“We have a lot of awards in journalism, but this one feels like the start of something special. It forced us to focus not only on the quality of the work, but the decisions reporters and editors made to ensure fairness.”
So kicked off the keynote address by Dean Baquet, former executive editor of The New York Times, at the inaugural ceremony for the Peter F. Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism. The event, hosted by us last April at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, convened 100 journalists, news consumers, and news leaders from across the country to celebrate journalism that met the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise.
The Washington Post, Mississippi Today, and University of Florida undergraduate Garrett Shanley took home the top prizes in the national/international, local, and student categories. The New Yorker, The Baltimore Banner, Documented, Columbia Journalism School graduate Ariane Luthi, Johns Hopkins undergraduate Cathy Wang, and a consortium including NBC News, the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism were among those also recognized.
“We saw rigorous reporting that broke news and held powerful people to account, while also demonstrating consummate care for accuracy, fairness, empathy, and transparency,” Stephen J. Adler, founding director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative, said of the awardees. “The strength of the work confirmed our belief that a greater focus on ethics can help journalists become more effective and more trustworthy. This is particularly important in this era of disinformation and distrust.”
Collier Awards highlights:
A rousing keynote address from Baquet, also a Collier Awards judge, that spoke to the financial and editorial challenges facing all journalists and the value of an explicit focus on ethics in reporting. “The finalists for this prize have told rich and deep stories. If we do that work, and talk about it, slowly but surely, we will win back our trust. It may take years, but the doing of the work, the meeting people in their own worlds, is ethical journalism,” said Baquet in his address.
A standout team of presenters that drew from across the journalism industry, including Gina Chua, executive editor of Semafor; Lynette Clemetson, Director of Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; and Ellen Horne, Director of the Podcasting and Audio Reportage program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
Our one-day Collier Awards symposium on Friday April 11, in which awardees across categories discussed timely topics including transparency around ethical decision-making, fairness in accountability reporting, and minimizing harm when working with vulnerable sources.