Announcing the Winners of the Inaugural Walter Duranty Prize

[Valin]

PJ Media:

Roger L Simon

10/11/12

 

(Snip)

Before I relinquish the podium, a word about our methods. Some months ago, PJ Media and The New Criterion publicized this prize and solicited nominations from our readerships, which then were vetted by a committee of professional writers and journalists, some of whom are with us tonight: Peter Collier, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, and the two Rogers — Kimball and Simon. We received over 150 different nominations, but ended up hewing remarkably close to the recommendations of our readerships. We abjured only one of the top four nominees — NBC for its selective editing in the Trayvon Martin case, because we could not determine culpability. We have learned, however, that NBC is being sued in the case, so that will be adjudicated in the courts — unless the network settles, of course.

 

SECOND RUNNER-UP

Today, it is my privilege to present the Second Runner-up Walter Duranty award to Andrew Sullivan, the writer and blogger for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Sullivan is worthy of the award for three specific themes which recur in his writing.

 

The first is his solitary fight on what he considers one of the most horrendous crimes committed against human beings — in this case, on male babies. I refer of course to what Sullivan calls “genital mutilation,” or as most of us refer to it, “circumcision.”

 

(Snip)

 

The second reason Andrew Sullivan deserves the prize is for his neverending and relentless crusade to prove that Sarah Palin was not the mother of her Down Syndrome baby, Trig.

 

(Snip)

 

FIRST RUNNER-UP The selection committee of the 2012 Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity is delighted to award its commendation and second-place prize to Bob Simon for his supremely untruthful report “Christians of the Holy Land,” which aired last April on CBS’s storied news show 60 Minutes.

 

(Snip)

 

“Christians of the Holy Land” is a textbook case of deploying the trappings and authority of objective reporting in order to further the ends of ideology. Bob Simon, though unworthy of the canons of responsible journalism intermittently upheld at CBS, is nevertheless a flagrantly successful embodiment of the spirit of mendacity that the Walter Duranty Prize was founded to commemorate. Congratulations, Bob Simon, on your award. You richly deserve it.

 

(SDnip)

 

 

DURANTY PRIZE WINNER

Choosing the winner of the first Walter Duranty prize at first seemed daunting. As you have just heard, there were a great many richly qualified contenders. But as our prize committee worked through the entries, there was one dispatch that stood out. Not only did it exemplify the Duranty spirit, but it did so in ways so Potemkin, so self-absorbed and so extravagantly intent on peddling terror-linked dictatorship as an exercise in elegance and good taste, that we knew we had a winner.

 

This story was a joint accomplishment of writer and editor, so it is a shared award. The selection committee is pleased to bestow the Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity on reporter Joan Juliet Buck and editor Anna Wintour, for their combined feats of on-site reporting, headline packaging, impeccable timing, and fearless dismissal of the truth in Vogue magazine’s astounding March 2011 cover story: “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”

 

Styled as a profile of the first lady of Syria, Asma al-Assad, this article was a paragon of propaganda — a makeover of the Assad dictatorship, presenting Asma as the human face of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule: “glamorous, young and very chic.”

 

 

 

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Before posting this I would just like to take a moment to thank Peter Collier, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, Roger Kimball Rodger Simon, for their tireless effort in this noble effort! They have set a high standard for those mavins of the media who wish to be nominated for this highly prestigious prize. But I have every confidence that they will rise to the challenge,in the coming years and in doing so cover themselves with much deserved glory.

 

[Valin]

Second Runner-up Walter Duranty award to Andrew Sullivan

 

First Runner-up Bob Simon “Christians of the Holy Land,”

 

DURANTY PRIZE WINNER Vogue magazine’s “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”