2018
-
Michael A. Dornheim Award for defense reporting
Donnelly won first prize in the 2018 Dornheim competition, which recognizes the previous year's best stories on defense issues.
Donnelly won the award for five stories showing:
--The Pentagon's top technical advisers wanted to develop a new, lower-yield nuclear warhead that critics worried could make nuclear war more likely, and a year later it became part of President Trump's budget request.
--The Air Force knew about and accepted deadly flaws in F-35 fighter jet ejection seats even as a senior general was telling the press that the seats' problems were fixed.
--U.S. lawmakers argued that military accidents were on the rise and that higher budgets were needed to fix them; but accidents had been going down for years and more money would not necessarily bring down accident rates.
--On the same day that President Trump claimed to have contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed in action on his watch, Oval Office personnel were scrambling to get the families' contact information from the Pentagon to make the president's false statement true as soon as possible.
--Members of Congress from states along the Mississippi River had disregarded safety warnings from the Coast Guard and instead pushed a fire-safety exemption for an old wooden cruise ship, the operation of which could jeopardize tourists' lives.
The judges said Donnelly's stories "exemplify solid and uncompromised investigative journalism."
