International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Mikkel Hertz, Denmark, is assistant managing editor of Denmark's largest daily newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

Mikkel Hertz, Denmark

Hertz has investigated police brutality and abuse of power by the Copenhagen Police Department, including false arrests and officers inciting violence between the Bandidos and Hells Angels motorcycle gangs. In 1999, Hertz and his colleagues revealed that Dandy, a Danish chewing gum manufacturer, pressured two researchers and administrators at the University of Århus to suppress test results of a study on children in Lithuania. The study showed that Dandy’s V6 sugar-free brand did not provide more cavity protection than any other sugar-free gum, as Dandy had advertised. The stories led to new government rules regarding scientific projects. In January 1994, Hertz was awarded the Cavling Prisen (equivalent to the U.S. Pulitzer Prize) for his coverage, while serving as the paper’s Berlin correspondent, of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, including the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Hertz also served as the paper’s New York correspondent from 1994 to 1996.