Friday, April 21, 2006

How to win a Pulitzer

In today’s Washington Times Douglas MacKinnon describes the litmus test a writer has to pass before the Pulitzer committee deems his or her work acceptable:

Well, as near as I can tell, to make the grade, one must have done at least one of the following: Betray national secrets; go after only Republican lobbyists; tackle only Republican corruption; blame the United States for everything wrong in the world: and the surefire attention getter; try to tear down the presidency of George W. Bush….
Does MacKinnon provide examples of what he’s saying? Yes. Here are a few of them:
Dana Priest of The Washington Post, won the best reporting award for revealing that the CIA was using secret prisons in Eastern Europe to interrogate terrorists.

In other words, they gave an award to a reporter who got a tip from a government worker who betrayed his or her country by revealing top-secret information. The reporter and The Post, in an effort to become the darlings of left, then splashed said top secret information all over the front page.

Who benefited from this "Pulitzer Prize Winning Reporting?" Terrorists who mean to kill everyone in the United States.

Next, you have the New York Times winning a Pulitzer Prize for announcing President Bush's "domestic eavesdropping program." Again, a proudly left-of-center newspaper is given a prestigious award for revealing top secret information that can only bring aid and comfort to al Qaeda and other terrorists who mean to destroy us and our allies.

It should be noted that with regard to the two prizes just mentioned, in the interests of national security, Mr. Bush personally appealed the patriotism and commonsense of both The Post and the New York Times, and implored them not to run the stories. Both papers, it seems, put their strong dislike of Mr. Bush and his policies before the future safety of Americans....
The Post and Times will no doubt answer MacKinnon with “the public has a right to know” and “as journalists we have a duty to report.”

But when Times’ reporter Judith Miller refused a federal judge’s order to disclose the identity of an anonymous source, we heard nothing from the Times about the public’s right to know.

The Post ran Priest’s story, it knew the consequences.

When The Washington Post Company’s Newsweek published a story which proved bogus about Gitmo guards flushing pages of Koran down a toilet, it knew the story would inflame the Muslin world, where the story led to rioting, deaths and injuries as well as further inflaming anti-American sentiment.

The Post Co. defended its publication decisions by claiming “the public has a right to know.”

Then there were the Danish cartoons. The Post and Times, along with almost all of the cowering MSM, decided they could make an exception to the old “right to know” principle. They told us their decisions had nothing to do with the thought of angry Muslims storming the newsroom. It was a question of “sensitivity.”

So they wouldn't dream of publishing even one of the cartoons.

Sure.

Somewhere in the Bible it says the breath of hypocrites “stinketh.”

Don’t get downwind from The Post or Times.

MacKinnon’s column.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess the only good news is that if the Islamofascists win and we fall into a Sharia Thug-ocracy then the minions of the MSM will be the first into the gulag.

Cold comfort tho.

-AC

Anonymous said...

No, they will be the first with their heads up under the robes of Islamofacsists.

You may have noticed they are much more courageous when they trust in the humanity of their opponents than when they don't.

Anonymous said...

The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have become a joke over the last 20 years. They are a mutual masturbation society for elitist editors and reporters. The decay of the Pulitzers' significance tracks the decay of the mainstream media, which have moved well to the left of the ideology of most Americans. We are in a life-and-death struggle against the new fascism -- militant Islam -- but you would not know it from reading the WP and NYT. Journalism as a calling to public service? Not in 2006.