Norm Solomon Presents "Awards"
ANNOUNCING THE P.U.-LITZER PRIZES FOR 2001
by Norman Solomon
The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a decade ago to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.As each winter arrives, I confer with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR to sift through the large volume of entries. This year, the competition was especially fierce. We regret that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer.
And now, the tenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media performances of 2001:
"LOVE A MAN IN A UNIFORM" AWARD -- Cokie Roberts of ABC News "This Week"
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On David Letterman's show in October, Roberts gushed: "I am, I will just confess to
you, a total sucker for the guys who stand up with all the ribbons on and stuff, and they
say it's true and I'm ready to believe it. We had General Shelton on the show the last day
he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I couldn't lift that jacket with all the
ribbons and medals. And so when they say stuff, I tend to believe it."
PROTECTING VIEWERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE -- CNN Chair Walter Isaacson
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"It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan,"
said Isaacson, in a memo ordering his staff to accompany any images of Afghan civilian
suffering with rhetoric that U.S. bombing is retaliation for the Taliban harboring
terrorists. As if the American public may be too feeble-minded to remember Sept. 11, the
CNN chief explained: "You want to make sure that when they see civilian suffering there,
it's in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United
States."
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An October internal memo from the daily in Panama City, Florida, warned its editors:
"DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S. war on
Afghanistan. Our sister paper ... has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of
threatening e-mails... DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from
the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the
story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT."
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This category had many candidates -- pundits apparently trying to sound as fanatical
as the terrorists they were denouncing -- but it was won by Coulter, who wrote in
September: "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing
right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to
Christianity."
Runner-up: Thomas Woodrow and The Washington Times, for a column headlined "Time to Use the Nuclear Option," which asserted: "At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice."
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In the Nov. 5 edition, under the headline "Time to Think About Torture," Newsweek's
Alter wrote: "In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ...
torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but
something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American
history.... Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of our old assumptions
about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly 'Sept. 10' -- living in a country that no
longer exists."
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On a Nov. 26 broadcast, the longtime anchor of "Morning Edition" interviewed a
12-year-old boy about a new line of trading cards marketed "to teach children about the
war on terrorism" by "featuring photographs and information about the war effort." The
elder male was enthusiastic as he compared cards. "I've got an Air Force F-16," Edwards
said. "The picture's taken from the bottom so you can see the whole payload there, all the
bombs lined up." After the boy replied with a bland "yeah," Edwards went on: "That's
pretty cool."
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"I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing ... that I do like about
Rumsfeld," columnist Friedman declared on Oct. 13 during a CNBC appearance. "He's just a
little bit crazy, OK? He's just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always
count on being able to out-crazy us, and I'm glad we got some guy on our bench that our
quarterback -- who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that
guy's going to do, and I say that's my guy."
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When Newsweek published a Dec. 3 cover story on George W. and Laura Bush, it was a
paean to "the First Team" more akin to worship than journalism. Along the way, the
magazine explained that the president doesn't read many books: "He's busy making history,
but doesn't look back at his own, or the world's.... Bush would rather look forward than
backward. It's the way he's built, and the result is a president who operates without
evident remorse or second-guessing."
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On the national "700 Club" TV show, with host Robertson expressing his agreement,
Falwell blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on various Americans who had allegedly irritated God:
"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays
and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU,
People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the
finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
AMERICA UNITED EXCEPT FOR THOSE DECADENT TRAITORS AWARD -- Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic and Sunday Times of London
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Columnist Sullivan, as if trying to prove that a gay rights advocate can be as
hysterically right-wing as a Falwell, wrote in mid-September: "The middle part of the
country -- the great red zone that voted for Bush -- is clearly ready for war. The
decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead -- and may well mount a fifth
column."
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A February profile of O'Reilly in MediaWeek quoted the TV host's claim that the Los
Angeles Times had never named the woman who'd accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978:
"They never mentioned Juanita Broaddrick's name, ever. The whole area out here has no idea
what's going on, unless you watch my show." After it was pointed out that O'Reilly was
wrong and that Broaddrick had been repeatedly mentioned in the L.A. Times, the writer of
the MediaWeek profile, Catherine Seipp, commented that she would likely have caught the
error "if I hadn't been so mesmerized by O'Reilly's sheer O'Reillyness. There's just
something about a man who's always sure he's right even when he's wrong."
_____________________
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
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