For more than a decade now, the Poo-litzer Prizes have gone to some of America's stinkiest media performances each year. The competition was fierce as ever in 2002. Many journalistic pieces of work deserved recognition, but only a few could be chosen.

While making the selections, I have relied heavily on research by the staff of the media watch group FAIR (of which I'm an associate). However, the responsibility for bestowing the latest Poo-litzers is entirely mine.

Here are the eleventh annual Poo-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media achievements of 2002: KICKING OUT HISTORY AWARD

Dozens of esteemed journalists and major media outlets qualified for this prize by reporting that the Iraqi government had ejected UN weapons inspectors four years ago. Actually, the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 under orders from UNSCOM head Richard Butler just before the blitz of US bombing dubbed "Operation Desert Fox".

With notable disregard for historical facts, many reporters at leading news organizations flatly asserted that Saddam Hussein had "expelled" or "kicked out" the UN inspectors.

Some outlets were repeat winners, such as USA Today, whose September 4 editorial claimed that "Saddam expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998". Other prominent newspapers also made the false information a centerpiece of the positions that they espoused. The New York Times declared in an August 3 editorial: "America's goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons. ... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago." On the very next day, The Washington Post editorialized: "Since 1998, when UN inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons." MEDIA DARWINISM PRIZE

As a longtime media tycoon now at the top of the Vivendi Universal conglomerate, Barry Diller isn't shy about depicting his success as part of an upward evolutionary spiral. "Media is going to continue its trend of consolidation, which mirrors the ongoing globalization," Diller told the Los Angeles Times in March. "This is a natural law. It is inevitable." FABRICATION OF EXONERATION AWARD

Commenting on George W. Bush's dubious role as a member of the board at Harken Energy, reporter-turned-pundit Cokie Roberts dismissed the idea that Bush might have been involved in corporate malfeasance during his corporate endeavors. "The president was exonerated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying he didn't do anything illegal or improper on insider trading charges," she said on July 8. "But the Democrats won't let it go." Roberts did not mention that Bush's lawyers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for a statement that he had been cleared – and the SEC responded that its initial letter "must in no way be construed as indicating that [Bush] has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation". SELF SLANDER PRIZE

Ann Coulter is a best-selling author who likes to attack the news media for supposed left-wing bias and irresponsibility. During an August interview with the New York Observer, she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." SELF GRATIFICATION PRIZE

On CNN's "American Morning" program August 5, anchorman Jack Cafferty mixed candor with exemplary media arrogance: "This is a commercial enterprise. This is not PBS. We're not here as a public service. We're here to make money. We sell advertising, and we do it on the premise that people are going to watch. If you don't cover the miners because you want to do a story about a debt crisis in Brazil at the time everybody else is covering the miners, then Citibank calls up and says, 'You know what? We're not renewing the commercial contract.' I mean it's a business."Courtesy of Media Monitors Network