A team from Mississippi Today and The New York Times is a finalist for the Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism for reporting about brutality in a Mississippi jail where guards used some inmates to carry out attacks on others.

The Ethics and Journalism Initiative at New York University announced nine finalists Wednesday for work published from 2024 to 2025. Three finalists were named in each of three reporting categories – student, local and national/international.

The work of Mississippi Today and The Times is a finalist in the local category.

The Collier Awards “honor journalism that meets the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise,” the initiative said in its announcement.

“Why practice ethical journalism when we are vilified for even our best work and when political leaders pressure news owners and their reporters to self-censor?” Stephen J. Adler, founder and director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative, said in the announcement. “Simply because ethical journalism is stronger, more reliable journalism, reflecting our aspirations to provide the public with fair and accurate information and to hold our leaders to account.”

First, second and third prizes will be announced April 15 at the Paley Center for Media in New York. The finalists, in alphabetical order by category, are: 

Student Category: 

• New York University students Krish Dev and Dharma Niles for their breaking news and data reporting for the Washington Square News on a March 2025 cyberattack that revealed the private information of more than 3 million NYU applicants, students and alumni.
• University of Texas Dallas students Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Sherlyn Dominguez, and Tyler Crivella for their data-driven investigation for the independent student publication The Retrograde into UTD’s low rates of action on Title IX cases, amid restrictive gag order policies. 
• Stanford University student Anna Yang for her searing account of a Stanford assault survivor’s journey through a protracted two-year Title IX process while their perpetrator faced criminal charges, for The Stanford Daily.

Local Category: 

• The Miami Herald/The Tampa Bay Times for their reporting on the detention and harsh treatment of immigrants at the South Florida facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
• Mississippi Today/The New York Times for their investigation of the Rankin County jail in which guards enlist prisoners to carry out violent attacks on other inmates in the guise of “enforcement.”
• The Record (New Jersey) for its reporting on widespread abuse and neglect in New Jersey’s $1.5 billion group home system for adults with developmental disabilities.  

National/International Category: 

• NBC News and Telemundo for their year-long investigation of the secretive and unregulated trade in body parts, in which a Texas academic health center provided researchers and medical technology companies with the corpses of poor, unhoused, mentally ill, and other vulnerable people without the knowledge or consent of their families.
• The Associated Press for its unyielding defense of ethical standards and principles after AP journalists were blocked from the Oval Office, Air Force One and certain news events because the news organization would not change its style on the Gulf of Mexico.  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg for his intrepid reporting on national security officials, including U.S. Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth, using the Signal app to discuss highly sensitive details of an impending strike on Houthi militants in Yemen. 

The Mississippi Today/Times reporting is also the recipient of the First Amendment Coalition’s 2025 Free Speech and Open Government Award, which recognizes journalism that advances free expression or the public’s right to know about its government.