Proposal: The Goebby Awards for Corpo-Fascist-Neocon Newsaganda

hvn_nbr_2

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Wed Jan-18-06 02:40 PM
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Proposal: The Goebby Awards for Corpo-Fascist-Neocon Newsaganda

I propose that we establish the Goebby Awards for achievement in corpo-fascist-neocon newsaganda, to "honor" the newsaganda industry's individual, show, publication, or network that does the most outstandingly egregious job of purveying propaganda as news. In some/many cases, the award might go to the entire Ministry of Propaganda (AKA media cartel).

You could think of these awards as kind of like an anti-Pulitzer Prize, although when Judy Miller wins Pulitzers, it seems that the Pulitzers themselves have become anti-Pulitzers or parodies of the Pulitzer intention.

In case it's not obvious, the name for the awards is in recognition of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi head of propaganda, whom our own Ministry of Propaganda so diligently emulates.

Since there are so many potential candidates so often, I think we could do an award weekly, but maybe it should be bi-weekly or monthly.

Instances of "honored" propaganda could be acts of commission, omission, or gross disproportion. Some past examples that could have won a Goebby (Some might still be eligible for lifetime achievement awards) include:

Pretending that the "wardrobe malfunction" explanation of the 'bot box on BumbleBorg's back during the debates was worthy of anything but derisive laughter.
Refusing to inform Americans about the vulnerabilities of vote counting machines, the partisanship of vote-counting machine companies, or the criminal hacking records of the hackers/programmers who programmed the machines, before the machines were adopted widely. Or even since then.
Spending thousands and thousands of hours of broadcast time and column inches on Clinton's lie about sex in contrast to broadcasting dozens of milliseconds about the Downing Street Minutes, Niger forgeries, and other proofs and/or evidence of BumbleBorg's lies to start a war.
Playing over and over again the Dean Scream and "I did not have sex with that woman" and never repeating the assurances that we know exactly where the WMDs are and that Iraqis will throw flowers at our feet.
24/7 broadcasting of hundreds of hours of coverage of a dozen Schiavo protestors in contrast to broadcasting dozens of milliseconds (if even that) of millions of anti-war protestors.
Giving a great deal of coverage to the Ukrainian election irregularites and ignoring the even greater irregularities in our own elections. And collaborating with the fudging of exit polls, pretending that sholarly, scientific, mathematical evidence of election fraud doesn't exist, and pretending that Mitofsky's "explanation" actually said anything.
Being unable or unwilling to detect blatant shills in their own ranks (Jeff Gannon, Judy Miller, etc.) and then, when caught in the act, refusing to come clean about it.

If anyone thinks this is something worth doing, here are a couple issues we need to discuss about it:

How often to do the awards? I'm initially thinking weekly but bi-weekly or monthly might be more manageable.
How the selection process should work. A possibility is to have one nomination thread per week (or whatever), then at the end of the week to set up a DU poll thread listing the nominees mentioned most often in the nomination thread, and select the winner based on the poll votes.
Should we send an actual, physical, printed paper certificate, suitable for framing, to winners or just make it a cyberspace award?
Who's going to administer and maintain it? (I'd be willing to start the first couple nomination and poll threads, but I don't think I could commit to reliably and punctually doing it on a week-in week-out basis.)

So, any comments? Anyone like it or hate it? Anyone want to volunteer to administer it?