In preparing to write up this year’s winners of the Media Research Center’s annual Bulldog Award — a lame sop to its fellow right-wingers for peddling conservatively correct narratives — we realized we hadn’t noted last year’s winners. The anonymously written post on the 2024 awards claimed that they were “honoring conservatives in the media who truly deserve accolades yet will never receive them from the news media establishment,” but it was just more of the same.
Victor Davis Hanson, whom the anonymous writer gushed was “the leading conservative thinker and author of our age,” received a lifetime achievement award. Other awards went to podcaster Ben Shapiro, right-wing columnist Salena Zito, blogger Kassy Akiva, Seth Dillon of the Babylon Bee, activist author Peter Schweizer (for whom the MRC buried his right-wing bias and lack of actual evidence to back up his claims of fraud at the Clinton foundation) and radio guy Dennis Prager. There was more gushing from the top:
In announcing this year’s winners, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell III said: “Like everything else the left controls, major journalism awards are rigged to reward people who advance their most radical agenda priorities. If you want to win a Pulitzer, write about ‘climate change’ or ‘systemic racism’ or ‘reproductive health’ or promote ‘Russian collusion.’ If you want to win a Bulldog Award, tell the truth. This year’s winners are great American truth-tellers.”
Bozell added, “I applaud Victor’s wise insights, Ben’s savage podcasts, Seth’s mockery of the left and defense of free speech, Salena giving voice to Middle-America, Peter’s damning investigations, Kassy’s war coverage and exposing anti-Semitism and Dennis’s can’t-miss radio show and work at PragerU. Congratulations to this year’s winners!”
The anonymous author went on to whine that the Pulitzer Prizes, which were announced the day before, “honored journalists who pushed liberal agenda topics,” such as … an examination of the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. The writer also whined that ProPublica won an award for exposing undisclosed lavish vacations taken by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas paid for by a right-wing billionaire, which the writer tried to redefine as “trying to discredit conservative Supreme Court justices.”
This year’s awards sent more resume-padding awards to more right-wingers: columnist Thomas Sowell (who our anonymous post writer declared has “invincible analysis”), Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, Fox News host turned podcaster Megyn Kelly, radio host Erick Erickson, “investigative journalist” Gabe Kaminsky, blogger Spencer Lindquist and Scott Jennings of CNN (who “has become a household name for his clear-sighted analysis and jovial attitude amid often multiple ferocious debates in segments in which he’s most often in the ideological minority”). But the big name here is “Outstanding Social Media Personality” Elon Musk:
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk completely changed the battle for free speech by purchasing the censorship-obsessed Twitter in October 2022, soon cleaning house by re-engineering its staff and platform into the phenomenal digital town square it is today.
Since then, Musk has been an outspoken champion for freedom of speech, completely unfazed by his numerous censorial critics in the liberal media and world leaders that have sought to silence him. His social media presence has since exploded to over 219 million followers as he continues to share his unvarnished opinions to the world, becoming arguably the most powerful voice in the free speech movement. As Musk himself stated during an X Space interview in January 2025, “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy.”
Musk’s leadership, innumerable posts and direct interactions with X users have shifted the global political dynamic. He has become a voice for the multitudes who have been censored for expressing their views by his tyrannical Silicon Valley competitors like Meta, Google and TikTok.
As the MRC usually does, our anonymous writer confused refusal to moderate social media content with “free speech” and efforts to stop the spread of lies and misinformation with “censorship.”
Once again, the no-name writer whined about the Pulitzers lacking right-wing ideology:
As noted above, the biggest journalism awards were announced on May 5. Inevitably, they honored journalists who pushed liberal agenda topics, but not any conservative outlet or agenda topic.
Pulitzer Prizes administrator Marjorie Miller set the left-wing tone by claiming criticism of the news media is “an attempt to erode the First Amendment of our Constitution.” She championed how the finalists and winners displayed “courageous reporting and impactful storytelling from unbowed newsrooms.”
Those purported “liberal agenda topics” honored with awards include “urgent reporting…about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws,” as well as an award for “Former Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit the paper when it decided to not print her repetitive cartoon ridiculing tech and media billionaires for their subservience to President Trump.” Our anonymous writer offered no evidence that anything Telnaes drew was “repetitive.”