Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on Monday to news organizations that uncovered instances of malfeasance and outright fraud in President Trump’s financial past, recognizing journalists’ perseverance in the face of the president’s ever-sharper attacks on a free press.

The New York Times received the explanatory reporting prize for an 18-month investigation that revealed how the future president and his relatives avoided paying roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of taxes. The Wall Street Journal won the national reporting award for disclosing clandestine payoffs made by the president’s associates before the 2016 election to two women who had alleged affairs with Mr. Trump.

Threats to journalists, foreign and domestic, provided a backdrop for this year’s prizes, which also honored reporters forced to cover deadly tragedies in their hometowns and, in one case, their own newsroom. In the cultural realm, the Pulitzers recognized the singer Aretha Franklin for her contributions to American music, the first special citation granted to a woman.