Mississippi Today won the inaugural Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism for its coverage of the ongoing state welfare scandal investigation in the face of a lawsuit against the newsroom from former Gov. Phil Bryant.
The Collier Award, administered by New York University’s Ethics and Journalism Initiative and judged by esteemed national journalists, celebrates journalism that meets the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise.
Mississippi Today was awarded the first place prize in the local category at a Thursday night ceremony at The Paley Center for Media in New York City. A team of journalists from The Washington Post won first place in the national category.
“Powerful people who are the subject of our reporting often try to intimidate our journalists or discredit their fair and truthful work,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “But those efforts consistently fall flat because of the rigorous ethical standards we follow — guiding principles that have shaped American journalism for generations. It’s an honor to receive national recognition for upholding those standards, especially at a time when public officials are increasingly dishonest with the public and scrutiny of the press is at an all-time high.”
Ganucheau continued: “This is a proud day for our newsroom, but knowing our reporters, I can’t say I’m surprised. I hope this award reminds our readers that we have a process behind everything we do, and that we take our ethical obligations seriously, every single day.”
Mississippi Today had previously been announced as one of three finalists for the local Collier Award prize. National finalists included The New Yorker, The Guardian/NBC News, and The Washington Post, which took home the national first place prize.
The award’s panel of judges was composed of journalism professionals drawn from across the news media landscape: Dean Baquet, executive editor of the local investigations fellowship at the New York Times; Sewell Chan, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review; Gina Chua, executive editor of Semafor; Lynette Clemetson, director of the Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University; Lynn Novick, a documentary filmmaker whose works include Baseball (1994), The War (2007), and The Vietnam War (2017); Kerry Smith, vice president of ethics and standards at ABC News; Stephen D. Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; and Paul Steiger, ProPublica’s founder emeritus.
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