{"id":1902672,"date":"2023-03-22T07:28:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T11:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/for-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation\/"},"modified":"2023-03-22T07:31:26","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T11:31:26","slug":"for-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/for-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"For Five Straight Years, The Pulitzer Prizes Have Rewarded Misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffor-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1902672&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>The way the Pulitzer Prizes work seems simple enough \u2013 an Ivy league university hands out annual awards that ostensibly recognize important journalism. In practice, however, my former colleague Phil Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist who has served on the nominating committee, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/weekly-standard\/prize-and-fall\">described the inner workings of the Pulitzers this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The Pulitzer Prizes are a singularly corrupt institution, administered by Columbia University and the management of the New York Times largely for the benefit of the New York Times and a limited number of favored publications and personalities. Any citizen who thinks that the annual distribution of awards has something to do with quality probably believes that the Oscar for Best Picture goes to the most distinguished film of the year. If you\u2019re a connoisseur of unrestrained self-praise, may I recommend the citations when the Times awards itself the Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While the Pulitzer Prizes have always been little more than self-dealing masquerading as journalistic beauty pageant, it was a lot easier to believe in this manufactured prestige back when journalism was at least slightly more competent and concerned with the appearance of objectivity. In fact, a spin through the last five years of Pulitzer recipients reveals some interesting choices that add up to a clear pattern.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-183544385\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-75185911b508e02e79f82f50019075b4 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-75185911b508e02e79f82f50019075b4\"><\/div>\n<p>In 2018, a Pulitzer for national reporting was given to The New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on the Donald Trump campaign\u2019s alleged collusion with Russia. A 2019 Pulitzer for \u201cExplanatory Reporting\u201d was given to The New York Times for reporting on Trump\u2019s taxes. <\/p>\n<p>The 2020 Pulitzer for commentary was given to Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times for the 1619 Project. In 2021, a public service Pulitzer was given to The New York Times for its coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic \u201cthat exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond.\u201d In 2022, the Washington Post won a public service Pulitzer for its coverage of January 6.<\/p>\n<p>Every one of these major stories was badly handled by the media writ large, served activist political narratives, frequently involved credulously regurgitating actual misinformation, or some combination thereof. While there is always reason to be suspicious of Pulitzers, historically most of the objections to the awards handed out never rose beyond the level of newsroom gossip. <\/p>\n<p>The Pulitzers always reflected journalism\u2019s skewed priorities. However, this many high-profile failures in such a short time underscores the rapid and catastrophic descent of American journalism into radical political activism and makes winning a Pulitzer look definitively like a mark of ignominy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9fc96d256386602f894f0674c3c1ee8c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9fc96d256386602f894f0674c3c1ee8c\"><\/div>\n<h2>Russia, Russia, Russia<\/h2>\n<p>Of the five Pulitzers mentioned above, only one has forced the institution that doles out the awards to do any reckoning. In the case of the media\u2019s coverage of Russia collusion, the obsessive media coverage wasn\u2019t just empirically wrong, it was akin to mass media hysteria. The saga meant years of overtly conspiratorial coverage on a story where the FBI was caught manufacturing evidence and relying on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/articles\/2022\/03\/08\/the_curious_case_of_stefan_halper_longtime_zelig_of_american_scandals_who_crossfired_trump_818108.html\">informants with dubious resumes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been such a black eye for the media, even Columbia belatedly acknowledged the failure in a major way. Earlier this year, Columbia Journalism Review, the college\u2019s influential publication devoted to media criticism, published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/special_report\/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php\">a damning, four-part 24,000-word report<\/a> by Jeff Gerth, a veteran New York Times investigative reporter. Gerth brutally dissects the industry-wide media malpractice involved in the biggest story of Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Before you think anyone deserves plaudits for acknowledging the basic truth of a story that should have been obvious a month into Trump\u2019s presidency, know that such admissions have their limits. CJR\u2019s story came out after the Pulitzer committee commissioned a review of their Russiagate Pulitzer prizes last year with absurdly predictable results:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>In 2022, the Pulitzer board announced that it had commissioned two \u2018independent\u2019 reviews of the 2018 awards to the\u00a0Post\u00a0and\u00a0Times; they both found that \u2018no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes,\u2019 so the awards \u2018stand.\u2019 The board did not disclose the identity of the reviewers or post their actual findings. In December, Trump made his threat to sue the Pulitzer board a reality; he filed a defamation lawsuit against the board\u2019s members in Okeechobee county, Florida<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Suffice to say, more independent reviews of these awards have come to the opposite conclusion. In addition to Gerth\u2019s evisceration, as far back as 2019 my RealClearInvestigations colleague Tom Kuntz (another New York Times veteran) authored a thorough, well, investigation of the specific New York Times and Washington Post Trump-Russia reporting that won the Pulitzer. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-5ed8c32c489ffb3882ad6eaedab446f4 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-5ed8c32c489ffb3882ad6eaedab446f4\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/articles\/2019\/04\/09\/why_last_years_trump-russia_pulitzer_was_no_prize.html#!\">Kuntz\u2019s conclusion?<\/a> \u201cLast year\u2019s award to the New York Times and Washington Post for Trump-Russia coverage is already looking like a crumpled first draft of history lofting in a high arc to the dustbin.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Trump\u2019s Taxes<\/h2>\n<p>The fact that \u201cexplanatory reporting\u201d has become a specific Pulitzer category is a revealing commentary in itself. Reporting, by its very nature, is explanatory. Explicitly ascribing this quality to reporting over and above what it is supposed to be is to basically reward telling people what to think.<\/p>\n<p>The reporting on Trump\u2019s taxes is such a great example of driving a political narrative that naturally the Pulitzers rewarded The New York Times for its efforts. However detailed the Times\u2019 reporting might have been, it can really only be interpreted in the broader media context into which it appeared. <\/p>\n<p>At that point, corporate media largely assumed Trump\u2019s unwillingness to release his tax returns was his attempt to hide information that was at best very embarrassing and at worst criminal. The deep diving into Trump\u2019s taxes was basically using the institutional clout of The Paper Of Record\u2122 to justify a lot of antagonistic political speculation about Trump.<\/p>\n<p>When complete Trump tax returns were illegally leaked the following year (previous Times reporting had been based on partial leaks) you could see the desperation emanating from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/09\/27\/us\/donald-trump-taxes.html\">their all-caps headline<\/a>: \u201cLONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP\u2019S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE.\u201d The Times had finally harpooned the white whale and the best that they could do was report that a real estate investor takes some pretty big write-offs and otherwise exploits America\u2019s absurdly complex tax code to avoid paying taxes. <\/p>\n<p>In other words, Trump behaves the same way every other billionaire does. And when Democrats on the Ways and Means committee last December released six years\u2019 worth of Trump\u2019s returns, by then even CNN was running op-eds conceding Trump\u2019s taxes were a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/12\/30\/opinions\/trump-tax-returns-mccaffery\/index.html\">nothingburger<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While there was a strong case for the media to press Trump \u2014 and any other politician, for that matter \u2014 for transparency on his taxes, what happened here went well beyond reasonable and set a fairly destructive precedent. For the last <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax\">two<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/secret-irs-files-trading-competitors-stock\">years<\/a>, the nonprofit journalism outfit Pro-Publica has been doing extensive reporting on the illegally leaked tax returns of various wealthy Americans, and the Democratic regime seems to have no interest in rooting out and stopping this criminal behavior.<\/p>\n<p>While it\u2019s often hard to blame journalists for publishing juicy leaks, regardless of whether they got them legally, publishing rich people\u2019s tax returns hardly has the same public interest justification as reporting on, say, the Pentagon Papers. Pro-Publica is engaged in deeply troubling behavior and should be roundly condemned by the media because this is the kind of crap that (rightly) makes people despise journalists and view them as unethical. You don\u2019t exactly have to be a billionaire to be worried about leftist media disrespecting your privacy. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, Pro-Publica won\u2019t be condemned by its peers because most of the profession supports pretending that radical political activism is professional behavior \u2014 no less than the New York Times and the Pulitzer prizes legitimized this behavior.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018Propaganda Is Not History\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>At this point, it\u2019s difficult to even know where to begin with the 1619 Project and Pulitzer-Prize winner for commentary Nikole Hannah-Jones. It\u2019s arguably the most celebrated work of \u201cjournalism\u201d in the last decade. Although it\u2019s often described as \u201ccontroversial,\u201d controversy suggests there\u2019s two sides to the argument that it\u2019s a shoddy work of journalism. There\u2019s not.<\/p>\n<p>To recap: When the Times launched the 1619 Project with great fanfare, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/12\/20\/magazine\/we-respond-to-the-historians-who-critiqued-the-1619-project.html\">who\u2019s who of America\u2019s most eminent and respected historians<\/a> loudly objected to the premise that America\u2019s \u201ctrue founding\u201d was rooted in slavery and this is to blame for America\u2019s obesity epidemic, our lack of socialized medicine, bad traffic, and a host of societal ills with obviously complicated causalities. (The Times eventually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/american-founders\/impact\/new-york-times-quietly-edits-1619-project-after-conservative-pushback\">stealth-edited out<\/a> the bit about America\u2019s \u201ctrue founding.\u201d) <\/p>\n<p>One of the history professors the Times asked to fact-check the 1619 Project later wrote an essay under the headline, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2020\/03\/06\/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248\">I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me<\/a>.\u201d One of the 1619 Project essays authored by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond is premised on an economic history so flawed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aier.org\/article\/the-case-for-retracting-matthew-desmonds-1619-project-essay\/\">the whole essay should be retracted<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Another 1619 Project author, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, was later revealed to be <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PhilWMagness\/status\/1578510776398073856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1578510776398073856%7Ctwgr%5E96b7d20105b0a1666365f2d5def81a7611fd3937%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&#038;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fcorner%2Faffirmative-inaction-for-rich-powerful-progressive-tweeters%2F\">an egregious plagiarist by Phil Magness<\/a>, one of the most astute critics of the 1619 Project. Kruse avoided any serious repercussions to his academic career almost certainly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/affirmative-inaction-for-rich-powerful-progressive-tweeters\/\">due to political favoritism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The 1619 Project\u2019s ringleader \u2014 because \u201ceditor\u201d is inappropriate given the circus we\u2019re dealing with \u2014 Hannah-Jones has been a disgrace. She\u2019s been explicit that her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/articles\/2021\/08\/04\/1619_project_touted_as_racial_reckoning_ignores_democratic_party_racism_788351.html\">goal is to get a reparations bill passed<\/a>, which makes her an activist, not a journalist. When a group of respected black intellectuals criticized the 1619 Project, she responded by tweeting <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20200218175028\/https:\/twitter.com\/nhannahjones\/status\/1229819467061960713\">a photo of her making rude gesture at them<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>During the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Hannah-Jones <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/video\/1619-project-author-apologizes-fanning-173319883.html?guccounter=1&#038;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&#038;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACqZhUsANwn8fLzzoQWshdms6-dn2h_MDAd-B8pUIW3abOoO5vjBCWjwL7a4eAiNItbuirKLjLTwsBUXpAqHOQFvIoaGAUGyPyTeAmECczbpUBd89XWi7mm2ESrRuqFRppknNc0SCv546ZxRNN52lC1SkZpo0fdl6P_Of4oag_Bi\">promoted a conspiracy<\/a> that fireworks were part of \u201ca coordinated attack on Black and Brown communities by government forces.\u201d During the nationwide BLM riots, she went on national television and <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/06\/03\/ny-times-reporter-says-destroying-property-is-not-violence\/\">said<\/a>, \u201cDestroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>She also went on Twitter and spouted another insane conspiracy about how America dropped atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II \u201cwhen they knew surrender was coming because they\u2019d spent all this money developing it and to prove it was worth it. Propaganda is not history, my friend.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Well, she\u2019s at least right about the fact propaganda is not history. I hope the Pulitzers are proud of this one.<\/p>\n<h2>Global Pandemic: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barrypopik.com\/index.php\/new_york_city\/entry\/world_ends_joke\">a very old joke<\/a> about the headline The New York Times would run in the event of the apocalypse: \u201cWorld Ends: Woman and Minorities Hardest Hit.\u201d Now the connoisseurs of unrestrained self-praise out there might want to compare that to the write-up the Times gave itself after it won the \u201cPublic Service\u201d Pulitzer for its coverage of Covid-19. <\/p>\n<p>It noted the paper \u201chas received 132 Pulitzers since they were first awarded in 1917, has won in the public service category, regarded as the most prestigious of the prizes, six times\u201d and made multiple references to their supposedly worthy coverage of the<strong> <\/strong>\u201cracial and social inequities of the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is true that some aspects of the Times\u2019 coverage were laudable. The Times, which has resources few other outlets can match, had essential early coverage of the outbreak in China and did good work chronicling the heroic efforts as the first wave of the virus hit hospitals in New York. But it also ran fairly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/07\/us\/Protest-coronavirus-george-floyd.html\">credulous coverage<\/a> of the attempts to flout Covid lockdowns in order to attend BLM protests and ran insulting Chinese Communist Party-friendly coverage suggesting that anyone who made reference to the fact the virus originated in China was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/03\/18\/us\/politics\/china-virus.html\">racist and xenophobic<\/a>, in spite of the fact huge numbers of diseases take their name from their place of origin. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The media coverage of Covid broadly was an unmitigated disaster. There were routine condemnations of medical experts who dared to depart from the conventional Covid wisdom and were eventually were proven correct, mass social media bans, the unquestioning adoration of the corrupt Anthony Fauci, the insistence masks and lockdowns were uniformly effective, and self-righteous certainty that the lab leak was a conspiracy theory. <\/p>\n<p>No sane person looks back on this and thinks, \u201cWe should give anyone in the media an award for providing the public with quality information about COVID and helping us create a rational, evidence-based political response.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>High Crimes and Misdemeanors<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s really no getting around the fact what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was an absolute travesty and no one should make excuses for it. But that also doesn\u2019t mean leftist media hyperbole about the disgraceful episode was helpful, either.<\/p>\n<p>One of the prominent headlines to be found in the Washington Post\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage was simply, \u201cBLOODSHED.\u201d While there was far too much violence on Jan. 6, it\u2019s worth noting the only person who died that day was one of the rioters. That didn\u2019t stop the Post from reporting that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22Brian+D.+Sicknick%2C+U.S.Capitol+police+officer%2C+dies+from+injuries+after+engaging+rioters%22&#038;sxsrf=AJOqlzX2FAVoIFx-bwrTkXVzRuEt8vv3sA%3A1678886271221&#038;ei=f8URZLr-DKul5NoPqKKlqAE&#038;ved=0ahUKEwj6ucHegt79AhWrElkFHShRCRUQ4dUDCBE&#038;uact=5&#038;oq=%22Brian+D.+Sicknick%2C+U.S.Capitol+police+officer%2C+dies+from+injuries+after+engaging+rioters%22&#038;gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzoHCCMQ6gIQJzoNCAAQjwEQ6gIQtAIYAToNCC4QjwEQ6gIQtAIYAUoECEEYAFAAWL0KYPQMaAFwAHgAgAFTiAHYAZIBATOYAQCgAQGgAQKwARTAAQHaAQYIARABGAo&#038;sclient=gws-wiz-serp\">Brian D. Sicknick, U.S.Capitol police officer, dies from injuries after engaging rioters<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>It was later ruled that Sicknick died of natural causes the day after the riot. The Post would alter its original story on the officer\u2019s death <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/public-safety\/brian-sicknick-capitol-police-officer-dies\/2021\/01\/08\/5552e036-51bc-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html\">without running a correction<\/a>. An editorial that ran a few days later on Sicknick would later run a \u201cclarification.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The dramatic \u2014 and false \u2014 tale that Sicknick died of injuries after being assaulted with a fire extinguisher was reported in detail by The New York Times. Nonetheless, you\u2019d think the Post would investigate these things as well. Suffice to say, neither the blown story nor the editorial on Sicknick was included in the curated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pulitzer.org\/winners\/washington-post-3\">package of stories<\/a> the Post sent to the Pulitzer committee for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Included in the Post\u2019s Pulitzer package, however, was a story from Jan. 3 that was only tangentially related to the assault on the Capitol a few days later: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote\/2021\/01\/03\/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html\">\u2018I just want to find 11,780 votes\u2019: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor.<\/a>\u201d While plenty of criticisms could be leveled at Trump for his statements about the 2020 election, the reporting on that phone call led to a media feeding frenzy that caused the unfair dismissal of very real and legitimate problems Georgia had with its elections. <\/p>\n<p>More importantly, it bears mentioning the same Post reporter, Amy Gardner, who wrote the Pulitzer-cited story above, would file a follow-up story on Jan. 9 about yet another Trump conversation with the Georgia secretary of state. This time Trump told allegedly Georgia\u2019s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to \u201cfind the fraud,\u201d which was generally understood to mean that Trump was telling Raffensperger to abuse his power and make up reasons to disenfranchise people.<\/p>\n<p>Not only did the Post have to run a correction on that story three months later \u2014 you can <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/03\/16\/washington-post-accuses-trump-of-a-crime-based-on-fabricated-quotes\/\">read the pretty astounding details here<\/a> \u2014 when the dust settled, Gardner and The Washington Post conceded that they had \u201canonymously printed fabricated quotes they knew were from a second-hand source in the office of a political enemy, couldn\u2019t confirm the quotes with additional sourcing, still attributed them to the sitting president of the United States, used those quotes as a basis to speculate the president committed a crime, and the Democratic party would later repeatedly cite the bogus article when attempting to impeach Trump for \u2018high crimes and misdemeanors.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So the Washington Post reported complete misinformation that was cited as criminal evidence in the impeachment trial of Trump that resulted from Jan. 6, and still won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the event. Unsurprisingly, this story was also not included in the bundle of stories the Post sent to the Pulitzer committee. <\/p>\n<p>It would seem that you wouldn\u2019t have to make stuff up to paint an unflattering portrait of Trump after Jan. 6, but, in the end, the partisan tenor of the Post\u2019s coverage was a feature, not a bug, as far as the Pulitzer committee was concerned. The final entry in their Pulitzer package is \u201cOpinion: Trump caused the assault on the Capitol. He must be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like Covid, the specifics of the Post\u2019s Jan. 6 coverage can\u2019t be viewed in a vacuum. There are tens of millions of Americans who deplore what happened on Jan. 6 but are equally disgusted by corporate media\u2019s \u201cfiery but mostly peaceful\u201d excuse-making for left-wing rioters just a few months earlier. <\/p>\n<p>When BLM protesters rioted at the White House and injured a hundred cops and Secret Service agents in the summer of 2020, there were no \u201cBLOODSHED\u201d headlines or talk of insurrection. When BLM protesters and actual domestic terrorists that claim to be \u201cantifascist\u201d were laying siege to a federal courthouse in Portland for weeks on end, federal law enforcement started arresting people on the streets in unmarked vans. Immediately, the deep concern about potential civil rights violations of these arrests was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/07\/17\/892277592\/federal-officers-use-unmarked-vehicles-to-grab-protesters-in-portland\">a national news story<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Right now, Jan. 6 rioters languish in pre-trial detention for years and the ones who make it to trial find federal judges routinely handing down bigger sentences to rioters than prosecutors requested. The corporate media, which often explicitly defended rioting as a vehicle for political change in the months leading up to Jan. 6, is at best silent and at worst actively trying to erode equal treatment under the law.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the media will insist you\u2019re making excuses for Jan. 6 if you have a problem with the media\u2019s overtly political double standards for rioting. One particularly oily Washington Post columnist went so far as to claim \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2021\/03\/03\/convenient-new-fiction-there-was-no-attack-white-house-last-year\/\">There was no \u2018attack on the White House\u2019<\/a>\u201d when people started comparing the BLM assault a few months prior to what happened on Jan. 6.<\/p>\n<p>It seems that on every big news story, you now have a choice to make: Who are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the Pulitzer committee?<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1327c2d5953308a5108947e2152525c5 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1327c2d5953308a5108947e2152525c5\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">   Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/heminator\">@heminator<\/a><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"article-tags bdr-top-black mt-30 mt-sm-60 pt-15 pt-md-45\">\n<ul class=\"list-unstyled d-flex flex-wrap align-items-center mb-0 mx-n10 p-0\">\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/1619-project\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">1619 Project<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/columbia-university\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Columbia University<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/covid-19\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Covid-19<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/donald-trump\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Donald Trump<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/january-6\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">January 6<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/media\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Media<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/media-bias\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">media bias<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/media-corruption\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">media corruption<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/media-criticism\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Media Criticism<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/new-york-times\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">New York Times<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/pulitzer-prize\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Pulitzer Prize<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/russia-collusion\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Russia collusion<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/russiagate\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Russiagate<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/russian-collusion\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Russian collusion<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/spygate\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Spygate<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/trumps-tax-returns\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Trump&#8217;s tax returns<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"mt-10 mx-10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/washington-post\/\" class=\"btn btn-black btn-small\">Washington Post<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>&#8216;From <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/03\/22\/for-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=for-five-straight-years-the-pulitzer-prizes-have-rewarded-misinformation\">&#8220;For Five Straight Years, The Pulitzer Prizes Have Rewarded Misinformation&#8221;<\/a>&#8216;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:11px\"><em>&#8220;The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author of the article and not necessarily shared or endorsed by Conservative News Daily&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The way the Pulitzer Prizes work seems simple enough \u2013 an Ivy league university hands out annual awards that ostensibly recognize important journalism. In practice, however, my former colleague Phil Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist who has served on the nominating committee, described the inner workings of the Pulitzers this way: The Pulitzer Prizes are a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":1902673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[7380,19746,9141,22439,9819,4346],"class_list":["post-1902672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-misinformation","tag-prizes","tag-pulitzer","tag-rewarded","tag-straight","tag-years"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1902672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1902673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1902672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1902672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1902672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}