AlterNet: Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/stories/45815/

Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006
By Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, AlterNet
Posted on December 26, 2006, Printed on December 27, 2006

Competition has been fierce this year for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes. You can say that again... - H.

Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.")

And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006:

- snip -

Lock up the First Amendment Prize -- CNN's William Bennett

Soon after being hired as a CNN pundit, Bennett went on his radio talk show and offered his views on freedom of the press -- and on reporters who broke stories about warrantless wiretapping and secret CIA detention sites "against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others." Bennett fumed: "Are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer Prizes. I don't think what they did was worthy of an award -- I think what they did was worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward."

- snip -

Casual About Casual Ties Award -- Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch

Echoing an Iraq war talking-point heard regularly on Fox News, owner Murdoch said on the eve of the November election: "The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute." As FAIR noted, U.S. deaths in Iraq exceed those in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, not to mention the combined U.S. deaths of all this country's other military actions since Vietnam -- including Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.


Front-Page Pundit Award -- Reporter Michael Gordon and The New York Times

With many voters telling pollsters that they want U.S. troops to leave Iraq, the Times front-paged a post-election analysis by Michael Gordon -- headlined "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say" -- quoting three hand-picked "experts" who decried the possibility of troop withdrawal. Gordon didn't tell readers that one of his "experts," former CIA analyst Ken Pollack, had relentlessly promoted an Iraq invasion based on wildly false claims about an Iraqi threat. Gordon took off his reporter's hat that night on CNN to become an unabashed advocate for his view that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to "civil war" (as though civil war weren't already underway).

- snip -

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

REST OF LIST AT LINK

[Tom Joad]

1. Norman is great, thanks for the post.

[Hissyspit]

2. .