Coming fresh off of the the insufferable annual panagyrizing event, the White House Correspondents Dinner, the month of May also delivers the more exalted press industry awards, the Pulitzer Prizes. While the WHCA Awards are more like a splashy cotillion (they love to call it “The Nerd Prom”), the Pulitzers are regarded more like journalism’s Academy Awards.
Journalists and news outlets crave this honor because it bestows a level of credibility to their efforts which gets thrown in the face of readers on the regular. The behavior is such that many act as if they are above criticism after touching the hem of Pulitzer. For this reason many journalists will tout even if they have been nominated for the Prize. Some have gone so far as to claim a nomination, when in truth they merely plunked down the $75 fee to have their work considered for nomination.
Beyond the scope of journalism, the Pulitzers have taken on a bit of a tarnished appearance, along with the industry in general. These days you are more likely to hear the name of this award used in a punchline; on social media frequently a completely mockable dose of journalism will have some announcing derisively the reporter should earn a Pulitzer nomination. (At RedState I have even concocted my version of the anti-Pulitzers - The Golden Remington Awards - to highlight the lowlights in the industry.)
For this year’s Pulitzers many of the honors in the various categories were about what you may expect, deeply serious reports about important issues that exposed needed changes. One bit of contradiction is found with the International Reporting honor, going to the New York Times, “For its wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel’s intelligence failures and the Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza.”
One might consider that there is a disqualifying aspect in the Times’ coverage, however. It was last October when that outlet led a faction of others with some of the worst examples of journalism we have witnessed in ages, on this very subject. They came out to declare Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds, and leading to a number of international incidents and reactions.
The amount of major news outlets who completely butchered their credibility with this errant accusation that Israel “bombed” a hospital is both pathetic, and unsurprising.
— Brad Slager - Scrubbing Down In a Bloodbath (@MartiniShark) October 18, 2023
The @NYTimes was not alone, but possibly the worst example.
1/ pic.twitter.com/pUuDV7MgBP
Then the facts arrived. Israel did not bomb Palestine, it was a Gaza-based rocket, it did not strike the hospital, and hundreds did not die. This was some of the most disgraceful journalism on display, and here is the Pulitzer committee awarding the very outlet on the same subject.
Then we can turn to the big annual honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. This is their equivalent of “Best Picture” at The Oscars, awarded to the news outlet delivering the best lengthy coverage on a subject over a course of several entries. This year’s winner was ProPublica, for its series of reports on the Supreme Court and personal benefits received by some of the justices.
Groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court to reveal how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel, pushing the Court to adopt its first code of conduct.
The first problem is the use of the plural in this description, as the committee mentions “Court” and “justices”, when almost all of the pieces cited for celebration were focused on one person, Justice Clarence Thomas. (Justice Alito was included in one of the over half dozen examples.) While these reports carried copious amounts of supposition and accusatory tones, at no point was there any mention of actual wrongdoing by Thomas. This, as we know, did not deter the press industry last year from energetically repeating the findings of ProPublica.
The second related issue is that the primary source of the benefits lavished on Justice Thomas came from billionaire Harlan Crow. These involved things such as paid vacations, uses of homes abroad, and paying the tuition for a young Thomas family member. But Crow was not buying influence, he is a close friend of Thomas, and there have been no incidents of Crow having any business being brought before SCOTUS.
This differs from the third problem seen – or specifically, not seen – in this celebration of the ProPublica investigation. At no point did the outlet use nearly the same energy in regard to Justice Sonya Sotomayor, despite some glaring realities, one being she has received millions of dollars from Penguin-Random House Publishing since taking a seat on The Court. Secondly, Sotomayor did not recuse herself from any cases involving Penguin they ruled on following her business arrangement.
If there is a suspicion of influence at play, it stands to reason there is a greater chance that ruling on your own publisher that paid millions of dollars would deliver more problems than a rich friend picking up the travel tab or paying for your kid’s schooling, while never having a case in The Court. Then there is one other possible reason this oversight took place.
Prior to her stint on SCOTUS, Justice Sotomayor was a Lecturer In Law at – Columbia University. That would be the same university with the esteemed journalism school that is behind the Pulitzer Prize. Small wonder why ProPublica’s avoidance of a more blatant example of probable influence on The Court would not be seen as a problem by the Pulitzers.
And yes, this is the same Columbia University currently embroiled in disturbing antisemitic protests on its campus, the same campus where the protesters actively barred the press from covering what was transpiring inside the tent city. We saw protesters and faculty lining up to bar journalists from the encampment, active anti-press actions taking place in the shadows of The Columbia Journalism School, and yet there has been hardly any outrage over that event witnessed in the news outlets of this country.
Small wonder why the luster has been dulled on the medals handed out by the Pulitzer Prize Committee.