New York, Apr 11 (IANS): The New York Times won three Pulitzer Prizes this year in the categories of best feature writing, best special reporting and best breaking news photography, as journalism presented its highest honours, the media reported.

On Monday, the New York Daily News and ProPublica shared the prize for public service for their joint coverage on the New York Police Department's widespread abuse of a decades-old law to force people from their homes and businesses over alleged illegal activity.

The investigation, which involved the examination of more than 1,100 nuisance abatement cases, found that the Police Department almost exclusively targeted households and shops in minority neighbourhoods.

The reporting drove New York City to re-examine the nuisance law and pass sweeping reforms, the New York Times reported.

David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post won the prize for jhis work in national reporting during the presidential campaign on Donald Trump's charitable foundation.

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal won the commentary award for columns that the Pulitzer board said "connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation's most divisive political campaigns."

Colson Whitehead's brutal and surreal novel "The Underground Railroad" won the prize for fiction.

The novel, which won the National Book Award last year, centres on a young woman who escapes her life as a slave in Georgia and flees via a real subterranean network of train cars.

Whitehead, 47, told the New York Times on Monday that to be given even more recognition by the Pulitzer committee was "startling and wonderful".

The prize for best explanatory reporting went to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald for their work on reporting the Panama Papers, discussing international tax havens.

Winning the award for investigative reporting was journalist Eric Eyre, with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, for his coverage of the uncontrolled flow of opioids into the most disadvantaged areas of West Virginia.

The Pulitzers this year come as financial pressure drains many news organisations of the resources to pursue top-flight journalism, according to The Times.

They also come in the face of a combative stance from President Trump, who has called the news media "the enemy of the American people".