The Guardian and Washington Post have been awarded the Pulitzer prize for public service journalism for their articles about mass surveillance based on the leaks of Edward Snowden.

Winning a Pulitzer is the highest accolade in US journalism and is recognised internationally. Naturally, it was reported on The Guardian's front page this morning.

Across America, the award was widely reported. News agencies, such as Reuters, here, carried the story. Any number of US outlets also did so (examples: here and here and here).

Newspapers regarded as rivals to the Washington Post, such as the New York Times, here, and the Los Angeles Times, here, ran articles about the award.

FoxNews, courtesy of Howard Kurtz, ran a piece headlined "Snowden's revenge: Journalists win Pulitzers for his NSA leaks."

Elsewhere in the world, The Times of Israel, here, and The Times of India, here, and France's Le Monde, here, thought it worth headline treatment.

What about Britain? Three UK news organisations certainly covered the story: the BBC here and The Independent, here and the Financial Times, here.

The FT's opening paragraph stated that the Pulitzer prize board had "delivered an indirect vindication" of Snowden's disclosures by awarding "one of America's most prestigious journalism prizes" to The Guardian and the Washington Post.

It was not quite prestigious enough, however, to warrant coverage by The Times and the Daily Telegraph. Mail Online did carry an Associated Press report, but it publishes almost every AP filing every day.

Note this - The Guardian, The Independent and the Financial Times are the three newspapers that have not signed contracts to join the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso).

Note this also - The Guardian's surveillance revelations last year were attacked by right-wing papers as some kind of treachery. Snowden was regarded not as a whistleblower but as a traitor. Indeed, an article in The Times last month by Edward Lucas was headlined "Edward Snowden isn't a hero. He's a traitor."

And, finally, note this - Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, after hearing of the award, said: "We are particularly grateful for our colleagues across the world who supported The Guardian in circumstances which threatened to stifle our reporting.

"And we share this honour, not only with our colleagues at the Washington Post, but also with Edward Snowden, who risked so much in the cause of the public service which has today been acknowledged by the award of this prestigious prize."

This is what sets The Guardian apart. We who work for this newspaper can take pride in having published the Snowden leaks and for resisting the official government pressure aimed at preventing disclosure in the public interest.

Rusbridger and the journalistic team - and Snowden - are vindicated. In Kurtz's words:

"If the Pulitzer standard is breaking the most important and newsworthy stories of 2013, there is little question that those leaks utterly transformed the global debate over surveillance, and prompted President Obama to propose new restrictions on the way the NSA operates in pursuit of terrorists."

Exactly.