Explore Harvard's Nieman network Nieman Fellowships Nieman Lab Nieman Reports Nieman Storyboard

Craig Pyes
PyesOnly@ yahoo.com

Craig Pyes is a private investigator and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with more than 25 years of experience investigating public corruption, human rights abuses, national security, and international crime. He is the owner and chief investigator of “Pyes Only,” a Los Angeles-based private investigations firm that specializes in human rights issues for lawyers, non-profits, and media organizations.

Pyes has been a senior correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting. He shared a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting at the New York Times for stories on the threat of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, and was a member of the small New York Times team that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for articles about the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico.

Pyes has shared in the Overseas Press Club “Hal Boyle Award” for reporting from abroad, the Los Angeles Times staff award for best investigative reporting, an E.H. Shaffer award for exposing abuses by prison mental health authorities in New Mexico that were a cause of the worst prison riot in American history, and the U.S. Latin American Studies Association award for best coverage of Latin American affairs for an inside look at Salvadoran death squads. The findings, disputed at the time by the Reagan Administration, were validated years later by the United Nations Truth Commission report. In 2002, Pyes was also a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.     

Pyes has worked as an off-air investigative producer on projects for CBS Sixty Minutes, NBC Dateline, and ABC’s Primetime Live. Before that, he was a staff investigative reporter for The Albuquerque Journal. 

 

Contributions

(Un) Covering the Death Squads in El Salvador
SHOWCASE | March 83, 2010
On the 30th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a veteran reporter looks back at some extraordinary and daring close-in coverage that was spurred by personal anger at the murder of the priest.


Some stories don’t die
SHOWCASE | November 306, 2007
Vicente Fox accuses a Mexican senator of drug trafficking, bringing to mind for Craig Pyes a story he worked on ten years ago.


Independent reporting drew Army coverup, secrecy, delays
SHOWCASE | March 61, 2007
Officials in the U.S. military, from the Pentagon on down, tried to thwart reporters for the L.A. Times who uncovered deaths and possible torture of detainees in Afghanistan.


» Mission Statement
» Watchdog conferences
» Nieman Foundation
» Fellowships
» Nieman Reports
» Staff
» Advisers
» Contributors
» Site Policies
The NiemanWatchdog.org website is no longer being updated. Watchdog stories have a new home in Nieman Reports.