Today FAIR announces its annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, a rundown of some of the corporate media's stinkiest moments in 2010.

Is there something we missed? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post (12/29/10):

I've seen Petraeus give many briefings over the years, and it's a bit like watching a magician at work. Even though you've seen the trick before, and you know the patter, you still get mesmerized. He has the ability to make people believe the impossible might be doable, after all.

That sounds bad, but then I remembered this from ABC's Martha Raddatz (6/23/10):

A warrior and a scholar, Petraeus is sometimes jokingly referred to as a water walker, since almost everything he touches seems to turn to gold.

Joke's on us, I guess.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg has an article in the New York Times (12/26/10) about what President Obama's trips to Hawaii say about him: "Mr. Obama's disappearance behind the palm trees reveals much about his presidential style, and also his thinking about how to balance work and play." She contrasts these trips to his birth state with his rejection of the traditional presidential vacation spot: "He rarely goes to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, and when he does, it is not to conduct business."

One problem with Stolberg's analysis: Since taking office, Obama has been to Camp David 15 times, and to Hawaii twice.

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Last night on Fox News (12/22/10), Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly attempted to defend GOP opposition to the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, which would provide health care for 9/11 Ground Zero workers.

In his final broadcast of the year (12/16/10), Comedy Central's Jon Stewart devoted the entire show to lambasting the Republican opposition. Stewart's attention to the issue seems to have pushed other media outlets to pay attention to this issue. (With any luck, we'll remember this the next time there's a "debate" about people watching a comedy show instead of "real" news.)

Rove and O'Reilly's defense of GOP intransigence is hardly worth recounting. What was notable was their suggestion that Jon Stewart suspiciously developed an interest in this story just last week:

ROVE: But look, where was Mr. Stewart earlier this year--

O'REILLY: He didn't know about it.

ROVE: --when they weren't doing voodoo diddly squat to move this through? Where was the president of the United States?

O'REILLY: Look, look, look--you know the answers to these questions. You know the answer to these questions. They're demagoguing the issue now.

ROVE: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: Because they've squeezed it into a corner where they want to pass it tomorrow.

This is, unsurprisingly, false. Stewart did a report on the health bill in August (8/4/10), when he blasted Congressional Republicans and Democrats for the failure to pass the bill--leading him to declare about the political process,  "I give up."  You can watch it here. And send it to Bill O'Reilly while you're at it (oreilly@foxnews.com).

At a press conference in 2009, Barack Obama said, "America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world toward peace and prosperity." He also proclaimed that America has core values that make it exceptional.

Based on those comments, right-wing pundits and politicians reached a conclusion: Barack Obama does not believe in "American exceptionalism." And since they say this all the time, reporters feel obligated to cover it as if it were an actual, serious argument.

Hence Susan Page's front-page article in USA Today (12/21/10):

Over White House objections, they're accusing him of not embracing the concept of American exceptionalism, saying he is pursuing an agenda on healthcare, the economy and foreign affairs that is at odds with fundamentals that distinguish the United States.

Obama "has clarified and personified secular socialization and a European view," says former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is weighing a presidential bid in 2012. Obama, he says, made "disastrous" comments on the subject during his first trip overseas as president in an exchange that has become a cause célèbre among conservatives.

Page notes that this all comes down to one answer to one question at a 2009 press conference:

At a news conference in Strasbourg, France, in April 2009, a British reporter had asked the new president whether he subscribed to the idea that the United States is uniquely qualified to lead the world. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," Obama had replied.

That comment--which White House officials say critics have twisted and pulled out of context--led Gingrich, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other prominent Republicans to question whether Obama believes that the USA has, by virtue of its heritage, a distinct and extraordinary role in world affairs.

He said, she said: Obama's defenders say they're misinterpreting the quote, Palin and company say they're not. If there was any "context" to this quote, USA Today didn't seem inclined to include it here--only the preface about the British and the Greeks.

But the paper did publish a sidebar article that included Obama's entire answer to this question about exceptionalism.

Now in a sane media world, we would acknowledge that Obama said this:

The United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

With that out of the way, we'd spend our time trying to figure out precisely how and why Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin willfully misinterpret his words. But we don't have that media system. We have the one where the sputterings from Sarah Palin are taken seriously as one side in a "debate."

Today's Washington Post (12/21/10) brings a story by Janine Zacharia headlined, "Aid groups decry Israel's Gaza constraints." The lead:

Despite recent moves by Israel to ease construction in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on building materials are hampering international humanitarian efforts while doing little to impede the Hamas-led government they are designed to weaken, aid and nongovernmental groups say.

The groups say that Israel is "snarling the delivery of materials to international relief organizations struggling to build much-needed housing, schools and infrastructure projects."  Zacharia goes on:

But even as Gaza's economy shows signs of improvement, its humanitarian needs remain widespread. Thousands of homes damaged in a punishing three-week war with Israel in 2008-2009 are yet to be rebuilt. Millions of liters of raw sewage are spilling into the Mediterranean Sea because treatment plants remain in disrepair. And experts say Gaza's rapidly growing population of 1.5 million could run out of fresh drinking water by 2015 if the infrastructure is not overhauled.

This account is an interesting contrast to a recent article (12/17/10)  by Ethan Bronner of the New York Times.  The headline alone would give some sign that the Times sees things differently: "Gaza Mends, but Israelis See Signs of Trouble." The primary concern would seem to be that Gaza is showing some signs of rebounding--which is apparently bad news for Israel:

Two years after the Israeli military swooped down here in a three-week war that destroyed thousands of buildings, killed about 1,300 people and largely deterred rocket fire, things are starting to shift again in Gaza. But they seem to be shifting backward, creating a sense of déjà vu. The economic siege is easing, and the border is heating up. Israel hoped that the blockade would break Hamas. Instead, Hamas is fully in charge, Israel is frustrated and another confrontation seems possible.

Israeli officials, readers are told, saw the humanitarian needs in Gaza, and responded accordingly:

Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, who runs civilian affairs in Gaza for the Israeli Defense Ministry, said that 78 civilian projects had been approved and that they included hospitals, schools and housing, although only half had been started. All those projects involve international groups that decline to work with Hamas.

And what of the humanitarian groups working in Gaza,  who see things very differently? They receive a passing mention:

Twenty-two human rights and aid organizations recently published a report saying that Israel had not yet carried out its obligations to change its policy and that life here remained unchanged.

The Post sees this as the news; the Times sees it more like a footnote to a story about how Israelis view the threat from the Gaza Strip.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (12/19/10) derides WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for being "insufferable"--apparently because he emerged from prison talking about prison conditions. Milbank sarcastically noted, "As if nine days in an English jail fighting extradition to Sweden on sex charges made him a regular Nelson Mandela."

You can decide for yourself whether that's insufferable. (Assange said, "I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me. Those people also need your attention and support." Milbank ended this quote after the word "confinement.")

But one thing is indisputable--Milbank's column is inaccurate.   Specifically when he writes: "Assange's indiscriminate dump of American government secrets over the last several months--with hardly a care for who might be hurt or what public good was served."

One more time: The release of the WikiLeaks cables has been extremely discriminate, actually. The documents are mostly released on schedule with various news outlets, with certain information redacted.

Today's New York Times (12/20/10) brings the latest from the WikiLeaks cables, an interesting piece about how Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) went to Honduras after the coup to praise the new government and hopefully arrange business deals for his friends.

Unfortunately the Times bungles the story of the coup itself:

Honduras had grabbed international headlines starting in June 2009, when its president at the time, Manuel Zelaya, was detained and then sent into exile, based on a fear by other elected officials there that he was scheming to remain in office despite a one-term limit in Honduras’ Constitution.

Mr. Rohrabacher, challenging the stand taken by some Obama administration officials, ridiculed suggestions that Mr. Zelaya's removal was a coup d'état, and used his visit to Honduras to praise government leaders there who played roles in removing Mr. Zelaya, including members of the Supreme Court and the president of the Honduran Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández.

This is pretty typical--presenting the coup from the point of view of coup defenders and promoters, who had "a fear" that Zelaya was "scheming" to extend his term.

If the Times was really interested in what WikiLeaks tells us about Honduras, they could report--as Robert Naiman did here--that U.S. officials in the country had determined soon after the coup that the arguments being made to defend its legitimacy were without merit.

Back to the Times article, which allowed Rohrabacher to portray himself as a guy standing up for freedom and democracy, as he is wont to do:

Mr. Rohrabacher, who was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as the United States financed "freedom fighters" in Central America to challenge a perceived communist threat, has long cast himself as a defender of democratic causes in the region. The turn of events in Honduras offered him a chance to return to that role.

"He warned at the danger of allowing 'caudillos' or strongmen, like Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to assume control," the State Department summary of his visit said, recalling his remarks to the new leaders in Honduras.

So a guy who worked for Reagan is positioning himself as a defender of democratic freedom in Latin America--by supporting a coup against an elected president.  Are readers supposed to be laughing at Rohrabacher's hypocrisy, or at the Times for presenting this drivel without challenging it?

One recently released WikiLeaks cable stated that Cuban officials had banned Michael Moore's healthcare documentary Sicko. Critics of Moore's work pounced, delighted that a film that spent time pointing out that Cuba's national system has some merits would be banned in that country.

The problem is that... well, it wasn't. Which is something that anyone could have known if they'd done a moment of factchecking. Like Michael Moore did (though, to be fair, he probably knew this stuff without having to check):

Sounds convincing, eh?! There's only one problem--Sicko had just been playing in Cuban theaters. Then the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of Sicko were set up in towns all across the country.

Moore slammed the Guardian's story (headlined, "WikiLeaks: Cuba Banned Sicko for Depicting 'Mythical' Healthcare System"). Other outlets were also guilty of taking the cable at face value. It shows--once again--that a lot of journalists have a strange relationship with these WikiLeaks cables. They don't like what WikiLeaks does, and they're pretty sure there's nothing explosive or newsworthy hidden in the cables. Unless, of course, there's something they find politically useful. Then it should be treated as a Top Secret Fact--no checking necessary.

In a column (12/19/10) devoted to attacking others for "the intentional manipulations of language to obscure truth," Washington Post columnist and CNN host Kathleen Parker spends most of her time targeting Democrats over the tax cut debate:

Democrats are equally guilty of obfuscation through language distortion. How many times throughout the tax bill debate have you heard some variation of the following? Giving tax breaks to the rich will add to the deficit.

Pardon? How does money in someone's own pocket add to another's debt? This sort of logic is possible, of course, only under confiscatory rules of wealth redistribution.

In case that wasn't clear enough, Parker comes up with an analogy where "Joe" (the federal government) is in debt and pressuring "Mary" (a wealthy person) to loan him some money. Mary knows he's just going to waste it. Of course, you can turn this analogy around pretty easily--as when Joe loaned several Wall Street giants money because, we were told, they would crumble without Joe's "loan." Or you could point out that Joe gave Mary a huge break on the money she owed for the past decade, and now Joe needs Mary to start paying what she used to pay.

Parker's argument doesn't make any sense, but her point is clear enough: Taxation is just "wealth redistribution" and Democratic rhetoric "stokes class warfare and demonizes the doers who create jobs for others." The irony is that she is declaring that anyone who points out an obvious fact--that tax cuts diminish government revenue, which makes the deficit and debt larger than they would otherwise be--is engaged in some kind of dishonest trickery.

In FAIR's recent study of the PBS NewsHour, we found that discussions of the Afghan War were incredibly narrow--no opponents of a war that is broadly unpopular among the American public were allowed to make their case.

Last night's NewsHour (12/16/10) offered a chance to see that narrow sourcing yet again. The show featured a reported segment on the administration's much-anticipated review of the progress (or lack thereof) in Afghanistan. The NewsHour quoted Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A wide range of views from inside the administration.

For the debate segment, anchor Jim Lehrer presented "two views of the review." The first guest was retired Gen. Jack Keane, a well-known proponent of the Iraq surge. The other guest was Andrew Wilder of the U.S. Institute for Peace. He saw "somewhat modest tactical and operational gains" in the war, and commented favorably on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. He remained concerned that the Afghan and Pakistani governments were not performing well.

Keane said pretty much the same, though he sounded more certain: "It's unmistakable that the momentum is beginning to switch to our favor." Both agreed that the key to the war is somehow pressuring Pakistan. These are not conclusions that are all that surprising, and would hardly conflict with what you would hear from U.S. officials.

Can't public television offer a wider view? Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) wrote a strong piece critical of the administration's war review, for starters. Independent experts and critics of the war are not exactly hard to come by. They seem to have a hard time being heard on public TV's flagship newscast.

Time's Mark Halperin (12/27/10) joins his punditry colleagues in cheering Barack Obama's wealthy-friendly tax plan as a great way for the president to end a rough year:

But by ending the year with a bipartisan-compromise tax deal, Obama showed he is capable of delivering the kind of change that was supposed to be the hallmark of his Administration.

Indeed-- I bet a lot of people watching Obama during the 2008 campaign were thinking, "I hope he doesn't mean it when he says he'll get rid of those tax breaks for the wealthy."

More Halperinian analysis:

To avoid seeing the economy stall again, the president needs to demonstrate that he has a strategy for centrist governance when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January. Political nihilists on the right and left may find the notion of swallowing something that their opponents want antithetical to their mind-set. But Obama's ability to compromise will prove crucial. Here's a simple rule for him: If a proposal is denounced by both Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin, it will probably find support in the center of the electorate.

Here's a simple test for that simple rule: What kinds of policy ideas would result from applying the Palin/Pelosi principle? (Torturing puppies would apparently be a sure-fire electoral winner--since Pelosi and Palin would presumably both denounce this.) Of course, defining the "center" in this way is absurd; repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell is broadly popular, for instance, but it outrages Palinesque Republicans. So it's not centrist, according to the Halperin rule. Unfortunately, a lot of Beltway journalists see the world this way.

In the proud tradition of objective journalism, the New York Times included both positive and negative views of Afghan envoy Richard Holbrooke in its December 14 obituary:

Some called him a bully, and he looked the part: the big chin thrust out, the broad shoulders, the tight smile that might mean anything. To admirers, however, including generations of State Department protégés and the presidents he served, his peacemaking efforts were extraordinary.

On the one hand, the big chin and a tight smile; on the other, the extraordinary peacemaking efforts. The Times leaves it to you, the reader, to decide for yourself which is more important.

In reality, of course, Holbrooke was called much worse than a bully; he's been criticized for facilitating genocide in East Timor, for delivering the designed-to-be-rejected ultimatum that started the Kosovo War and for cheering the military targeting of journalists. If you'd like to see what an actual critic has to say about Holbrooke's career, rather than relying on the Times' false balance, read Steven Zunes' piece in Huffington Post (12/15/10), "Richard Holbrooke Represented the Worst Side of the Foreign Policy Establishment."

The earmarks story is a peculiar genre of journalism wherein you focus on how much government spending is directed to legislator-specified projects--generally without pointing out what a tiny fraction of total spending this is, or that without the earmarking this money would be spent anyway, on some project chosen by the executive branch. Then you rattle off a list of earmarked projects, often provided by a partisan source, which are generally chosen not for their inherent wastefulness but for their comedic potential.

Thus NBC Nightly News' Kelly O'Donnell on December 14:

Senator McCain's staff pointed to a few examples they call unnecessary spending: $208,000 for beaver management in North Carolina, $235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada, $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama, and $247,000 for virus-free wine grapes in Washington state.

Now, all these are locally important agricultural products and/or problems, which would seem to be natural candidates for earmarks. But they are actually good candidates for mockery, given some basic laws of humor:

• Beavers are funny because animals are funny and because, well, you know.

• Peanuts are funny because peanuts are funny. (Substitute "wheat research in Kansas." See, not funny.)

• Wine grapes are funny because wine is funny--it makes people drunk! And drunks are funny.

For the life of me, though, I don't understand why noxious weed management is supposed to be funny. Maybe Nevada is funny?