More than a dozen years ago, I joined with Jeff Cohen (founder of the
media watch group FAIR) to establish the P.U.-litzer Prizes. Ever
since then, the annual awards have given recognition to the stinkiest
media performances of the year.
It is regrettable that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer.
In 2005, a large volume of strong competitors made the selection
process very difficult.
And now, the fourteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest
media performances of 2005:
“FIRST DO SOME HARM” AWARD -- Radio reporter Michael Linder
Linder, a correspondent for KNX Radio in Los Angeles, was a media
observer at the Dec. 13 execution of Stanley Tookie Williams by
lethal injection. In a report that aired on a national NPR newscast,
Linder said: “The first hint that it would be a difficult medical
procedure came as they tried to insert the needle into his right
arm.” Medical procedure? During his brief report, Linder used the
phrase twice as he described the execution. George Orwell’s ears must
have been burning.
SELF-PRAISE STEALTH PRIZE -- William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer
Effusive with praise for George W. Bush’s second inaugural address on
Jan. 20, Kristol told Fox News viewers that they’d just watched “a
very eloquent speech ... one of the most powerful speeches, one of
the most impressive speeches, I think I’ve seen an American president
give.” Appearing on the same network, Krauthammer was no less
enthusiastic as he likened Bush to John F. Kennedy and called the
speech “revolutionary.” But neither pundit mentioned that they’d been
advisers who helped to write the speech.
PUT THEM IN CHAINS AWARD -- Bill O’Reilly
“You must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and
the war on terror and undermining it,” O’Reilly told his national
audience on June 20. “And any American that undermines that war, with
our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with
3,000 dead on 9/11, is a traitor. Everybody got it? Dissent, fine;
undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at
the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately.
Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them
in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and
they don’t care, couldn’t care less.”
MICKEY MOUSE JOURNALISM PRIZE -- Correspondent Mike Barz and ABC
During a Sept. 12 report that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America,”
Barz explained: “Based on all the smiles on all the faces of the
children ... it looks like the magic of Disney is taking hold in
China.” It was a very upbeat report about a new Disney-owned theme
park -- on a TV network owned by Disney.
OUTSOURCED TO THE PENTAGON AWARD -- New York Times reporter Judith
Miller
In October, after pressure built for Miller to explain her prewar
reliance on dubious sources while frequently reporting that Saddam
Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction, she agreed to be
interviewed by the Times. The newspaper’s Oct. 16 edition quoted her
as saying: “WMD -- I got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts
and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong. If your
sources are wrong, you are wrong.” But easily available sources were
not “all wrong.” Many experts -- including weapons inspectors Mohamed
ElBaradei, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter -- rebutted key White House
claims about WMDs month after month before the invasion.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MAN PRIZE -- Bob Woodward
During a Nov. 21 appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” the famous
Washington Post journalist struggled to explain why -- for more than
two years -- he didn’t disclose that a government official told him
the wife of Bush war-policy critic Joe Wilson was undercover CIA
employee Valerie Plame. Even after the Plame leaks turned into a big
scandal rocking the Bush administration, Woodward failed to tell any
Post editor about his own involvement -- though he may have been the
first journalist to receive one of those leaks. What’s more, in TV
and radio appearances, he disparaged the investigation by Special
Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
PRIME SLIME NEWS AWARD -- Nancy Grace and CNN Headline News
Since debuting in late February, the hour-long nightly “Nancy Grace”
program has broken new ground with salacious prime-time programming
on a so-called news channel. Promoted as “one of TV’s most
experienced and passionate legal analysts ... drawing on her unique
perspective as a former violent crimes prosecutor and as a crime
victim herself,” the host has taken prime-time “news” to new
cesspools of prurience and exploitation of human suffering. “This is
no script, no made-for-TV drama, it’s the real thing,” Grace
promises, “real people with real stories.” On a typical evening, the
show led with these stories: “Tonight, breaking news. Human bones,
human teeth -- police come across a gruesome scene at a Wisconsin car
salvage yard, where they say it looks like somebody may have burned a
body. ... Plus, a husband in court today for spiking his wife`s
Gatorade with anti-freeze, enough to kill her.”
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Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com