The Guardian and the Washington Post have been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting on the NSA surveillance that the leaked documents from Edward Snowden brought to light.

The award recognized Glenn Greenwald, Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill for their reporting on the topic.

It has been about 10 months since The Guardian and the Washington Post published stories on the NSA's PRISM program and its widespread data collection, causing privacy concerns in the tech community as well as much of the world. Soon after, Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor, claimed responsibility for the leaked documents.

Snowden was then charged with espionage and has sought asylum in various countries. He is currently believed to be in Russia. The original reports continue to resonate. President Barack Obama recently proposed an overhaul of the surveillance system.

The reports have been praised as some of the most important journalism work in a generation. Daniel Ellsburg, who leaked a government study of the Vietnam war that later became known as "the Pentagon Papers," said the Snowden documents are the most important leak in the history of the country.

Snowden released a statement to the Guardian applauding the decision:

Today's decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognises was work of vital public importance.

For all the plaudits the journalists have received, they have also become targets of backlash from both the U.S. and UK government. Peter King, a Republican congressman from New York, called for Greenwald's arrest. Heathrow Airport security detained Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, for nine hours. They questioned him and confiscated numerous possessions.

Greenwald and Poitras only recently returned to U.S. soil for the first time since the initial NSA reports when they received the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting on Friday.

"Each one of these awards just provides further vindication that what [Snowden] did in coming forward was absolutely the right thing to do and merits gratitude, and not indictments and decades in prison," Greenwald said in regard tot he Polk Award, according to a report from Democracy Now!

"None of us would be here … without the fact that someone decided to sacrifice their life to make this information available," Poitras added. "And so this award is really for Edward Snowden."

Journalism is one of the 21 categories recognized by the Pulitzer Prize, founded in 1917 after the death of Joseph Pulitzer and overseen by Columbia University. The Pulitzer is widely considered the greatest honor in journalism, with the public service award regarded as the grand prize.

Greenwald left The Guardian in October to start First Look Media with eBay entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar. Poitras as also joined the company. Greenwald's vertical, The Intercept, went live in February and will continue to explore the documents from Snowden.

The Boston Globe was awarded the prize for breaking news reporting for its coverage of the bombing of the Boston Marathon that included hundreds of updates to its live blog as well as in depth coverage of the aftermath and eventual arrest of suspects.

Chris Hamby of The Center for Public Integrity won for investigative reporting on the work of lawyers and doctors to rig a system to block coal miners from claiming benefits. The New York Times swept the photography awards, with Josh Haner winning for feature photography and Tyler Hicks for breaking news.