The New Meme: "Anti-Bush" Pulitzers
Topic: NewsBusters
An April 19 NewsBusters post by Greg Sheffield claims that this year's Pulitzer Prizes were "given to anti-Bush journalism." This is a presumed reference to the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau winning for disclosing the Bush administration's secret, possibly illegal domestic surveillance program and the Washington Post's Dana Priest winning for exposing the CIA's secret interrogation sites around the world.

This is a talking point that NewsBusters has been harping on since the Pulitzers were announced. Rather than being bothered by such dubious actions, NewsBusters has abandoned its watchdog status and has gone into full partisan mode, defending the Bush administration:

-- Noel Sheppard wrote that "three of the recipients wrote stories about top-secret military information that conceivably compromised America’s War on Terror." Sheppard apparently has no evidence that they actually did.

-- Brent Baker wrote that the Pulitzers were given to "reporters who exposed -- and thus undermined -- secret anti-terrorism efforts." Again, no hard evidence was offered that anything was, in fact, "undermined."

Baker also beat up on Pulitzer winner Robin Givhan, "a Washington Post critic who mocked Vice President Cheney's outdoor apparel and ridiculed the supposed 1950s-era clothing worn by then-Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' kids." Is Baker suggesting that Cheney wasn't dressed "to operate a snow blower" when he was at Auschwitz? Well, no; apparently, merely saying it is offense enough, as Baker called it a "notorious hit piece." Baker also fails to mention Givhan's critiques of Democratic fashion, such as Cynthia McKinney's hair.