The dummy in the White House told the world he feels really, really sorry about the abuse of A friend writes that comments by major media figures in 2001 “might help us understand why Alter’s comment was cited by the Here are some of the most relevant awards given that year:<\/P> TORTUOUS PUNDITRY PRIZE — Jonathan Alter of PROTECTING VIEWERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE — CNN Chair Walter PROTECTING READERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE — Panama City News BEST EMBRACE OF TERRORIST MINDSET AWARD — columnist Ann Runner-up:<\/B> Thomas Woodrow and The Washington Times, for a column headlined HISTORY IS FOR WIMPS PRIZE — Newsweek<\/B> <\/P> Go to the site ( +LOVE A MAN IN A UNIFORM AWARD — Cokie Roberts of ABC News “This Remember our May 3 item ANCHORS AWAY TO WAR PRIZE — Fox News Channel and PBS “NewsHour With The dummy in the White House told the world he feels really, really sorry about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How sorry? So sorry that he vowed to keep his boy Rummy on the job. And we all know that Rummy, who runs the U.S. military, feels really, really sorry, too. That’s what < FONT […]\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-aR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIraqi prisoners. How sorry? So sorry that he vowed to keep his boy Rummy on the job. And we
\nall know that Rummy, who runs the U.S. military, feels really, really sorry, too. That’s what
\nsquirm in two separate Capitol Hill hearings to be broadcast on
\nET and at 3 p.m. ET. (Let’s see if he avoids the T-word the way the dummy does.)<\/P>
\n
\nAmericans ended up torturing and murdering prisoners.” When you look at what leading figures
\nin the media have said, the abuse at Abu Ghraib “does not appear to be just an anomaly
\ncommitted by some girl from West Virginia. Note especially the comment encouraging torture by
\nJonathan Alter that was published in Newsweek.” <\/P>
\n
\nadministered by syndicated columnist and author Norman Solomon with Jeff Cohen of the media
\nwatch group FAIR. Solomon created the P.U.-litzers Prizes more than a decade ago “to give
\nrecognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.” <\/P>
\n
\nWILD ABOUT THAT MADMAN AWARD — Thomas Friedman of The
\nNew York Times<\/B>
“I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there’s one thing … that I do
\nlike about Rumsfeld,” columnist Friedman declared on Oct. 13 during a CNBC appearance. “He’s
\njust a little bit crazy, OK? He’s just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on
\nbeing able to out-crazy us, and I’m glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback —
\nwho’s just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy’s going to do, and I say
\nthat’s my guy.”
\n
\nNewsweek
<\/STRONG>In the Nov. 5 edition, under the headline “Time to Think About
\nTorture,” Newsweek’s Alter wrote: “In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts
\nturning to … torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States,
\nbut something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history….
\nSome people still argue that we needn’t rethink any of our old assumptions about law
\nenforcement, but they’re hopelessly ‘Sept. 10’ — living in a country that no longer exists.” <\/P>
\n
\nIsaacson
<\/STRONG>“It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in
\nAfghanistan,” said Isaacson, in a memo ordering his staff to accompany any images of Afghan
\ncivilian suffering with rhetoric that U.S. bombing is retaliation for the Taliban harboring terrorists.
\nAs if the American public may be too feeble-minded to remember Sept. 11, the CNN chief
\nexplained: “You want to make sure that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context
\nof a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.” <\/P>
\n
\nHerald<\/STRONG>
An October internal memo from the daily in Panama City, Florida,
\nwarned its editors: “DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S.
\nwar on Afghanistan. Our sister paper … has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of
\nthreatening e-mails… DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the U.S.
\nwar on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs
\nrewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT.” <\/P>
\n
\nCoulter<\/B>
This category had many candidates — pundits apparently trying to sound as
\nfanatical as the terrorists they were denouncing — but it was won by Coulter, who wrote in
\nSeptember: “We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing
\nright now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
\n<\/P>
\n
\n“Time to Use the Nuclear Option,” which asserted: “At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear
\ncapabilities should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less
\nwould be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice.”<\/P>
\n
When Newsweek published
\na Dec. 3 cover story on George W. and Laura Bush, it was a paean to “the First Team” more akin
\nto worship than journalism. Along the way, the magazine explained that the president doesn’t read
\nmany books: “He’s busy making history, but doesn’t look back at his own, or the world’s…. Bush
\nwould rather look forward than backward. It’s the way he’s built, and the result is a president who
\noperates without evident remorse or second-guessing.”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\nP.U.-litzers:<\/P>
\n
\nWeek”
+ BLAME CERTAIN AMERICANS FIRST PRIZE — televangelist\/pundits Jerry
\nFalwell and Pat Robertson
+ AMERICA UNITED EXCEPT FOR THOSE DECADENT
\nTRAITORS AWARD — Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic and Sunday Times of
\nLondon
+ SHEER O’REILLYNESS AWARD — Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly and
\nCatherine Seipp of MediaWeek
+ CHILD WARNOGRAPHY AWARD — Bob Edwards,
\nNPR News <\/P>
\n
\nOsborne’s idea that the military is conducting a cultural war on its own people? Have a look at
\nthese two awards from the
\nof that:<\/P>
\nCLEAR IT WITH THE PENTAGON AWARD — CNN<\/B>
A
\nmonth after the invasion of Iraq began, CNN executive Eason Jordan admitted on his network’s
\n“Reliable Sources” show (April 20) that CNN had allowed U.S. military officials to help screen its
\non-air analysts: “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with
\nimportant people there and said, for instance — ‘At CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of
\nretaining to advise us on the air and off about the war’ — and we got a big thumbs-up on all of
\nthem. That was important.”
\n
\nJim Lehrer” (Tie)<\/B>
On March 24, about an hour before the first NATO missiles struck
\nYugoslavia, viewers heard a Fox News Channel anchor make an understandable slip: “Let’s bring
\nin our Pentagon spokesman — excuse me, our Pentagon correspondent.” A more scripted
\ndemonstration of journalistic independence came later in the war, when “NewsHour” anchor
\nMargaret Warner introduced a panel: “We get four perspectives now on NATO’s mission and
\noptions from four retired military leaders.”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"