Announcing the finalists for the 2026 Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics
The judges for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics are honored to select five outstanding entries as finalists for the 2026 award from an impressive field of nominations.
The Shadid Award recognizes journalists who exhibit a strong commitment to ethical journalism by acting with integrity, honoring ethical principles in their reporting or resisting pressure to compromise ethical principles.
The winner will be announced in March and honored at an award ceremony in Washington, DC on Monday, April 20.
2026 Finalists
- Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Mark Arsenault, The Boston Globe. In “The Education of Rümeysa Öztürk,” Boston Globe reporters showed how Öztürk became the face of the Trump administration’s actions against international students involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Their sensitive and transparent methods not only yielded a moving portrait of a private person who became an international news story but also contextualized the ICE detainment of tens of thousands of people in the United States last year.
- Gregory Royal Pratt, Laura Rodríguez Presa, Caroline Kubzansky, Jason Meisner and Andrew Carter, The Chicago Tribune. This team provided a definitive account of the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort in Chicago and also disproved the government’s account of why they raided a South Shore apartment building. Though tear gassed and threatened by the government, the team upheld their duty to the public.
- Sarah Topol, The New York Times Magazine. Freelance investigative journalist Sarah Topol mapped a global fertility industry worth tens of billions of dollars, tracing how it hopscotched from country to country, reconstituting wherever regulations were weakest. In the reporting process, Topol had to win the trust of women who had been systematically betrayed by authority figures and navigate the tension between source security and the public’s right to know.
- Perla Trevizo, Melissa Sanchez, Mica Rosenberg, Gabriel Sandoval, Ruth Talbot, Ronna Risquez, Adrián González, Jeff Ernsthausen, Adriana Núñez Moros and Carlos Centeno, ProPublica. In this investigation of the Trump administration’s deportation of more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, the team conducted mini-investigations of each man and built an interactive database showing the truth about who these men are. Publishing the full report came with risks for the men that had to be weighed against the journalists’ goal of accountability.
- Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes, San Francisco Chronicle. This four-part investigation revealed how California officials had disregarded state law in their haste to open more mental health treatment facilities, spurring violence and neglect. Reporters spent more than a year sensitively working with victims and focusing on the principle of doing no harm. In the process they weighed when and how to describe harm inflicted on patients, how to cover a suicide and when to publish surveillance footage.
“We were heartened to see the incredible journalism being done at every level and in every medium this year,” said Kathryn McGarr, judging chair and UW–Madison associate professor of journalism and mass communication. “These five stories exemplify journalism as an ethical practice, bringing attention and care to stories of immigration, mental health institutions and international surrogacy practices.”
Recent winners of the award include The Seattle Times team of Hannah Furfaro, Lauren Frohne and Ivy Ceballo for their work showing the barriers preventing young people from accessing treatment for opioid addiction in Washington state, and the NBC News team of Jon Schuppe, Mike Hixenbaugh and Rich Schapiro for their investigation of our country’s failed death notification system.