Author: Meredith Lee

The University of  Wisconsin-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics seeks applications for the first national Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Shadid died in 2012 while crossing the Syrian border on a reporting assignment for the New York Times.  He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his courageous and insightful foreign correspondence.  Shadid sat on the ethics center’s advisory board and strongly supported its efforts to promote public interest journalism and to stimulate discussion about journalism ethics.

The center will award $1,000 to the journalist (or team) whose reporting on a specific story or series best exemplifies seeking and reporting truth, minimizing harm, acting independently, and remaining accountable.

“In its first five years of awards, the ethics center emphasized its Wisconsin roots and sought nominations from the state,” says Robert Drechsel, the James E. Burgess chair in journalism ethics. “We now are expanding nationwide, proud to recognize Anthony’s deep and broad impact on journalism and its ethical practice.”

Nominations are due March 3, 2014, and self-nominations are welcomed.

Nomination Guidelines 

• We seek nominations for ethical decisions in reporting stories in any medium, including, print, broadcast, and digital, by those working for established news organizations or publishing individually.  We prefer stories reported in the 2013 calendar year, but will consider older stories if the ethical decision centered on a decision not to publish information that remains sensitive.

  The nominating letters should focus solely on the ethical decisions made in reporting the stories, organized around the four principles in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics:

  1.  Seek Truth and Report it.  “Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.”

  How did the reporting surmount any barriers – political, economic, institutional, personal – encountered? How did the reporting ensure fairness while identifying truth?

  2. Minimize Harm. “Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.”

  What decisions, if any, were made to protect the interests of innocent individuals and of the broader community?

  3. Act Independently. “Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.”

  How did the decision-makers acknowledge and deal with their own biases about the story covered?  With pressures, if any, brought to bear from the outside?

  4. Be Accountable. “Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.”

  How did the decision makers acknowledge and respond to any criticism of their work?

  Letters of nomination must include:

  1. The name and contact information of the nominator and their relationship to the story, and the identity of the reporter or reporting team that produced the report.

  2.  A brief description of the story and a link to it on-line.

  3.  One or more paragraphs for each of the four principles in the SPJ code as it applies to this story.  Paragraphs may vary greatly in length, recognizing that all four principles are unlikely to be equally pertinent to any story, but each deserves at least a sentence and others deserve detailed elaboration.

  Nomination Letters should be saved in pdf format and attached to an e-mail to ethicsaward@journalism.wisc.edu

  Deadline for submissions is Monday, March 3, 2014

[Nomination guidelines revised January 31, 2014]