Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer
Prizes.
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:
* “FACT-FREE TRADE” AWARD -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
In a press corps prone to cheer on corporate-drafted trade agreements
as the key to peace and plenty in the world, no cheerleader is more
fervent than Tom Friedman. During a CNBC interview with Tim Russert in
July, Friedman confessed: “I was speaking out in Minnesota -- my hometown,
in fact -- and a guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is
there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely
not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA,
the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I
just knew two words: free trade.’”
(Friedman may not have read even the pact’s title; CAFTA actually
stands for the Central America Free Trade Agreement.)
* 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.”
* BROKE-BRAIN MOUTHING AWARD -- MSNBC’s Chris Matthews
As the movie “Brokeback Mountain” (about a relationship between two
cowboys) was gaining attention and audience in January, Chris
Matthews appeared on the Imus show to hail “the wonderful Michael
Savage” and the talk-show host’s nickname for the movie: “Bareback
Mounting.” Matthews and Savage had been MSNBC colleagues until “the
wonderful” Savage was fired -- after referring to an apparently gay caller
as a “sodomite” and telling him to “get AIDS and die.” Now
that’s hardball.
* CASUAL ABOUT CASUALTIES 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).
* “PROVE YOU’RE NOT A TRAITOR” PRIZE -- CNN’s Glenn Beck
In November, Beck -- an Islamophobic host on CNN Headline News --
launched into his interview with Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, a Muslim
American, this way: “I have been nervous about this interview with you,
because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not
working with our enemies.’” Beck then added: “And I know you’re not. I’m
not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think
a lot of Americans will feel that way.” Is it possible that primetime
bigots like CNN’s Beck have something to do with the prejudices “that a
lot of Americans feel”?
* GROUNDHOG DAY AWARD -- Ted Koppel
One role of journalism should be to help the public learn from past
government policy disasters in hopes of preventing future ones. But in a
New York Times column on Oct. 2, former ABC News star Koppel
wrote that Washington should tell Iran it is free to develop an
atomic bomb -- with a Mafia-like warning: “If a dirty bomb explodes in
Milwaukee, or some other nuclear device detonates in Baltimore or Wichita,
if Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia should fall victim to a nuclear
‘accident,’ Iran should understand that the United States
government will not search around for the perpetrator. The return
address will be predetermined, and it will be somewhere in Iran.” In other
words, no matter what the evidence, Koppel urged our government to attack
a predetermined foe, Iran. Didn’t that happen in 2003 with Iraq?
So, there they are, the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006. Hold your nose
and prepare yourself for 2007.
_____________________________
Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For more information, go to:
www.normansolomon.com