Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2008

The P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of the nation's stinkiest media performances. Every year, I join with the other judge for these awards — Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watch group FAIR and now a journalism professor at Ithaca College — to identify the most deserving recipients of this unwelcome plaudit.

And now, for 2008, the 17th annual P.U.-litzers Prizes:

HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE — MSNBC's Chris Matthews

This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Barack Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February. That was when Chris Matthews spoke of "the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

BEYOND PARODY PRIZE — Fox News

In August, a FoxNews.com teaser for the "O'Reilly Factor" program said: "Obama bombarded by personal attacks. Are they legit? Ann Coulter comments."

UPSIDE DOWN "ELITIST" AWARD — New York Times columnist David Brooks

For months, high-paid Beltway journalists competed with each other in advising candidate Obama on how to mingle with working-class folks. Ubiquitous pundit Brooks won the prize for his wisdom on reaching "less educated people, downscale people," offered on MSNBC in June: "Obama's problem is he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who could go into an Applebee's salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. And so he's had to change to try to be more like that Applebee's guy." It would indeed be hard for Obama to fit in naturally at an Applebee's salad bar. Applebee's restaurants don't have salad bars.

STRAIGHT SKINNY PRIZE — Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Chozick

In August, the Journal's Chozick went beyond the standard elitist charge to offer yet another reason that average voters might be wary of Obama. Below a headline "Too Fit to Be President?" she wrote of Obama: "Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them." Chozick asked: "In a nation in which 66 percent of the voting-age population is overweight and 32 percent is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" To support her argument, she quoted Hillary Clinton supporters. One said: "He needs to put some meat on his bones." Another, prodded by Chozick, wrote on a Yahoo bulletin board: "I won't vote for any beanpole guy."

"OUR CENTER-RIGHT NATION" AWARD — Newsweek editor Jon Meacham

With Democrats in the process of winning big in 2008 as they had in 2006, a media chorus erupted, warning Democratic politicians away from their promises of change.

Behind the warnings was the repeated claim that America is essentially a conservative country. In an election-eve Newsweek cover story with the sub-headline "America remains a center-right nation — a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril," Meacham argued that the liberalism of even repeatedly re-elected FDR offended voters. And the editor claimed that a leftward trend in election results and issues polling means little — as would Obama's victory after months of charges that he stood for radical change. Evidence seemed to lose out to journalists' fears that campaign promises might actually be kept.

"WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED?" AWARD — The New York Times

The Times op-ed page marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion in March by choosing "nine experts on military and foreign affairs" to write on "the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wish they had considered in the prewar debate." None of the experts selected had opposed the invasion. That kind of exclusion made possible a bizarre claim by Times correspondent John Burns in the same day's paper: "Only the most prescient could have guessed ... that the toll would include tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, as well as nearly 4,000 American troops; or that America's financial costs by some recent estimates, would rise above $650 billion by 2008." Those who'd warned of such disastrous results were not only prescient, but were routinely excluded from mainstream coverage.

"STATUS QUO CENTRISTS CAN'T BE IDEOLOGUES" AWARD — Too many to name

In late November, corporate media outlets began to credit Barack Obama with making supposedly non-ideological Cabinet picks. The New York Times front page reported that his choices "suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues." Conservative Times columnist David Brooks praised the picks as "not ideological" and the economic nominees as "moderate and thoughtful Democrats." USA Today reported that Obama's selections had "records that display more pragmatism than ideology." In mediaspeak, if you thought invading Iraq and signing the NAFTA trade pact were good ideas, you're a pragmatist. If not, you're an ideologue.

Norman Solomon is author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." The book has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com.

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