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 comparison 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.
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