Teen who recorded Floyd's arrest, death wins Pulitzer nod
Minneapolis: The teenager who pulled out her cellphone and began recording when she saw George Floyd being pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer was given a special citation by the Pulitzer Prizes for her video that helped to launch a global movement to protest racial injustice.
Darnella Frazier was cited on Friday "for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality, around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists' quest for truth and justice," the Pulitzer Prizes said.
Frazier was not giving interviews to the media, her publicist said on Friday.
Frazier was 17 when she recorded the arrest and death of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, on May 25, 2020.
She testified at the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that she was walking to a corner grocery store to get snacks with her then-nine-year-old cousin when she saw a man being pinned to the pavement, "terrified, scared, begging for his life."
She said she didn't want her cousin to see what was happening so she ushered the girl into the store then went back out to the sidewalk and began recording because "it wasn't right. He was suffering. He was in pain."
She kept recording even though she said she felt threatened when Chauvin ignored the cries of bystanders and pulled out his Mace as he knelt on Floyd's neck for nine minutes, 29 seconds.
Her video, which shows Floyd repeatedly saying he couldn't breathe before going limp, was posted to Facebook hours after it was recorded, sparking outrage in Minneapolis and beyond. It was also a prominent piece of evidence in Chauvin's trial.
Chauvin was convicted in April of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. He will be sentenced on June 25.
The Pulitzer Board also announced on Friday that the Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the breaking news reporting prize for its coverage of Floyd's murder and its aftermath.
Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, said in a column for Nieman Lab last month that Frazier should win a Pulitzer for her video. Clark, who has been a Pulitzer juror five times, told The Associated Press on Friday that Frazier was like the many journalists or artists who have won Pulitzer Prizes for standing up for tolerance, equality and social justice.
"There she was, at 17, sort of witnessing an injustice and she stood there in the face of threats and captured that video," he said, adding, "It would be hard to select, even from the work of professional journalists over recent years or decades, a 10-minute video that had as profound an impact as this young woman's video did."
Frazier's video was "globe shaking," spoke truth to power and gave a voice to the voiceless, Clark said.
It's unusual but not unprecedented for the Pulitzer Board to award citizens who capture news events; the famous photo of a firefighter cradling an infant after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was taken by Charles Porter IV, a bank credit officer, and distributed by the AP.
Clark said the special citation that Frazier received recognizes exceptional work that falls outside specific award categories. The honour puts Frazier on a list with Ida B. Wells, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, for their response to a 2018 shooting in their newsroom.
Frazier was also given the PEN/Benenson Courage Award last year by PEN America, a literary and human rights organization.
PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said at the time: "With nothing more than a cellphone and sheer guts, Darnella changed the course of history in this country, sparking a bold movement demanding an end to systemic anti-Black racism and violence at the hands of police."
During her testimony at Chauvin's trial, Frazier told jurors that she sometimes wishes she had done more to help Floyd. She said she looks at her father and other Black men in her life and thinks about "how that could have been one of them."
"It's been nights I stayed up, apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more, and not physically interacting and not saving his life," she testified, adding of Chauvin: "But it's like, it's not what I should've done, it's what he should've done."
The three other officers involved in Floyd's arrest are scheduled to face trial next year on aiding and abetting counts. All four officers are also charged with violating Floyd's civil rights.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
