The Knucklehead of the Year award- MSM

The 2nd annual Knucklehead of the year awards are here. TFM along with some blogging friends will be giving out awards in 8 categories between now and December 30th. On December 31st the Grand Knucklehead of 2006 will be announced.

Sound like fun? If you need a reminder of how I ran this in 2005, click here and here.

The only change from last year is the eigth category. Academia, Sciences, Medicine, Eduation and Religion.

This year's judging panel is

Greta from Hooah Wife and Friends
Don Surber
The Professor from Right Wing Nation
Doyle from A Cool Change
Jim from Bright & Early
James Joyner from Outside the Beltway
Dr. Steven Taylor from Poliblog
Jo from Jo's Cafe
Mr C from Peer Review FL
John in Carolina
Right in Florida
Rick from Stuck on the Palmetto
Bullwinkle
and Yours Truly. A big thank you to all the bloggers who helped out.

Our first category is the MSM. This was a tough category to sort down to just six nominees. Here they are-

Byron Calame
New York Times
Reuters
Reuters
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
USA Today

Comments on the nominees by our judges-

John in Carolina said- "NYT – The Times’ SWIFT disclosure made the job of those protecting us from terrorists harder. SWIFT was a legal and necessary program. Its disclosure only helped the terrorists. So why did the Times disclose it?

The Times and other Bush-haters used the disclosure to “beat up on Bush.” National security be damned."

Mr. C from Peer Review FL said-
NY Times reveals secret program
USA Today can’t take no for an answer
Reuters loses its head

Greta said-

1. LGF kick punting Reiters
2. Behead teachers disrupts learning just like an assembly
3. Anything done by the New Your Crimes

Doyle wrote about her #1 pick the New York Times- "In his column not only does Mr. Calame admit initially letting his emotions cloud his judgement on the NYT’s June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program, he then says he really (Really!) worried about that decision, "pondering for several months" if he’d done the right thing. Now he knows he didn’t but — it was such a close call then (and still is) — he really (Really!) did ‘cause he’d written something against running it but "that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column."

Note the use of passive in that last phrase? It appears to me Mr. Calame isn’t even sure who buried the paragraph in the column HE wrote. Then again, he’s such a busy person, all that worrying and pondering taking up so much time, perhaps he simply forgot. And, let’s not forget all the time he spent his futile search looking (Searching!) for evidence "that anyone’s private data had actually been misused." Plus, he was cramming for his Bar exam, too: "I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws."

Although each of the nominees for this award is truly worthy of consideration, Mr. Calame is by far the most impressive.


and finally the winner is..........

The New York Times! They are the first Knucklehead of the year finalist.

Please come back tomorrow to see who our next finalist is. Have a wonderful Holiday season.

Linked to- Amboy Times, Blue Star, Bright & Early, Cao's Blog, Hill Chronicles, Is it just me?, Jo's Cafe, Outside the Beltway, Pirate's Cove, Pursuing Holiness, Random Yak, Right Wing Nation, Samantha Burns, Stuck on Stupid, Third World County, Woman Honor Thyself, Basil's Blog,