David Finkel

David Finkel
David Finkel at the 2013 Texas Book Festival.
Born	David Louis Finkel October 28, 1955
Occupation	Reporter, writer
Education	University of Florida
Notable awards	MacArthur Fellow Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting

David Louis Finkel (born October 28, 1955) is an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 as a staff writer at The Washington Post. He is currently assigned to the national staff as an enterprise reporter. He has also worked for the Post′s foreign staff division. He wrote The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.

Finkel's book The Good Soldiers describes several months he spent in 2007 as an embedded reporter with 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, also known as the "2-16 Rangers", as they worked to stabilize a portion of Baghdad.

The logs of Chelsea Manning's IM chats with Adrian Lamo state that David Finkel had the video which was released as Collateral Murder by but did not release it. David Finkel has never publicly disclosed whether he had the video or not. In a washingtonpost.com webchat, he said, "I based the account in my book The Good Soldiers on multiple sources, all unclassified. Without going into details, I'll say the best source of information was being there [in Iraq]."

In his personal statements to court, Manning agrees that parts of Finkel's account are quoted from the same source "verbatim", yet he asserts that other events from the source were clearly fabricated by Finkel.

He lives in the Washington, DC area.