NEW YORK, MAY 22, 2025 – Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights today announced the winners of its 2025 RFK Book and Journalism Awards during a virtual ceremony featuring remarks by Kerry Kennedy, Soledad O’Brien, and Margaret “Peggy” Engel.

Award winners were honored for their work documenting pressing social issues and human rights abuses. Winning entries were selected from roughly 400 global submissions.

Throughout the ceremony, presenters commented on the state of journalism and highlighted recent threats from the Trump administration, including attempts to revoke White House press credentials and cut funding for public broadcasters.

“In every corner of the world where democracy is under siege, the first target is always the free press and the storytellers who speak truth to power,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of RFK Human Rights. “But no amount of executive orders or funding cuts will silence the brave men and women who bring us the facts and truths that matter. Journalists and authors alike have a higher calling—the pursuit of truth. And as we see from the bold and fearless reporting and writing honored here today, that pursuit cannot be stopped by any political leader or movement.”

Among the 2025 Journalism Award winners:

• ProPublica photojournalist Stacy Kranitz won the Domestic Photography Award for her immersive photo essay, “The Year After A Denied Abortion.” Kranitz’s piece documents a year in the life of a struggling mother, Mayron Michelle Hollis, who was denied an abortion to end a life-threatening pregnancy. The piece seeks to answer a critical question: What happens when a state forbids abortion but offers little support once babies are born? “The Year After A Denied Abortion” was also named the Grand Prize Winner.
• NBC News Studios and Trilogy Films won the Domestic Television Award for their series “The Sing Sing Chronicles,” based on 22 years of original investigative reporting by NBC News journalist Dan Slepian. Directed by Dawn Porter and with Kimberley Ferdinando serving as Executive Producer, this groundbreaking exposé of the criminal justice system ultimately helped overturn wrongful convictions in five New York City homicide cases and free six innocent men.
• The Associated Press won the International Photography Award for photographer Abdel Kareem Hana’s series “Children of Gaza: Surrounded by War.” The series highlights the devastating toll the war has taken on the children of Gaza: More than 13,000 have been killed, an estimated 25,000 injured, and at least 25,000 hospitalized for malnutrition, according to U.N. agencies. “Children of Gaza” also received the John Seigenthaler Courage in Journalism Award.

This year’s Book Award winner is “Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis” by Jonathan Blitzer. Drawing on his reporting as a staff writer for The New Yorker, Blitzer’s book is an epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the humanitarian crisis at the southern border. “Everyone Who is Gone is Here” profiles migrants, activists, and politicians, examining how decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption have resulted in this vast and unremitting conflict.

The annual competition, in place since 1969 for journalism categories and 1980 for the Book Award, highlights exemplary work that explores issues of human rights, social justice, and the power of individual action.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights is grateful to Mort Zuckerman and the Zuckerman Family Foundation for their support of this year’s Book and Journalism Awards ceremony. Special thanks to historian and author Michael Beschloss, head of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award committee, and Margaret Engel, director of the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards committee, as well as the committees and many volunteer judges who participated this year. 

The full list of honorees for the 2025 RFK Book and Journalism Awards can be found below.

High School Journalism
High school journalists are fighting back against censorship
PrismReports
Marium Zahra

College Journalism
Failure to Comply
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University 
Mia Berry, Chad Bradley, Sam Ellefson, Aspen Ford, Christopher Lomahquahu, Madison Perales, Reagan Priest, and Eshaan Sarup

Non-traditional Media
Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust
Long Lead, The Trace, Campside Media, and PRX
John Patrick Pullen and Garrett Graff with Emily Martinez and Jennifer Mascia

Domestic Print
Steward Health Care investigation
The Boston Globe Spotlight team

Domestic Photography and Grand Prize Winner
The Year After A Denied Abortion
ProPublica
Stacy Kranitz

Domestic Television 
The Sing Sing Chronicles
NBC News Studios and Trilogy Films
Dan Slepian, Dawn Porter, and Kimberley Ferdinando

International Print
South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning
FRONTLINE PBS and The Associated Press
Kim Tong-Hyung, Claire Galofaro, and Lora Moftah

International Photography and John Seigenthaler Courage in Journalism Award
Children of Gaza: Surrounded by War
Associated Press
Abdel Kareem Hana

International Television
A Year of War: Israelis and Palestinians
FRONTLINE (PBS)

Radio
Inheriting
Emily Kwong along with James Chow, Anjuli Sastry Krbechek, Catherine Mailhouse, Minju Park and Sara Sarasohn
LAist Studios

Reporting on Incarceration and Criminalization
How a largely debunked diagnosis keeps innocent parents in prison — and lives on in the courts today under a new name, tearing children apart from their families.
ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine
Pamela Colloff

Cartoon
Work of Lalo Alcaraz
Andrews McMeel Syndication

Book
Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Penguin Press
Jonathan Blitzer