Don’t Menshn The Pulitzer Prize

The 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners in the Public Service category are the Washington Post and Guardian US, for their work with the Snowden revelations. As a result, as Roy Greenslade has noted, more or less the whole of the UK press, except for the Guardian itself, Independent, and Financial Times, has roundly ignored the event, thus avoiding any difficulty of explaining why they called that reporting “treachery”.

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

But there had to be a dissenting voice to the proceedings: as journalists at both titles celebrated, former Tory MP Louise Mensch, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, decided on a novel strategy for doing down the paper she now hates – if only so she can prostrate herself shamelessly before Rupert Murdoch and his bulging wallet – by pretending they didn’t win after all.

First a stupid whopper ...

“Pulitzer award hilarious. Rusbridger, Greenwald, Poitras, NYT don’t win it for Snowden. Jay Rosen furious hahahaha. Bad luck” she wibbled. But it is more often than not the case that no journalist is cited for this Pulitzer. This, though, was disregarded: “Pulitzer names zero journos too and excludes both Guardian UK, NYT and ‘The Intercept’ entirely. Lol. Fail. Rusbridger so pissed off” came next.

... then an even more stupid whopper ...

That will be why Alan Rusbridger and staff at the Guardian have this afternoon been celebrating, and possibly laughing at Ms Mensch’s craven idiocy: the Guardian UK cannot be included, as it is by definition excluded. Only US based news organisations are eligible – why does she think no other UK paper has ever won one? And Guardian US is a recent start-up, so it’s a remarkable achievement.

... then a repeated and still stupid whopper ...

But none of this mattered to Ms Mensch, who droned on “I know Greenwald and Rusbridger were longing to say they won a Pulitzer, bad luck boys” she sniped, which brought a reply from Mira Bar-Hillel bearing the hashtag #vinegartits. This didn’t put off Louise: “Guardian report actually leaves out that Rusbridger and Guardian UK omitted from prize” she snarked, going wrong again.

... and finally, another stupid whopper

Edward Snowden was in no doubt as to the significance of the award: “We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public importance”.

Here is the actual citation

And neither were those who authored the Pulitzer citation.  This was a vindication of much hard work, and the suffering of appalling disdain from much of the British press. As for Louise Mensch, I have just one thing to say: shame on you. Shame on your money-grubbing, attention-seeking, selfish, inconsiderate, dishonest, inept and grovelling ways. And shame on all those who encourage your detestable rantings.

Last night the good guys won. And stupid Louise Mensch did not. End of story.