 2002 to 2012 she co-hosted NPR’s “All Things Considered” and later served as a host and special correspondent for the network. She was also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post opinion section and is the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award-winning narrative archive where people around the world share six-word stories about race, identity, and belonging. The Race Card Project became the foundation for her New York Times bestselling book, “Our Hidden Conversations,” published in 2024, which explores cultural divisions and identity in modern America. Norris is also the host of Your Mama’s Kitchen, an award-winning podcast exploring how childhood kitchens shape the adults we become.

Before joining NPR, Norris spent nearly a decade as a correspondent for ABC News in Washington, covering the White House, politics, policy, and social change. She also previously worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. Her honors include Emmy, Peabody, Livingston, and Dupont Awards. In 2022, she received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

The Marshall Project will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Catalyst Award, which honors journalists or organizations whose reporting has had a significant impact.

The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. The newsroom produces in-depth investigations about a wide range of issues, including immigration, policing, prison and jail conditions, capital punishment, and juvenile justice. The Marshall Project’s reporting shines a spotlight on problems within the nation’s criminal justice system, holds people in power accountable, and informs criminal justice experts who need fresh and accurate information to do their best work. 

Since launching in 2014, The Marshall Project’s award-winning work has been recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes: one, in 2021, for a yearlong investigation into the life-altering injuries caused by police dog bites, which was reported in collaboration with AL.com, IndyStar, and the Invisible Institute, and another, in 2016, for reporting about a failed police investigation into the brutal rape of an 18-year-old girl, which was reported in collaboration with ProPublica. 

The newsroom’s journalism has also influenced policy and sparked reforms. In June 2026, members of Congress cited The Marshall Project’s coverage of the detention of babies and toddlers in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody during debates over $70 billion in new federal immigration enforcement funding. The newsroom’s reporting also helped inform a landmark Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in March 2026 that struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for certain felony murder convictions, potentially affecting hundreds of incarcerated people and those who could be charged in the future. In 2023, a Marshall Project investigation into rampant violence prompted the shutdown of the Special Management Unit at Thomson prison in Illinois. And just one day after The Marshall Project’s story of abuse by correctional officers at New York’s notorious Attica prison appeared on the front page of The New York Times, three guards at the center of the story pleaded guilty to misconduct.

reynolds tyler will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award, which honors a journalist, attorney, or organization whose work has had a significant impact locally. 

reynolds tyler is the director of data at the nonprofit Invisible Institute, a journalist, and a native of Chicago’s South Side. She leads Beneath the Surface, a project employing machine learning to identify gender-based violence at the hands of Chicago police. reynolds tyler works to document how communities unable to depend on the police are forced to create safety and accountability outside of the carceral state. As a data journalist, she centers the practice of narrative justice and data in her inquiries.

reynolds tyler won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting with her co-reporter Sarah Conway of City Bureau for “Missing in Chicago,” their investigation into how the Chicago Police handle missing person cases. The project emerged directly from reynolds tyler’s yearslong Beneath the Surface project, which used community data taggers to train a machine learning model that parsed tens of thousands of complaint records, eventually directing the team toward a pattern of complaints involving the missing persons cases.

Schulz will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Pro Bono Service Award, which honors those who have dedicated significant pro bono time and support to journalists and newsrooms.

Schulz is the director of the Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, where he serves as the Floyd Abrams Clinical Lecturer and a senior research scholar. Under his leadership, the clinic has become a model for pro bono initiatives at law schools across the nation, providing legal services, pursuing impact litigation, and developing policy initiatives that increase government transparency, defend newsgatherers, and protect freedom of expression. Schulz also serves as co-chair of the Free Expression Legal Network, a coalition he helped launch alongside the Reporters Committee in 2019 to bring together law school clinics, academics, and practitioners to share resources and expertise for pro bono work promoting and protecting press freedom and public interest journalism.

Over the past four decades, while in private practice, Schulz has represented leading national and international media organizations in their First Amendment, defamation, privacy, intellectual property, and related media law litigation. He has appeared in federal and state courts throughout the United States, before U.S. military commissions, and international tribunals, winning precedent-setting cases on the public’s right of access to government proceedings and information, the constitutional protection for newsgathering, and the right of privacy. He was most recently senior counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP.

View information about sponsorships and ticket purchases. View a list of past Freedom of the Press Award winners.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is the leading pro bono legal services provider for journalists and news organizations in the United States, offering direct legal representation, amicus curiae support, and other legal resources to protect First Amendment freedoms and the newsgathering rights of journalists. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our newsletters and following us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.