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Announcing the 2007 Falsie Awards for the Biggest Fraudsters in the Media

By Diane Farsetta, Center for Media and Democracy. Posted December 7, 2007.


Draw up your chair and prepare to be both amused and dismayed. The winners of the Center for Media and Democracy's 2007 Falsies Awards are ...
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is the year that the Falsies Awards have truly arrived!

Here at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), we've dearly treasured our Falsies since we gave the first awards out in 2004. After 12 months of reporting on the cynical, manipulative and just plain anti-democratic pollution of our information environment, we love adding an extra dash of humor to our work. But this year's Falsies Awards are extra super special.

Why, you ask? Well, more people responded to our Falsies Awards survey than ever before. Thanks to the more than 1,400 people who took part! Our Falsies are your Falsies, too.

In addition, this year marks the first time there was an organized campaign in favor of one of our Falsies Awards nominees. To find out who was stuffing our Falsies survey, read on.

As always, Falsies Awards winners must stop by CMD's office in Madison, Wisconsin, to collect their prizes. This year's winners will receive a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, to obscure your real identity; the Online Deception Kit, comprised of a sock, buttons and thread, to make your own puppet; and a five-gallon bucket of Mr. Flack's Special Greenwash Paint (warning: may not look green upon closer examination)!

With so many stellar nominees and few clear trends in the survey results, deciding on this year's winners was no easy task. Our panel of judges awarded the coveted Gold Falsie to two belligerent groups. The Silver and Bronze Falsies recognize spinners of environmental and health issues, respectively. Dishonorable mentions go to drug pushers, troop users and reporter wanna-be's. And thanks to the survey participants for nominating many worthy recipients for our Readers' Choice and Win Against Spin Awards!

Draw up your chair and prepare to be both amused and dismayed. The winners of the 2007 Falsies Awards are ...

Golden Falsie: "War More Years" and "For More Wars"

The only thing worse than failing to end a long, bloody and increasingly unpopular war might be trying to start a new one. All we are saying is that the joint winners of this year's Gold Falsie should give peace a chance.

Half of this year's Gold Falsie goes to the leadership of the U.S. Democratic Party. By all accounts, growing opposition to the Iraq war was a major factor in the Democrats' November 2006 election victories, which gave them control of both houses of Congress. What have they done with that mandate? Not much. The tension between the public's anti-war sentiment and the Democrats' political wrangling came to a head in early 2007, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promoted a "compromise" war funding bill with no specific timetables, no binding measures and no chance of becoming law. As CMD's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote at the time, a stronger Iraq amendment by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was deep-sixed by the Democratic leadership and ignored by the Democrat-aligned online advocacy group MoveOn.

The Iraq war funding triangulation continues today. In early December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Democratic leaders, in order to avoid being seen either as capitulating to Bush on Iraq or as under-funding the military, "are looking at the option of advancing more money for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan." Meanwhile, "responsible" war critics are being encouraged to wait for General David Petraeus's spring 2008 report, much as they were previously for Petraeus's September 2007 report. It reminds us of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's infamous, never-ending six month timeframe for evaluating progress in Iraq.

No wonder that Congress's approval ratings have sunk even lower than President Bush's, or that Speaker Pelosi felt compelled to launch a PR campaign this autumn, touting the Democratic Congress's accomplishments. At least now they can say they've won an award!

The other cup of the Gold Falsie goes to Freedom's Watch, an influential Republican-associated lobbying group that advocates "peace through strength," as described by its spokesman, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. In August 2007, the group launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign encouraging continued support for the "troop surge" in Iraq. The Freedom's Watch print and television ads alleged a connection between Iraq and 9/11, without directly claiming that Iraq was responsible for the terrorist attacks -- the same approach used by the Bush administration in the lead up to the March 2003 invasion.


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Diane Farsetta is senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy.

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I'm gonna follow all the links - expect my comment sometime in mid 2008
Posted by: UnEasyOne on Dec 10, 2007 12:34 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Seriously tho - hard to imagine such an award that doesn't even mention Tony Snowjob or Dana Perino.

Oh - in the links?

I'll get back to ya.

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» RE: Dana Perino's hot Posted by: truthteller
Too Many to List or Blacklist, Oh Thats the Citizens That
Posted by: Turiye on Dec 10, 2007 1:46 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
wind up on every 'List' those MF'ers from loosed psychopaths on the Hill say you are on, just BECAUSE.
Perino, Pelosi, Ann CULTer, Rumsfeld, The Gathering of Eagles, every Dem Rep. in Congress, Podhertz, too, too many.
That really aggravates me about the Gardasil and the breastfeeding, I knew about the Gardasil but my daughters DR. more or less gave her the injection and said that was Gardasil, WTF?
Every idiot knows breastfeeding provides an infant with the proper immune system while that young, breastfeed in the sun and away goes Jaundice, not to mention it is so much easier to just give your baby the booby then get up warm a bottle with some chemically enhanced formula, get up and feed your baby, let them puke it up, and then merrily make your way into work.

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Hint to the author:
Posted by: Oryoki on Dec 10, 2007 5:33 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Brevity is the soul of wit.

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» RE: Hint to the author: Posted by: Cruella
Tough isn't it?
Posted by: Cruella on Dec 10, 2007 6:07 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I can never tell which journalists are just evil and which ones are just stupid and lazy. In the UK we have a little situation with the press reporting that rape conviction rates are disturbingly low (which they are) and then the press contributing to all the myths that keep them so low...

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Give me one good reason...
Posted by: dover23 on Dec 10, 2007 6:29 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
why any thinking person should trust the opinions of the foundation-funded Center for Media and Democracy?

I didn't think you had had one.

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May I make some last minute nominations: Naomi Klein and Al Gore
Posted by: Bobsays on Dec 10, 2007 11:44 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Both have taken leftist sophistry and personal hypocracy to new levels. So a big gong to both for a year well done!

Al did a big borefest in London the otherday for US $200,000 - how green is that?

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» typical neocon moron Posted by: may261989
how did Cheney get a 'bye'...?
Posted by: lexicon on Dec 10, 2007 12:25 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When pointedly and directly asked about waterboarding, stress positions, use of dogs, sensory deprivation, and desecration of religious items, Cheney opined that "...really, my view is, that a person, er, persons who...what consenting adults choose to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, is really not something that I think I should be commenting on..."


just sayin'....


lexicon

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Media CON CORP USA
Posted by: Number_6 on Dec 10, 2007 3:52 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This story like so many others is a red herring.

The entire corporate media and most of what pretends at being non-corporate is a snake oil puppet for the usual suspects.

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Lobbying and the campaign contribution
Posted by: thelostsailor on Dec 10, 2007 3:56 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Doesn't the legal nature of federal and state lobbying and the campaign system doom nearly all media (all corrupt about every realm of goverment...).
Make lobbying illegal, revamp the whole campaigning process to stop money donations altogether. There will always be massive corruption with these two realities.
Why should money matter at all? Is your president going to take you out to dinner? How can a media source that gives so much money to potential candidate not be biased?

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Better List -- Project Censored
Posted by: johndoraemi on Dec 10, 2007 6:33 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Top 25 Censored news stories of 2007

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo

#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy

# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq

#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act

#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians

#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed

#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup

#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US

#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner

#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court

#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda

#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story

#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever

#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem

#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers

#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed

#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe

#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year

#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

CRIMES OF THE STATE BLOG

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