Posted on 06/02/2005 1:12:12 PM PDT by rightalien
Congratulations to NRO Contributor Claudia Rosett, winner of the 2005 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism!
She should have a Pulitzer and maybe even a Nobel on her desk, but today Claudia Rosett has a true truth-teller's prize in her possession — the Eric Annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism.
The $10,000 prize, given by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in honor of former New York Post columnist and editor Eric Breindel, is awarded to "the columnist, editorialist or reporter whose work best reflects the spirit of the writings by Eric Breindel: Love of country and its democratic institutions as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism." This year the award was presented at a Manhattan ceremony at the New York Historical Society on Wednesday night, with Rupert Murdoch playing host and N.Y. mayor Michael Bloomberg in attendance, among others, including Fox News's Roger Ailes, Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Norman Podhoretz, and news vet Robert Novak.
The choice of Rosett could not have been more fitting.New York Post Publisher Lachlan Murdoch hailed Rosett for her work uncovering the corruption in the United Nations Oil-for-Food program (a.k.a. Saddam's Sugar Daddy) — a scandal that may not have been exposed without her attention. As it happens, one of Briendel's last columns had to do with Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein, at the embryonic stages of the U.N.'s collusion with the tyrant — which, Rosett pointed out at the award ceremony, "laid the foundation" for the Oil-for-Food scandal she's been unlocking. Breindel saw that coming: He ended his column by noting that "the final chapter has yet to be written." At the time, Breindel presciently wrote:
It seems that the settlement just crafted by the secretary-general includes clauses concerning the need to "respect Iraq's dignity and sovereignty." Such phrases virtually invite Baghdad to halt the inspections — either by resurrecting the claim that so-called "presidential sites" are off-limits or by demanding that the ostensibly condescending American inspectors be removed from the U.N. teams.
And, as Lachan Murdock said on Wednesday night, "the full story [of the U.N.-Iraq scandal] is not yet known — in part because Claudia has not finished writing it."
Rosett, who is a journalist-in-residence at Cliff May's Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is a seasoned journalist. She's served in various capacities as an editor and reporter for the Wall Street Journal — including being editorial-page editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal. She reported from the scene of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, exposed North Korean labor camps (again, on the scene), covered the Soviet Union (she was bureau chief of the WSJ's Moscow bureau), and most recently stood in the midst of Lebanon's Cedar Revolution, sending us what she saw.
Hearing Rosett thank the publications, editors, and TV and radio hosts who have encouraged her and been the conduit for getting her work out, as she did Wednesday, one realizes the significant role alternative media play in the world today. There's the Wall Street Journal she has written for, but also The New York Sun, Fox News, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, radio talk-show hosts Hugh Hewitt and John Batchelor, and, of course, National Review Online. These are the outlets that have, along with the blogosphere — Roger Simon, I'm talking about you, for instance — driven the story. Fortunately folks like Minnesota Republican senator Norm Coleman have gotten on the trail inside the Beltway, calling the U.N. to account, however slowly, for the disaster it oversaw.
Previous winners of the Briendel award, now in its seventh year, include NR managing editor Jay Nordlinger, who is a tireless advocate on behalf of the people of Cuba, among others; and NRO columnist Victor Davis Hanson, who consistently makes sense out of the poisonous nonsense of anti-Americanism and the fog of war.
A dogged reporter with clear eyes and the ability to focus like a laser on the meat while never losing site of the big picture — and in the case of the Oil-for-Food scandal, the Iraqi people who were robbed by a tyrant and his corrupt friends, some of whom pretend to be our moral superiors — Rosett is both meticulous and among the most gracious writers an editor is ever privileged to work with. Congrats, Claudia.
Congratulations, dear lady!
She is an amazing and wonderful woman.
Very happy to hear this. She deserved a Pulitzer instead of the leftist do-nothing journalists who received that politicized award. I followed her breaking of this important news avidly.
Way to go Ms Rossett!
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