Martha Mendoza (born August 16, 1966) is an Associated Press journalist whose reporting has helped free over 2,000 enslaved fishermen and prompted action by the U.S. Congress and the White House.
[3] On September 21, 2020, Mendoza won an Emmy Award for her collaboration documentary "Kids Caught in the Crackdown"[4] produced by Frontline and PBS.
[9] Between September 29 and December 28, 1999, Mendoza and fellow AP journalists Choe Sang-hun and Charles J. Hanley published nine investigative reports centering on atrocities committed against civilians during the Korean War.
"[15] Mendoza earned her second Pulitzer Prize in 2016 as part of the AP reporting team, along with Esther Htusan, Margie Mason, and Robin McDowell, that exposed the use of forced labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia and its connections to seafood sales in the United States.
[19] "We were able to search and find the companies in Thailand that were then shipping to the United States," Mendoza told PBS NewsHour, "and go to these American seafood distributors to figure out where their fish ends up.
The investigation involved using freedom of information procedures in 105 countries and the European Union to request answers on expert-vetted questions about terrorism.
An October 2017 AP report by Mendoza, Tim Sullivan, and Hyung-jin Kim traced salmon available at major U.S. stores like Wal-Mart and ALDI to North Korean forced labor in China.
[27] In 2018, Mendoza and fellow AP journalist Garance Burke reported on child migrants forcibly separated from parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In 2021, the Associated Press demanded "an immediate explanation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection as to why journalists including AP investigative reporter Martha Mendoza were run through databases used to track terrorists and identified as potential confidential informant recruits.