(Credit: Ricky Montalvo via Flickr)

Who will win the Anthony Shadid journalism ethics award this year? Issues of privacy and source protection were all factors in selecting the five nominees for the prize. Shadid was a New York Times foreign correspondent who died in 2012 from an asthma attack while reporting in Syria.

The annual ethics award “focuses on the ethical aspect of excellent journalism – the degree to which journalists honor (and did not violate) ethical aims and standards,” the center’s website explains.

The award winner will be named April 29 at the center’s annual journalism ethics conference. The theme this year is “Race, Ethnicity and Journalism Ethics.” “We are just days away from making the announcement about specific speakers. But, right now we can say it will be a mixture of scholars, advocates, activists, and working journalists,” the center’s Megan Duncan told iMediaEthics by e-mail.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Journalism Ethics announced the five finalists for its 2016 award this week, describing them as “extremely strong examples of journalism that displayed high ethical standards in the pursuit of truth.”

The nominees include local and national media: McClatchy, ProPublica and National Public Radio, Columbus Dispatch, Milwaukee Journal and the Associated Press. In 2014, the center expanded the award to include national media.

Three of the five publications –McClatchy, ProPublica/NPR, and the Columbus Dispatch — had to handle privacy issues in their reporting. The Milwaukee Journal “faced an array of ethical challenges reopening a 40-year-old unsolved murder case,” the press release said, and the Associated Press had to “protect its sources from retaliation, including death” in its coverage of “slave labor.”

The Chicago Tribune won the award last year for its report on wards of the state being assaulted and raped, the Madison.com reported.

Previous conferences have focused on media ownership, surveillance and sports journalism, as iMediaEthics has written at the time.