Judith Miller
Judith Miller joins the New York Post in criticizing Pulitzer jurors for giving the investigative journalism prize to the Associated Press. She says the AP’s series on the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims is “manufactured news that played to left-wing stereotypes about police and law enforcement excesses.” She continues:
The subtext was that the NYPD’s monitoring was illegal, unconstitutional, and unnecessary—an infringement on Muslims’ civil rights and an outrageous example of religious and ethnic profiling.
But the series itself failed to document such illegality or over-the-top conduct. Moreover, the department’s assertions that its surveillance efforts were legal and its explanations about how the program worked were invariably given short shrift, buried in the AP’s flurries of unsupported allegations.
I asked AP spokesman Paul Colford if he wanted to respond. He sent this email:
This is a great week for AP and our four journalists who won a Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. We’re all proud of them and their editors for bringing such important findings to the surface. And I encourage all who read comments about our NYPD series, whether critical or complimentary, to review the stories at www.ap.org/nypd.
Meanwhile, sports journalist Ed Sherman points out “it was the same old story this week for the press box gang. Another year of being bypassed by the Pulitzers.”
George Dohrmann of St. Paul Pioneer Press was the last individual sportwriter winner in 2000 …[and] it’s been 22 years since a sport columnist has claimed a Pulitzer.
* Judith Miller: Pulitzers for nothing
* Ed Sherman: Sports journalists are snubbed again
