Pulitzer Went to the Wrong Photo
How Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Infected Yet Another Once Vaunted Institution
On his death in 1911, publisher Joseph Pulitzer left a $2 million bequest to Columbia University to establish a Journalism School and award prizes for excellence in journalism. In 1942, news photography was added to the categories honored.
Ever since, iconic works of breaking news photography have won the Pulitzer Prize, for capturing an essential pivot or pausing on a heartbreaking moment in world history. These are stolen images, as they happen, in the click of the shutter.
The AP photo by Joe Rosenthal in 1945 of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima.
The wrenching image in 1972 by Nick Ut of a nine-year-old girl in Vietnam, who had thrown off her burning clothes, arms flung wide, crying, fleeing from U.S.-dropped napalm. Editors at first refused to print it, because of its frontal nudity.
Or that 1994 shot by Kevin Carter of a little girl amid a famine in Sudan, collapsed on her way to a feeding center, a vulture looking on, waiting. Instructed not to touch victims for fear of spreading illness, haunted by her memory, he later killed himself.
They are like snapshots of memory, frozen in time. Still, now, they grip my heart.
This year, the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography went to the New York Times’ Doug Mills, for managing to capture the split-second moment a speeding bullet was seen mid-air next to President Trump’s head at the rally in Butler, PA.
It’s an interesting photo, showcasing an assassination attempt in progress.
But it’s not the photo.
Like that famous “shot heard round the world” from Lexington and Concord in 1775, when British troops killed five Boston patriot at the start of the American Revolution, the shot heard round the world in 2024 was the iconic moment when President Trump, blood running down his face, stood amid a gaggle of Secret Service agents, raised his fist and shouted, “Fight, Fight, Fight!”
Little children in Africa raised their fists in imitation of his bravado. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook maestro who in 2020 funded massive Democrat election ploys against Trump, now said it was “one of the most badass things I've ever seen.” Soon the image was printed on hats and t-shirts, worn proudly by Americans who felt that after four years of being insulted as deplorables, they had a fighter in Trump.
In fact, it is not too much of a stretch to say that in that moment, Donald J. Trump — assaulted by Democrats with one lawsuit after another, belittled by the legacy media because he was brash and never ran from a fight — won the 2024 election. In fact one leftwing outlet urged the media to stop using the photo, for fear of electing Trump.
But the Pulitzer Board snubbed the iconic photo, taken by the AP’s Evan Vucci. There is no way a committee of self-appointed, self-important leftists could reward Trump’s bravery. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, called the fist-bump from Butler “maybe the single most famous photo of the past decade, but because it made Trump look good, the Pulitzer Prize committee just refused to give it the award.”
This was not the only indication that the Pulitzer Prize Board has lost its way, yet another institution unmoored from its principles by Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Washington Post, which has already pocketed a Pulitzer for the hoax of its Trump Russian collusion coverage, this year won the Pulitzer for its news coverage in Butler. The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reports that the Post’s first headline, in its archives, was: “Trump rushed off stage after loud noises at rally.” As if Trump was scared of his own shadow. As if he was spooked by noise. So outrageous was this attempt to downplay an assassination attempt with real bullets that later, ex-staffer Paul Farhi defended the cautious coverage as prudent.
The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service went to Pro-Publica, a freelance investigative unit financed by leftwing philanthropists. The news outlet won for its disingenuous reporting on women who, ProPublica claimed, died from medical care delays in states with “strict abortion laws.” One they cited as Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman pregnant with twins she wanted to abort. In fact, as as American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) reported, “her tragic death was caused by legal abortion drugs — now used in more than half the nation’s abortions — and the resulting complication of sepsis. Nothing in Georgia law, said AAPLOG, prevented doctors from treating her.
For excellence in commentary, the Pulitzer Board honored the so-called Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, for his New Yorker columns blaming Israel for the war in Gaza. “How on earth is this girl called a hostage?" he wrote of 28-year-old IDF soldier Emily Damari, who was abducted by Hamas. In Substack, Emily Damari, held 500 days in captivity, questioned the Pulitzer Board’s ethics. “You claim to honor journalism that upholds truth, democracy, and human dignity. And yet you have chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered,” she wrote. “Do you not see what this means? Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer. He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honoring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial.”
It comes as no surprise that an institution meant to uphold standards and principles is instead pushing a narrative that protects its power. The Pulitzers are part of a media landscape that embraces lies as long as they are in the cause of progressive politics.
There never was a Maryland man. He was always an El Salvadoran member of MS13, a terrorist organization, with police cam footage of him in the driver’s seat of a human smuggling ring. As for due process, two court sentences suggest he had plenty.
Elon Musk never used data to violate citizens’ privacy. Instead, using technology and creativity, DOGE unearthed fraudsters — some of them claiming to be more than 115 years old — cashing in on such staples of the American safety net as Social Security.
Oh and Trump is not, and never was, Hitler. Imprisoning political foes, abetting attacks against Jews, discriminating by race — Democrats did that. Hitler too.
When your party's platform is hate you really have very little chance of winning elections without censorship, lies and ultimately violence. Trump et al, is working to eliminate censorship, lies and violence and while there are pockets of resistance his administration seems to be making head way. God Bless Donald Trump and his administration!