'Dishonest Reporter' Awards 2007 Announced

The 2007 Dishonest Reporter Awards have been announced by Honest Reporting.Com.

These awards apply mostly to biased coverage excusing Islamist imperialism, which media-outlets or their producers/reporters typically rationalize, often by attempting to criminalize the Jewish state of Israel. Here are a couple of well-placed honors, though the entire list is worth reviewing:

Worst Film Editor: Charles Enderlin

In his legal battle over the Mohammed al-Dura video, French media analyst Philippe Karsenty forced France 2 TV to publicly screen for the first time cameraman Talal Abu Rahma's raw, unedited footage.

When the judge asked correspondent Charles Enderlin why only 18 minutes of footage were submitted – instead of an expected 27 minutes – the veteran reporter told the court that when he transferred the images to DVD for the court, he had to manipulate some footage that wasn't relevant for that day. Although a final ruling isn't due till the end of February, the development and the footage discredited the myths of Mohammed al-Dura.

Dishonest Reporter of the Year

This year's Dishonest Reporter voting marks a change for HonestReporting readers. Previous awards went to large, impersonal news services, but not so this year. One journalist made herself such a lightning rod in 2007 she easily defeated BBC and Reuters – the traditional disfavorites.

The results didn't surprise us, but the depth of anger and lingering resentment indicate that readers weren't just outraged by our winner's work; on some level, they were personally offended in a way far exceeding the rest of the MSM’s Mideast coverage this year.

Which is why the 2007 Dishonest Reporting Award goes to Christiane Amanpour, for her in-depth, but tragically flawed CNN special series, God's Warriors.

The series sought to examine Jewish, Muslim and Christian extremism. It's not our intention to address God's Warriors yet again. However, reader criticism can be boiled down to four primary charges. In a nutshell, Amanpour's series:

• Equated years-old isolated cases of Jewish extremism with Islamic terror that has killed thousands of people in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Amman, etc.
  
• Spuriously claimed that fringe elements of world Jewry succeeded in hijacking Israeli and American government policy.
  
• Addressed radical Islam with kid gloves.
  
• Belittled religious belief in general.

Religious extremism is a valid news story and an accurate, honest comparson of the three major monotheistic faiths would undoubtedly have a positive impact on public debate.

Unfortunately, the sense our readers and we have is that Amanpour didn't spend a year researching religious extremism, but rather reinforcing her own world views.