Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2002
by Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice
January 3, 2003
For more than a
decade now, the P.U.-litzer Prizes have gone to some of America's stinkiest
media performances each year. The competition was fierce as ever in 2002. Many
journalistic pieces of work deserved recognition. Only a few could be chosen.
While making the
selections, I have relied heavily on research by the staff of the media watch
group FAIR (where I'm an associate). However, the responsibility for bestowing
the latest P.U.-litzers is entirely mine.
Here are the
eleventh annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media
achievements of
2002:
"KICKING
OUT HISTORY" AWARD -- Multiple winners
Dozens of
esteemed journalists and major media outlets qualified for this prize by
reporting that the Iraqi government had ejected U.N. weapons inspectors four
years ago. Actually, the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 under orders
from UNSCOM head Richard Butler just before the blitz of U.S. bombing dubbed
"Operation Desert Fox."
With notable
disregard for historical facts, many reporters at leading news organizations
flatly asserted that Saddam Hussein had "expelled" or "kicked
out" the U.N. inspectors. Among the purveyors of that misinformation were
Daniel Schorr of National Public Radio (Aug. 3), John Diamond of USA Today
(Aug. 8), John McWethy of "ABC World News Tonight" (Aug. 12), John
King of CNN (Aug. 18), John L. Lumpkin of the Associated Press (Sept. 7),
Randall Pinkston of "CBS Evening News" (Nov. 9), Betsy Pisik of the
Washington Times (Nov. 14) and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post (Nov. 17).
Some outlets
were repeat winners, as when USA Today claimed in a Sept. 4 editorial that
"Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998." Other prominent
newspapers also made the false information a centerpiece of the positions that
they espoused. The New York Times declared in an Aug. 3 editorial:
"America's goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all
unconventional
weapons. ... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms
inspectors four years ago." On the very next day, the Washington Post
editorialized: "Since 1998, when U.N. inspectors were expelled, Iraq has
almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological
weapons."
GOLD STANDARD
PRIZE -- NBC News
Too savvy to go
along with the theory that TV news producers are professionals who should edit
stories without fear or favor, the decision-makers at "NBC Nightly
News" devoted 69 minutes of coverage to the Winter Olympics, which aired
in early 2002 on NBC. It just so happened that competing news shows on other
networks saw much less news value in the games -- "ABC World News
Tonight" gave them 30 minutes, and the total on "CBS Evening
News" amounted to 10 minutes.
MEDIA DARWINISM
PRIZE -- Barry Diller
As a longtime
media tycoon now at the top of the Vivendi Universal conglomerate, Barry Diller
isn't shy about depicting his success as part of an upward evolutionary spiral.
"Media is going to continue its trend of consolidation, which mirrors the
ongoing globalization," Diller told the Los Angeles Times in March. "This
is a natural law. It is inevitable."
FABRICATION-OF-EXONERATION
AWARD -- Cokie Roberts
Commenting on
George W. Bush's dubious role as a member of the board at Harken Energy,
reporter-turned-pundit Cokie Roberts dismissed the idea that Bush might have
been involved in corporate malfeasance during his corporate endeavors.
"The president was exonerated by the Securities and Exchange Commission,
saying he didn't do anything illegal or improper on insider trading
charges," she said on July 8. "But the Democrats won't let it
go." Roberts did not mention that Bush's lawyers asked the Securities and
Exchange Commission for a statement that he had been cleared -- and the SEC
responded that its initial letter "must in no way be construed as indicating
that [Bush] has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from
the staff's investigation."
SELF-SLANDER
PRIZE -- Ann Coulter
Coulter is a
best-selling author who likes to attack the news media for supposed left-wing
bias and irresponsibility. During an August interview with the New York
Observer, she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go
to the New York Times Building."
SELF-SATISFACTION
PRIZE -- CNN anchor Jack Cafferty
On CNN's
"American Morning" program Aug. 5, Cafferty mixed candor with exemplary
media arrogance: "This is a commercial enterprise. This is not PBS. We're
not here as a public service. We're here to make money. We sell advertising,
and we do it on the premise that people are going to watch. If you don't cover
the miners because you want to do a story about a debt crisis in Brazil at the
time everybody else is covering the miners, then Citibank calls up and says,
'You know what? We're not renewing the commercial contract.' I mean it's a
business."
Norman Solomon's new book "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You," coauthored with foreign correspondent Reese
Erlich, will be published in February by Context Books. Email: mediabeat@igc.org