AlterNet ran a piece on the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2004. They were established a dozen years ago to provide special recognition for truly smelly media performances. It's put together by Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watchdog group FAIR.
A few choices:
TIMIDITY RULES PRIZE: The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius
Explaining why mainstream journalism failed to ask tough questions about the Iraq war before it started, columnist Ignatius – a war supporter – wrote in April: "In a sense, journalists were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own." Create a debate? Ignatius suggests it would have been unprofessional to raise questions at a time that many experts, over a hundred Congress members and millions of others were already questioning the drive to war.
This one galls me because the media creates "debates" all the time. It does so via analyses of things they contrived themselves ('Is Bush really ahead in the polls?'). It does so with the trial du jour of some random person no one had ever heard of before (most recently Scott Petersen: 'was he really guilty?'). It's also astonishing that the world's most controversial war in decades, which provoked the world's largest anti-war demonstrations since Vietnam, could be described as facing "little criticism." That the media ignored criticism is quite different than saying such criticism didn't exist.
"ONLY RIGHT-WING POLITICS THIS ELECTION YEAR" AWARD: Disney's Michael Eisner
In May, when Disney refused to distribute Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary, CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney "didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." But Disney was one of the 2004 election year's leading broadcasters of political propaganda, almost all of it pro-Bush, as its powerful talk radio stations served up hour after hour of right-wing hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc.
MEDIA MOGULS FOR BUSH PRIZE: Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone
Seven weeks before the election, Sumner Redstone expressed support for Bush on behalf of his company, which owns CBS, UPN, MTV, VH1, Infinity radio and dozens of other subsidiaries: "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on." Days later, Redstone added: "I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one." (Ironically, cultural conservatives often blame TV and radio sleaze on "The Liberal Media" – not GOP-backing media owners like Redstone and Rupert Murdoch.)
MOUTHPIECE FOR POWER AWARD: The Washington Post
Give credit for candor to Karen DeYoung, former assistant managing editor, for this comment in an August report examining why the Washington Post marginalized prewar doubts about White House claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." If counter-arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far."
STENOGRAPHIC PRIDE AWARD: Judith Miller, The New York Times
Defending her use of anonymous sources like Ahmed Chalabi, a highly unreliable Iraqi exile, in prewar front-page stories on Iraq's supposed WMDs, reporter Miller explained: "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence agency myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." Miller did not explain how her job differs from being a PR agent for the U.S. government.
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