The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a dozen years ago to provide
special recognition for truly smelly media performances. As usual, I've
conferred with Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watch group FAIR, to sift
through the large volume of entries.
And now, the thirteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest
media performances of 2004:
MANDATE MANIA -- Too many winners to name
It became a media mantra. Two days after the election, the Los Angeles
Times reported that "Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51 percent of the
vote." Cox columnist Tom Teepen referred to Bush's vote margin as an
"unquestionable mandate." Right-wing pundit Bill Kristol argued that Bush's
"mandate" went beyond the 49-states-to-one landslides of Nixon in 1972 and
Reagan in 1984. Reality check: This was the narrowest win for an incumbent
president since 1916. As Greg Mitchell wrote in Editor & Publisher: "Where I
come from, 51 percent is considered a bare majority, not a comfortable
margin. If only 51 percent of my family or my editorial staff think I am
doing a good job, I might look to moderate my behavior, not repeat or
enlarge it."
MEDIA BIGOT OF THE YEAR -- MSNBC and radio host Don Imus
On his Nov. 12 show, the day after Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat
died, Imus said of Palestinians: "They're eating dirt and that fat pig wife
of his is living in Paris." After an Imus colleague referred to Palestinians
as "stinking animals" and said "they ought to drop the bomb right there,
kill 'em all right now," Imus responded: "Well, the problem is we have (NBC
reporter) Andrea (Mitchell) there; we don't want anything to happen to her."
In February, when a civilian Iranian airliner crashed, killing 43 people,
Imus reacted: "When I hear stories like that, I think who cares." So much
for showing the Islamic world we don't see all Muslims as enemies.
NO APOLOGY FOR BEING GULLIBLE AWARD -- CBS anchor Dan Rather
Asked at a Harvard forum in July what network TV news could have done
better during the build-up to the Iraq war, Dan Rather said "more questions
should have been asked" and then declared: "Look, when a president of the
United States, any president, Republican or Democrat, says these are the
facts, there is heavy prejudice, including my own, to give him the benefit
of any doubt, and for that I do not apologize."
TIMIDITY RULES PRIZE -- 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.
"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" movie, 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., 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 -- 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, 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.
WINNING HEARTS AND LUNGS AWARD -- Thomas Friedman of The New York Times
In a Nov. 18 column datelined "Camp Fallujah, Iraq," columnist Friedman
summed up the situation after the U.S. assault had left much of Fallujah in
rubble: "Bottom line? Iraq is a country still on life support, and U.S.
troops are the artificial lungs and heart." Apparently, the U.S. military
needed to deprive the country of oxygen and blood in order to save it.
ORWELLIAN FORCES AWARD -- Nic Robertson and others
U.S. military spokespersons now describe those who attack U.S. soldiers
in Iraq as "anti-Iraqi forces" -- even though, by all documented accounts,
the vast majority of those forces are actually Iraqis. And some American
journalists have begun to make that newspeak their own, among them CNN's
senior international correspondent Robertson. On Nov. 25, Robertson reported
from "Camp Freedom in Mosul, where the troops go out in their Striker
vehicles into the city of Mosul." He continued: "What they are doing has
been conducting offensive operations to disrupt the anti-Iraqi forces."
OUTFOXING FOX PRIZE -- Jack Cafferty, CNN
As co-anchor of CNN's morning program, Cafferty had something to report
on March 31: "It's a red-letter day here in America," he said. "Air America,
that communist radio network, starts broadcasting in a little while."
Cafferty was unyielding when CNN colleague Soledad O'Brien responded by
saying that the new talk-radio network was not communist but liberal. He
replied: "Well. Aren't they synonymous?"
______________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at
www.normansolomon.com.
