The revered <a href="https://journalism.columbia.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Columbia Journalism School</a> issues this year&#8217;s <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pulitzer Prizes</a> on its New York campus this week, with an unaddressed problem next door in its own hallowed “Pulitzer Hall.” Prominently displayed inside the lobby, Columbia Journalism School has allowed a memorial shrine to fallen Gazan “journalists” who were anything but that.
As I <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13371267/columbia-protest-palestine-israel-journalism-todd-bensman.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported in The Daily Mail</a> five days before the school’s 108th award ceremony, at least 15 of the journalists worked for U.S. Treasury Department-designated terrorist entity, “Al Aqsa TV,” Hamas’ primary propaganda arm. President Barack Obama <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/tg594" target="_blank" rel="noopener">designated Al Aqsa TV in 2010</a> after it pressed children to become suicide bombers and learn to use the AK-47, loudly praised terrorist bombings in Israel, and routinely <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/news/al-aqsa-tv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urged civilian slaughters</a>. The U.S. State Department declared the station’s owner, Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997, <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/fight-against-terrorism/terrorist-list/#hamas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as have dozens</a> of Western nations.
That’s not even the worst of it.
In 2016, Obama’s State Department designated the <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/09/262004.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">station’s director</a>, Hamas interior minister Fathi Ahmad Mohammad Hammad, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Hammad served as a senior military commander who supervised military tunnel construction under Gaza, where Hamas is hiding 130 Israeli hostages its terrorists seized during the October 7 attack; and “coordinated terrorist cells,” U.S. government documents state.
Six more on the journalism school’s walls worked for the Hamas-owned Al Aqsa Voice Radio, a sibling of the TV station whose broadcasters have called on Gazans to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hamas-radio-station-in-gaza-reports-on-the-sunny-side-of-islamist-movements-rule/2014/09/28/cf533106-c8b2-47ab-9c6f-1f1acc075ca3_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">act as human shields</a> for Hamas offices and routinely encourage civilian murder.
Eleven more <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/02/26/who-are-the-killed-gazan-journalists-affiliated-with-palestinian-terror-groups/">are accused by Israel</a> of working for propaganda outlets controlled by three other groups the United States has legally declared outlawed terrorist organizations, including the ultra-violent rocket-launching Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
As it prepared to hand out Pulitzer Prizes, the journalism school ignored my emailed questions. But journalism groups, including the main one who drafted the tribute list upon which the school memorial is predicated — the Committee to Protect Journalists — trotted out an old, largely unchallenged argument for promulgating its list: they’re still journalists if they self-identified as journalists and weren’t pulling triggers. 
That line of justification occupies extreme fringes of mainstream academia counterterrorism, military, and law enforcement thinking worldwide, notably in the United States. The U.S. homeland security establishment regards the pen and camera of terrorist propagandists as deadly as fingers on triggers — and would kill or prosecute half of those on Columbia Journalism School’s wall if given a chance. 
Indeed, the U.S. Homeland Security and presidents on both sides of the aisle regard propagandists for designated terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda as dangerous enough to assassinate abroad with Hellfire missiles. Inside the United States, the establishment prosecutes and imprisons propagandists like those on Columbia Journalism School’s walls whenever possible. American journalism institutions are so far out of step with the rest of the civilized world that an argument can be made that their political stunts aid and abet the murder of real people. 
<h4>The line of argument journalism groups use to defend their tribute lists</h4>
The binary “if-not-combatant-then-hero” argument is hardly new. It last flew in 2013, overcoming Jewish and pro-Israel groups that <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140204-us-newseum-withholds-tribute-to-palestinian-journalists-under-pressure-from-the-pro-israel-lobby/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bitterly complained</a> when the now-defunct Newseum in Washington D.C. included two Al-Aqsa TV cameramen on a highly prominent KIA memorial list projected on a 74-foot First Amendment tablet facing Pennsylvania Avenue. They’d been killed in an outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel.
Dozens of journalism groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), vigorously argued that the two cameramen weren’t carrying weapons or conducting surveillance when Israel bombed their vehicle, which they’d marked as TV press. The Newseum initially pulled the names but then <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/13/should-the-newseum-consider-cameramen-for-hamas-run-tv-to-be-journalists/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bought into the narrative</a> that these two cameramen weren’t carrying weapons and therefore <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4378438,00.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">belonged back in</a> the tribute.
Now the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pushing the same narrative for its new 2024 tribute list upon which the journalism school’s Pulitzer Hall memorial is based.
“CPJ does not support journalists engaged in breaking the law,” the group told me in an email containing a recycled earlier statement about its tribute list. “In the cases we have documented, multiple sources have found no evidence to date that these journalists were engaged in militant activity.”
On that basis alone, the argument follows, they were legitimate journalists who died in noble public service. More than <a href="https://cpj.org/2024/03/news-outlets-express-solidarity-with-journalists-in-gaza/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">100 news organizations</a> have joined the committee in signing a letter in February attesting to worthiness of its tribute on the sole grounds that none were throwing bombs. 
It&#8217;s time to debunk the intellectual defense these journalism groups rely on to recast terrorist propagandists as noble journalists who died in public service. 
<h4>Propaganda Kills</h4>
Because they hold that propaganda kills just as surely as bullets and bombs, the United States and its Western allies have mounted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-propaganda-war-us-tried-to-play-by-the-enemys-rules/2015/05/08/6eb6b732-e52f-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">relentless counter-propaganda campaigns</a> against terrorist radio, television, and online media outlets just like those run by Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad out of Gaza. The key feature of this campaign are assassination hunts overseas for ISIS and al-Qaeda propagandists in the long-settled academic science, rooted in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/74/1/63/7275800?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener">consistent academic studies</a>, that nonviolent propaganda for terrorist groups <a href="https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2023/09/hahn-terrorist-propaganda.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tightly correlates</a> with attack frequency and human casualties worldwide.
“The continued presence of terrorist content on the web is a grave risk to citizens and to society at large,” the <a href="https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security/counter-terrorism-and-radicalisation/prevention-radicalisation/terrorist-content-online_en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European Commission concluded</a> in one typical policy paper proposing the find and remove such content. “Terrorists misuse the internet to spread their messages to intimidate, radicalize, recruit and facilitate carrying out terrorist attacks.”
One of the more prominent hunts ended with an August 30, 2016 precision airstrike by U.S.-led coalition forces that killed ISIS propaganda leader and spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, whose grisly propaganda empire in slick monthly magazines Dabiq, Rumiya and radio and TV stations was credited with drawing thousands of recruits to Syria and inspiring murderous attacks around the globe.
Foreign Policy magazine, among many other creditable sources, quoted active-duty <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/31/going-after-the-isis-propaganda-mastermind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">government professionals and diplomats</a> who credited his media work and messaging with inspiring followers to kill. U.S.-led coalition forces <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/930843/statement-by-pentagon-press-secretary-peter-cook-on-precision-airstrike-targeti/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">finally killed Adnani</a> on August 30, 2016 in a precision airstrike near Al Bab, Syria.
That was hardly the first or last U.S. killing of a terrorist propagandist overseas, including American ones. In September 2011, President Obama controversially ordered a Hellfire missile strike that killed U.S. born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, saying his body of work <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2016/01/killing-anwar-targeting-jihadi-propagandists-is-only-part-of-the-solution/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">killed people</a> and “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/legal-memo-backing-drone-strike-is-released/2014/06/23/1f48dd16-faec-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posed an imminent threat of violence or death to other Americans</a>” even if he himself did not shoot the guns or detonate the bombs.
Al-Awlaki’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/al-qaeda-figure-seen-as-key-inspiration-for-san-bernardino-attacker/2015/12/18/f0e00d80-a5a0-11e5-9c4e-be37f66848bb_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lectures and other propaganda</a> were seen as the chief inspiration for the bloody 2015 terror attack that killed 15 people in San Bernardino, California; Hassan Nidal’s deadly 2010 attack at Fort Hood, Texas; the Faisal Shahzad attack on Times Square; the Boston bombing and dozens of others around the world that killed hundreds of innocents.
In April 2015, the CIA fired Hellfire missiles in Pakistan that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-al-qaeda-leader-adam-gadahn-dead-drone-strke-state-n346891" target="_blank" rel="noopener">killed U.S.-born Adam Gadahn</a>, known as “Azzam the American” another notorious propagandist for al Qaeda whose work was considered so dangerous the U.S. government put out a $1 million reward for his arrest on treason charges in California.
In March 2017, another <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-propaganda-chief-killed-strike-iraq-syria-border/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U.S. airstrike killed</a> ISIS propaganda chief Ibrahim al Ansari in Iraq for inciting vehicle, knife and arson attacks against American citizens.
In the Israel-Gaza theater, the U.S. and Europe have left assassination operations to Israel, which is plenty enough capable of taking out these propagandists and often does so just like the Americans and European allies.
<h4>Hard Time For Terrorist Propaganda</h4>
In December 2019, a U.S. federal judge sentenced Texas-born Dallas resident Said Azzam Mohamad Rahim to a hefty 30-year prison sentence for terrorism. But Rahim didn’t earn that punishment for killing anyone himself.
He’s in prison for spreading a “warped ideology on social media” and for “promoting violence against innocent people, including Americans,” a Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/dallas-man-sentenced-30-years-terrorism-charges" target="_blank" rel="noopener">press release stated</a>. For years from his home in North Texas, Rahim moderated a “State of the Islamic Caliphate” social media channel on Zello dedicated to recruiting ISIS fighters and where he touted acts of terror.
“Kill and do not consult anyone,” he said in on 2016 message. “Kill, by any means. Smash his head on the wall. Spit in his face. Burn, I mean anything, anything. Poison anything!”
Even if America’s institutions of journalism refuse to see it, Rahim’s prosecution and 30-year sentence are but one of many emblematic examples of how the entire United States security establishment views the provision of propaganda on behalf of a designated terror organization.
So profoundly fearful of non-violent activities was Congress and the White House after 9/11 that it expanded and enhanced “<a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/RS22222/4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">material support for terrorism</a>” statutes that carry harsh sentences that include life in prison. One of the key provisions of these laws targets anyone who knows full well that they “work “under that terrorist organization’s direction or control” and that it has been designated as a terror organization.
These criminal “material support” statutes have been used to send U.S.-based jihadists to prison hundreds of times for more than two decades, often for spreading propaganda on behalf of designated terrorist groups or doing anything at all to support their murderous missions.
The U.S. justice system has brooked no mercy for Hamas operatives inside the United States who merely raised money for Hamas. The DOJ in 2002 broke up and prosecuted the largest Hamas fundraising operation in U.S. history, the Holy Land Foundation, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-judge-hands-downs-sentences-holy-land-foundation-case" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dishing out</a> prison sentences ranging to 65 years for the so-called “Holy Land five” who were prosecuted in Dallas.
What does this history mean in today’s context? It means that heralded U.S. journalism institutions like Columbia Journalism School – most especially those inside the United States – should never get away unchallenged with fringe justifications for lionizing propagandists for designated terrorist groups in KIA lists and memorials.
That’s because their involvement in enabling tribute memorials qualify, on their own as twisted propaganda that helps those terrorist organizations keep killing people when the rest of the civilized world believes that is morally wrong and legally prosecutable.
* * *
Todd Bensman is a two-time <a href="https://www.toddbensman.com/awards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Press Club award winner</a>, graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and 23-year veteran newspaper reporter.

Cloumbia Schooll

Debunking The Argument For Columbia Journalism School’s Terrorist Propagandist Memorial

Debunking The Argument For Columbia Journalism School’s Fallen Terrorist Propagandist Memorial

Columbia University

Gaza

Hamas

Journalism

Middle East

Pulitzer Prize

Terrorists

Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) jokingly demanded a Pulitzer Prize for The Daily Mail on Wednesday after the outlet published photos of him in Florida, maskless and holding his son while he sipped coffee at the Miami Beach Loews Hotel.
The Daily Mail&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10372009/amp/Eric-Swalwell-seen-maskless-Miami-blaming-GOP-prolonging-pandemic.html">headline</a> reads, &#8220;EXCLUSIVE: &#8216;Masks everywhere. Vacation cancelled.&#8217; But not for Eric Swalwell! Democratic congressman follows in AOC&#8217;s footsteps and goes maskless at posh Miami hotel in mandate-free Florida, days after blaming GOP for &#8216;prolonging&#8217; the pandemic.&#8221;
The outlet pointed to Swalwell&#8217;s recent comments blaming &#8220;Republican lies&#8221; for the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — &#8220;As we end 2021, mired in a deadly pandemic, you should know who has prolonged it. THESE GUYS. Republican liars. Your vacation cancelled. Your kids back to virtual learning. And back to masks everywhere. For blame look no farther than #TheseGuys&#8221; — and noted that the California Congressman appeared to have no issue with the free state of Florida when he was visiting there.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
As we end 2021, mired in a deadly pandemic, you should know who has prolonged it. THESE GUYS. Republican liars. Your vacation cancelled. Your kids back to virtual learning. And back to masks everywhere. For blame look no farther than <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheseGuys?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheseGuys</a>. <a href="https://t.co/v3S43HKPVZ">pic.twitter.com/v3S43HKPVZ</a>
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1477057880377511936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Swalwell shared a screenshot of the article on his own Twitter account, adding, &#8220;They got me! Maskless, juggling a baby and a coffee while meeting with a Congolese queen. Pulitzer please!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
They got me! Maskless, juggling a baby and a coffee while meeting with a Congolese queen. Pulitzer please! <a href="https://t.co/ai3RmuGM4q">https://t.co/ai3RmuGM4q</a>
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1478856368388034560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2022</a></blockquote>
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He went on to share another picture from the article — one showing him with the coffee cup actually in his hand — and wondering why The Daily Mail had chosen to call him out for being &#8220;maskless&#8221; when he was actively drinking. &#8220;And thanks @DailyMail for not blurring out Hank’s face. He’s too damn cute!&#8221; he added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Funny they didn’t use this picture in their headline, taking a cup of coffee to my mouth. And thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/DailyMail?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DailyMail</a> for not blurring out Hank’s face. He’s too damn cute! <a href="https://t.co/y617ATH2u8">pic.twitter.com/y617ATH2u8</a>
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1478868115496779781?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Swalwell&#8217;s office told The Daily Mail in a statement, &#8220;The Congressman was in the Sunshine State to take official meetings and campaign to help Democrats keep the House. He loves Florida and has dozens of family members there. It is lies from unvaccinated Republicans that are prolonging the pandemic.&#8221;
Swalwell&#8217;s trip to Florida comes just days after photos of Congresswoman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ocasio-cortez-caught-partying-in-miami-without-mask-rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> (D-NY) vacationing there over the New Year&#8217;s holiday went viral, prompting critics to slam her for vacationing while her home state dealt with a record-shattering wave of COVID-19 cases. Ocasio-Cortez responded by claiming that Republicans only attacked her because they were mad they couldn&#8217;t date her.
Republican Florida Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-not-surprised-desantis-says-hed-be-a-pretty-doggone-wealthy-man-if-he-had-a-dollar-for-every-lockdown-politician-who-escaped-to-florida">Ron DeSantis</a> responded to Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s trip to the Sunshine State, saying that he was not surprised to see &#8220;lockdown&#8221; politicians — most of whom favored more draconian mandates and policies in their own states — enjoying their time in his state.
&#8220;Look, I think if you — if I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last 2 years… I’d be a pretty doggone wealthy man, let me tell ya,” DeSantis said.
&#8220;I mean, Congresspeople, mayors, governors, I mean, you name it. It’s interesting though, the reception that some of these folks will get in Florida. Because I think a lot of Floridians will say ‘Wait a minute, you’re bashing us because we’re not doing your draconian policies, and yet we’re the first place you want to flee to to basically to be able to enjoy life. And so I’m not surprised to see that continue to happen,&#8221; he added.

Prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky Testifies Remotely Before House Judiciary Committee

‘They Got Me!’: Eric Swalwell Jokingly Demands Pulitzer For Daily Mail After He’s Caught Maskless In Florida

Eric Swalwell

Florida

The Daily Mail

Former President Donald Trump urged the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2018 National Reporting awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2020 campaign, saying their stories were based on &#8220;false reporting&#8221; and a &#8220;complete lack of evidence.&#8221;
“As has been widely publicized, the coverage was no more than a politically motivated farce which attempted to spin a false narrative that my campaign supposedly colluded with Russia despite a complete lack of evidence underpinning this allegation,” Trump wrote in a letter addressed to Bud Kliment, the interim administrator of the awards, The Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-demands-for-the-revocation-of-the-2018-pulitzer-prize">reported</a>.
Trump cited an indictment of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton&#8217;s presidential campaign, in special counsel John Durham&#8217;s investigation. Durham alleges that Sussmann &#8220;lied to the FBI about who he was representing when he tipped the agency in September 2016 to a possible link between the Trump campaign and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin,&#8221; the Examiner wrote.
Trump said the indictment “serves as a damning repudiation of the media’s obsession with the collusion story. The indictment pointedly accuses Mr. Sussman of making false statements to the FBI when he presented ‘evidence’ purporting to show secret communications between my organization and the Russia-based Alfa Bank.&#8221;
The former president also said the papers&#8217; stories cited only “‘people with knowledge,&#8217; &#8216;current and former officials,&#8217; &#8216;some senior U.S. officials,&#8217; and other vaguely defined individuals.&#8221;
“I would expect that you will take the necessary steps to rectify the situation, including stripping the recipients of their prize and retracting the false statements which remain on the Pulitzer website,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Without holding the recipients to such a high standard of accountability, the integrity of the Pulitzer Prize namesake stands to be wholly compromised.&#8221;
Meanwhile, Trump said in a new interview that he would beat Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis should the two face off in a 2024 primary but added he doesn&#8217;t think DeSantis will run against him.
“If I faced him, I&#8217;d beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-brags-if-i-faced-desantis-id-beat-him-like-i-would-beat-everyone-else">said</a> during an interview with Yahoo Finance Live, set to be released on Monday. But he added, “I think most people would drop out, I think he would drop out.”
A straw poll in July at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) put DeSantis squarely in the running.
When asked who they would vote for in the Republican primary if it were held that day, 70% of respondents said Trump. DeSantis was a distant second at just 21%.
But when asked who they would vote for if Trump wasn&#8217;t an option, DeSantis topped the poll at 68%.
DeSantis, who was a vocal supporter of Trump throughout his four years as president, is up for re-election in 2022. On Thursday, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he intends to run for governor again next year and is &#8220;not considering anything beyond doing my job.”

Republican National Convention: Day Four

Trump: Revoke Pulitzers For ‘False Reporting’ On Russia Hoax

Donald Trump

On Monday, the Pulitzer Prize Committee announced that it had given its commentary award to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine who was the creator of the 1619 Project. The New York Times reported that the award was given for “her <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html">essay</a> that served as the leading piece in the 1619 Project, a series centered on reframing United States history by focusing on the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans.”
The 1619 Project has come under withering criticism for its perspective on American history. Many historians have questioned its accuracy and its attempt to undermine the salutary and historic effects of the American founding. Among them are Pulitzer-Prize winning author James McPherson, professor emeritus of history at Princeton University, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Battle Cry of Freedom,” widely regarded as the authoritative account of the Civil War. He <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/14/mcph-n14.html">stated</a>: “I was disturbed by what seemed like a very unbalanced, one-sided account, which lacked context and perspective on the complexity of slavery, which was clearly, obviously, not an exclusively American institution, but existed throughout history.”
MacPherson said of Hannah-Jones’ statement in her essay that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” “the idea that racism is a permanent condition, well that’s just not true. And it also doesn’t account for the countervailing tendencies in American history as well. Because opposition to slavery, and opposition to racism, has also been an important theme in American history.” Of Hannah-Jones contention that “black Americans have fought back alone” to make America a democracy, MacPherson responded:
<blockquote>From the Quakers in the 18th century, on through the abolitionists in the antebellum, to the radical Republicans in the Civil War and Reconstruction, to the NAACP which was an interracial organization founded in 1909, down through the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, there have been a lot of whites who have fought against slavery and racial discrimination, and against racism. Almost from the beginning of American history that’s been true. And that’s what’s missing from this perspective.</blockquote>
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gordon Wood, professor emeritus at Brown University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” as well as “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815,” and many books and articles on the colonial period and the American Revolution, was asked about the 1619 Project and Hannah-Jones’ essay.  Wood <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html">stated</a>:
<blockquote>I read the first essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which alleges that the Revolution occurred primarily because of the Americans’ desire to save their slaves. She claims the British were on the warpath against the slave trade and slavery and that rebellion was the only hope for American slavery. This made the American Revolution out to be like the Civil War, where the South seceded to save and protect slavery, and that the Americans 70 years earlier revolted to protect their institution of slavery. I just couldn’t believe this.
I was surprised, as many other people were, by the scope of this thing, especially since it’s going to become the basis for high school education and has the authority of the New York Times behind it, and yet it is so wrong in so many ways.</blockquote>
Wood added of the 1619 project, “No one ever approached me. None of the leading scholars of the whole period from the Revolution to the Civil War, as far I know, have been consulted. I read the Jim McPherson interview and he was just as surprised as I was.&#8221;
James Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who has written two books winning the prestigious Lincoln Prize, <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/18/oake-n18.html">was asked</a> about the 1619 Project dovetailing with the identity politics of the Democratic Party. The questioner continued, “And the claim that is made, and I think it’s almost become a commonplace, is that slavery is the uniquely American ‘original sin.’”
Oakes answered, “Yes. ‘Original sin,’ that’s one of them. The other is that slavery or racism is built into the DNA of America. These are really dangerous tropes. They’re not only ahistorical, they’re actually anti-historical.”
Prompted by the questioner asserting that Jones presented Lincoln as a “garden-variety racist,” Oakes said of Jones “ … she also says somewhere else that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation simply as a military tactic … It’s ridiculous. Most of what Abraham Lincoln had to say about African Americans was anti-racist, from the first major speech he gives on slavery in 1854, when he says, ‘If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal’; and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.’ Lincoln says, can’t we stop talking about this race and that race being equal or inferior and go back to the principle that all men are created equal. And he says this so many times and in so many ways.”
Richard Carwardine, professor emeritus at Oxford University, the author of the Lincoln-award winning biography “Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power” and other books on antebellum and Civil War-era American history, also criticized the 1619 Project. <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/31/carw-d31.html">Carwardine</a> stated of Jones’ work:
<blockquote>I have read your interviews with James McPherson and James Oakes. I share their sense that, putting it politely, this is a tendentious and partial reading of American history … the idea that the 1619 Project’s lead essay is a rounded history of America—with relations between the races so stark and unyielding—I find quite shocking. I am troubled that this is designed to make its way into classrooms as the true story of the United States, because, as I say, it is so partial. It is also wrong in some fundamentals … the idea that the central, fundamental story of the United States is one of white racism and that black protest and rejection of white superiority has been the essential, indispensable driving force for change—which I take to be the central message of that lead essay—seems to me to be a preposterous and one-dimensional reading of the American past.</blockquote>
Asked about Hannah-Jones’ treatment of Abraham Lincoln, Carwardine stated, “Where in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s reading of Lincoln, and in her wider perspective, is the voice of the greatest of all African-Americans, Frederick Douglass? He doesn’t appear. Douglass was not uncritical of Lincoln: he famously said that the black race were only Lincoln’s stepchildren. But he also came to extol Lincoln, too, as a white man who put him at his ease, treating him as an equal, with no thought of the &#8216;color of our skins,&#8217; and showing he could conceive of a society in which blacks and whites lived together in a degree of harmony, that racial relationships in the US America were not irredeemably fixed by its 17th and 18th century past.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The goal is to mainstream the rewriting of American history and philosophy as a garbage heap of evil &#8212; not as a corrective to whitewashed traditional history, but as a complete replacement of it <a href="https://t.co/aPU7HwmstW">https://t.co/aPU7HwmstW</a>
&mdash; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1257402785223462912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Pulitzer epically beclowns itself. Prize supposed to go to work that “adheres to the highest journalistic principles.” NYT’s 1619 project is explicitly not journalism; it is propaganda. In NYT’s words: “It aims to REFRAME OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY.” It’s based on FALSE premises. 1/x <a href="https://t.co/sIZ5iZkqOm">https://t.co/sIZ5iZkqOm</a>
&mdash; Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1257405265793757184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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2/x NYT: &quot;[America’s] founding ideals were false when they were written.&quot; &quot;The US is a nation founded on both an ideal &amp; a lie.&quot; &quot;[O]ne of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare independence was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.&quot; ALL FALSE.
&mdash; Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1257405622812884992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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75th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony

Pulitzer Prize Awarded To Creator Of Widely-Derided 1619 Project From The New York Times

1619 Project

New York Times

Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s Investigation is over. There will be no more indictments. He found no evidence of collusion but also did not exonerate President Donald Trump.
We know there will be no reckoning among members of the media for their contributions to the narrative that Trump would be indicted or impeached following the allegedly obvious evidence that he and his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Those media outlets that did follow the narrative were richly rewarded.
The Washington Post and The New York Times both won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting that bolstered the narrative that Trump and his associates committed treason by working with a foreign government to win an election. The two outlets shared a joint award from the Pulitzer board for national reporting:
&#8220;For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation&#8217;s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect&#8217;s transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)&#8221;
In <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-washington-post-wins-2-pulitzer-prizes-for-reporting-on-russian-interference-and-alabama-senate-race/2018/04/16/0915c310-4197-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html">its article</a> about receiving two Pulitzers in 2018, the Post bragged that its reporting &#8220;helped set the stage for the special counsel&#8217;s ongoing investigation of the administration.&#8221; That investigation concluded that even though the media repeatedly shouted that &#8220;where there&#8217;s smoke, there&#8217;s fire,&#8221; there turned out to be no fire.
One of the Post&#8217;s Pulitzer Prize-winning articles was about former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn talking to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition, alleging it was &#8220;potentially in violation of the law.&#8221; Flynn was indicted in the Mueller investigation &#8212; for apparently lying about his contacts with Kislyak and not about anything illegal about those contacts. As the Federalist&#8217;s Mollie Hemingway suggested, the Flynn probe &#8220;<a href="https://insider.foxnews.com/2018/12/13/mollie-hemingway-flynn-investigation-creating-its-own-crime-lying-feds">created its own crime</a>&#8221; by setting a perjury trap for Flynn.
Another of the Post&#8217;s Pulitzer Prize-winning articles was about then-Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions meeting with Kislyak while he was a legislator. The media portrayed this as Sessions lying about meeting with Russians regarding the Trump campaign. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/sessions-met-russian-ambassador-didn-t-mislead-senate-spokeswoman-n727966">In reality</a>, Sessions met with the Russian ambassador as part of his job on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
As for the Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/business/media/new-york-times-pulitzers.html">it boasted</a> of its report about Trump&#8217;s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner (full disclosure: I wrote for the New York Observer while Kushner owned it), and former campaign manager Paul Manafort meeting with a &#8220;lawyer linked to Kremlin.&#8221;
That lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was <a href="Natalia%20Veselnitskaya">actually providing the campaign with disinformation</a> from Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS is also the firm behind the discredited &#8220;Trump Dossier&#8221; compiled by ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson met with Veselnitskaya the day before and after the meeting with the Trump campaign.
The information about Veselnitskaya makes it look more like an entrapment plot by a research firm paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton&#8217;s campaign.
There are problems with the other articles that received awards, but the bottom line is that the major outlets who reported disinformation as evidence of collusion were rewarded, while those &#8212; like Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist, Andrew McCarthy of National Review, and others &#8212; who reported that the collusion narrative was a bust and have now been proven correct, received only scorn and judgment.

REMINDER: WaPo, NYT Won Pulitzers For Russia Collusion Reporting

Media Bias

Washington Post

It has only been 10 days since Rep. Steve Scalise was gravely wounded after a Bernie Bro attempted to massacre two dozen Republican lawmakers guilty of nothing more than practicing baseball. And it has not even been 10 days since shots were fired at a truck flying a &#8220;<a href="http://fox59.com/2017/06/15/several-shots-fired-at-truck-carrying-make-america-great-again-flag-on-i-465/">Make America Great Again</a>&#8221; flag.
Nevertheless, and although the death threats against the GOP <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/shooting-gop-say-threats-violence-increased-trump/">continue to mount</a>, in the wake of two politically-driven murder attempts, the kind of rhetoric the media assures us provokes this kind of violence, has only increased from the mainstream Left. 
On Thursday, no less than the political media&#8217;s very own It-Girl, Senator Elizabeth Warren, accused Republicans of wanting sick grandparents and babies to die, of writing a healthcare bill that amounts to nothing less than &#8220;<a href="http://theweek.com/speedreads/707719/elizabeth-warren-rips-apart-senate-republicans-healthcare-bill-blasting-tax-cuts-blood-money">blood money</a>.&#8221; Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Warren outright accused Republicans of &#8220;paying for tax cuts for the wealthy with American lives&#8221;:
<blockquote>
Senate Republicans had to make a choice &#8212; how to pay for all those juicy tax cuts for their rich buddies. I&#8217;ll tell you how &#8230; blood money. &#8230; For Senate Republicans, it wasn&#8217;t enough that the House bill was going to toss grandparents out of nursing homes, or slash funding for people with disabilities or pull the plug on healthcare for babies born too soon. &#8230; These cuts are blood money. People will die. Senate Republicans are paying for tax cuts for the wealthy with American lives.
</blockquote>
Dear God.
But that is not all we have seen from the Left this week:
<a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/elise-jordan-says-defending-trump-like-hugging-a-suicide-bomber/">On MSNBC Thursday</a>, former Bush official and current #NeverTrumper Elise Jordan equated Trump to a suicide bomber:
<blockquote>
My advice would just be to Republicans who do cozy up to [Trump] &#8212; it&#8217;s like hugging a suicide bomber. He blows you up in the process with him.
</blockquote>
Also on Thursday, left-wing actor Johnny Deep openly mused <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/06/22/johnny-depp-talks-about-assassinating-trump.html">about the idea of assassinating Trump</a>:
<blockquote>
&#8220;When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?&#8221; he asked, referencing John Wilkes Booth assassinating President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
&#8220;I want to clarify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living,&#8221; Depp said. &#8220;However, it has been a while and maybe it is time.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Just a few days earlier, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon openly wished for Trump to die, <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17820/pulitzer-prize-winning-novelist-i-hope-trump-has-hank-berrien">to have a stroke</a>:
<blockquote>
Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he is going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney.
</blockquote>
Listen, I am not one of those people who believes usual-usual political rhetoric, even harsh attacks can be blamed for violence. But when you are accusing a political party of wanting poor people and children to die as a means to make the rich richer, are you not calling for something drastic to be done, isn&#8217;t an act of violence against such fiends merely an act of self-defense to save innocent lives?
How many deluded fans does Johnny Depp already have? Let us never forget that it only took one movie to convince a Jodie Foster fan to shoot a sitting president. But here is Depp openly saying that such a thing is a nifty idea.
Despite the fact that it was not at all politically motivated, after the terrible 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords, not only did the media spend two weeks trying to use the incident as a cudgel against Sarah Palin, but Republicans were lectured forever-after about using a New Tone, about avoiding something called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Eliminationists-Hate-Radicalized-American-Right/dp/0981576982">eliminationist rhetoric</a>.
But here the Left is, with Scalise still in the hospital, right back to declaring Republicans murderers, right back to openly calling for Trump&#8217;s assassination. And where is our objective, unbiased media? Right back to pushing the Trump Is a Dangerously Unstable Traitor Who Pees On Russian Hookers hoax &#8212; which is its <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/13245/assassination-dogwhistles-media-ramps-dangerous-john-nolte">own kind of clarion call for violence</a>.
Is it not worth noting that almost a month prior to the Scalise shooting, as Republicans <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/334333-republicans-fearing-for-their-safety-as-anger-threats-mount">expressed their fears of mounting death threats</a>, that in response, Democrats and their allies in the MSM only increased the intensity of their harsh rhetoric and wildly false accusations against Trump?
I&#8217;m sorry, but if Democrats and the MSM truly believe what they have told us for years, that violent rhetoric results in violence, their intent here is as disturbing as it is obvious.
And never forget that this is the same media that destroyed the life and career of an obscure rodeo clown because he had the temerity to <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/17021/cnn-got-rodeo-clown-fired-cnn-still-employs-kathy-john-nolte#exit-modal">wear an Obama mask</a>.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC">@NolteNC</a>. Follow his Facebook Page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnNolteNC/?skip_nax_wizard=true">here</a>.

Media Darling Elizabeth Warren Claims Republicans Pay For Tax Cuts ‘With American Lives’

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Health Care

Hollywood

Johnny Depp

Obamacare

Republican Party

Steve Scalise

On Monday, a Pulitzer Prize-winning leftist American novelist <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/06/22/watch-pulitzer-winning-novelist-michael-chabon-expresses-hope-trump-massive-stroke/">expressed his hope</a> that President Trump would have a &#8220;massive stroke.&#8221;
Michael Chabon, who won the Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &amp; Clay, spoke with Goel Pinto, host of a radio program also televised on the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, when Pinto asked him to tell him about his view of Trump. Chabon replied:
<blockquote>
Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he is going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney. And every day so far, I have been disappointed in that hope. But, you know, hope springs eternal. He&#8217;s an old guy, he doesn&#8217;t eat well, he&#8217;s overweight. He has terrible nutrition. He doesn&#8217;t exercise and it is that not that hard to imagine.
</blockquote>
The interview was redolent with Chabon&#8217;s railing against the Israeli &#8220;occupation.&#8221; Chabon&#8217;s remarks came after Pinto said, &#8220;You come to Israel. You say how bad we are.&#8221;
Chabon retorted, &#8220;No. I am just saying how bad the occupation is.&#8221;
Pinto replied, &#8220;How bad the occupation is? Michael, you have Donald Trump.&#8221;
Chabon agreed: &#8220;Yeah. You are right. Can you do something about that?&#8221;
Pinto, sadly, &#8220;No, I can&#8217;t.&#8221;
Chabon, prompting, &#8220;I would love to hear anything you have to say about how to get rid of Donald Trump. I welcome your input.&#8221;
Pinto, returning the favor: &#8220;Tell me your view about your president.&#8221;
That did it.
Video below:
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<blockquote data-lang="en">
Pulitzer prize winner Michael Chabon: Every morning I wake up and hope that this is the day that trump is going to have a massive stroke <a href="https://t.co/avZSHQfnoa">pic.twitter.com/avZSHQfnoa</a>
&#8212; &#1499;&#1488;&#1503; (@kann) <a href="https://twitter.com/kann/status/876780066084196353">June 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist: I Hope Trump Has A ‘Massive Stroke’

Stroke

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