'Firestone and the Warlord' Wins RFK Journalism Award

The joint project with PBS Frontline was honored in the new media category.

May 11, 2015, 1:36 p.m. EDT

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights has named Firestone and the Warlord the winner of its 2015 RFK Journalism Award in the new media category.

The collaborative project with PBS Frontline offered the first detailed examination of the iconic tire company's role in Liberia’s brutal civil war. As T. Christian Miller, Jonathan Jones, Marcela Gaviria and Will Cohen unveiled over a longform investigation and in-depth documentary, Firestone needed Liberia and its rubber while Charles Taylor, an ambitious rebel leader, needed Firestone for his eventual rise to power. Their painstaking reporting brought to light how the killer and the corporation found a way to make peace as war consumed the rest of the country.

Established in 1968, the RFK Journalism Awards have honored those who report on issues concerning human rights, social justice and the power of individual action in the U.S. and around the world. Congratulations to all the winners.

Follow ProPublica

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page