With our third annual Bulldog Awards in six categories announced today, the Media Research Center is honoring conservatives in the media who truly deserve accolades yet will never receive them from the news media establishment.
The winners of the MRC’s 2024 Bulldog Awards: Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Seth Dillon, Salena Zito, Peter Schweizer, Kassy Akiva and Dennis Prager.
The biggest journalism awards, the Pulitzer Prizes, were announced on Monday, May 6. Inevitably, they honored journalists who pushed liberal agenda topics. (See the bottom of this post for some examples.)
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!”
Previous: 2022 and 2023 Bulldog winners
Details on the seven winners of the MRC’s 2024 Bulldog Awards announced Tuesday, May 7:
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Lifetime Achievement: Victor Davis Hanson
The leading conservative thinker and author of our age, Victor Davis Hanson has for decades offered wise guidance on a wide range of issues, providing intellectual fuel for conservatives battling the latest liberal schemes to undermine traditional American values.
A man of many skills and passions, he’s a farmer, university professor, historian and prolific author. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Humanities Medal. He’s written or edited 25 books, and is probably best known for his 2002 treatise, ‘Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power.’ His latest book, the much-anticipated ‘The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation,’ is being published this week.For years his articles were must-reads in the pages of National Review. Today, cable viewers who are privileged to catch one of his appearances always come away with a broader and deeper understanding of the issue at hand.
He’s now the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where his focus is on classics and military history. He also teaches in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Podcast: Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro is a super-star of podcasters, his popular podcast rightly touted as “the hardest hitting, most insightful, and savagely irreverent conservative podcast on the web.”
In a sign of his popularity and desire of so many to hear his takes on the latest news, radio stations across the country air his daily podcast as a radio show. A whole generation of young conservatives considers Shapiro an inspiration and point to him when asked who is the conservative voice they trust the most. He is also a leading speaker on college campuses where he’s willing to confront liberal assumptions and “woke” students on the most contentious issues.
Shapiro’s podcast and radio show are part of a much larger media empire he has been a key player in building. He’s the founding editor-in-chief and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, a profitable media company producing a wide-array of original products which push conservative values into the wider hostile culture, including a popular news web site, video shows and audio productions, and a pioneering move into original production documentaries and entertainment films from a conservative perspective.
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Social Media Personality: Seth Dillon
Seth Dillon, a battler for free speech and producer of much-needed mockery of cancel culture, has been CEO of The Babylon Bee since 2018. He’s grown the site into a national treasure, a compelling daily creator of articles and videos decimating, through satire, the Left and “woke” culture. Dillon observes that “jokes are funny because of their proximity to the truth” and “the problem now isn’t that our satire is too close to reality, it’s that reality is too close to satire.”
As “Your Trusted Source for Christian News Satire,” the Babylon Bee drives liberals crazy as conservatives laugh at how the site skewers liberals with their own hypocrisy. So-called “fact check” and social media sites have embarrassed themselves by deplatforming and canceling Dillon and the Babylon Bee for supposed disinformation, unable to recognize satire or tolerate any ridicule of themselves.
In on the joke, the X page for the Babylon Bee, restored by new X owner Elon Musk, dubs itself: “Fake news you can trust.” Indeed it is.
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Columnist: Salena Zito
Salena Zito is the “Middle America”-whisperer, relaying the views and passions of the heartland to those on the coasts. As she best explains herself: “In my estimation, there is no patch of geography in this country that is the ‘middle of nowhere.’ This is America; everywhere is the middle of somewhere.”
Based in Western Pennsylvania, she joined the Washington Examiner in 2016 as a political reporter and columnist, just in time to chronicle Donald Trump’s popularity in her region. Her columns also appear in the New York Post and she appears as a guest on the Fox News Channel and Newsmax. In 2018, she co-authored, ‘The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.’
Amongst her unique 2023 column takes: “Community colleges and trade schools are largely void of Israel-Hamas protests”; “What the ‘Great Trucking Recession’ is warning us about the economy”; “The general store that cultivated a community one Friday at a time”; “Faith groups come together in Youngstown to ‘Stop the Violence’”; “Democrats abandon the blue-collar worker in favor of ‘social justice’ warriors” and “Mike Rowe is on a mission to reverse the ‘unspeakable stupidity’ of devaluing work.”
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism: Peter Schweizer
Anyone who watches the Fox News Channel or Newsmax knows Peter Schweizer as the go-to expert on all things China, particularly of late, the Chinese payment scandals involving Joe and Hunter Biden., but he’s first and foremost a driven investigative book author, uncovering topics ignored by the liberal media. An impressive eight of his books have made it onto the New York Times’ best-seller list. He hit #1 earlier this year with his latest, ‘Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.’
Previous ground-breaking books include 2022’s ‘Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win’; in 2018, ‘Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends’; and in 2015, ‘Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.’
An earlier book, ‘Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison,’ was so compelling that even the liberals at CBS’s 60 Minutes considered it worth featuring on their program.
He conducts his investigative journalism through the Florida-based Government Accountability Institute, which he founded in 2012 “to investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance.”
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Blogger: Kassy Akiva
A reporter and video journalist for The Daily Wire since October of 2023 after serving as a digital journalist for FoxNews.com, Kassy Akiva is a dedicated chronicler of the excesses of the left. Since October 7 and the start of the Israel/Hamas War, Akiva has been a force in covering the anti-Semitism festering on college campuses across the country.
Since she calls Boston home, she has been able to shine a spotlight on the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred at Harvard in particular which contributed to national pressure on the university’s president, Claudine Gay, to resign. (“‘Can’t Fool Me’: Arab-Speaking Israeli Slams Rashida Tlaib For Lie About ‘From the River To The Sea’ Chant” and “‘Harvard Does Not Have Our Back’: Rabbi Slams University At Hanukkah Event Attended By Claudine Gay”).
Akiva’s fearless reporting on the war even took her halfway around the world to the combat zone itself. While in Israel, she visited the Kfar Aza kibbutz to witness firsthand the carnage and evil Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians. She also scored an exclusive with a Thai man who survived Hamas’s attack and who was able to identify his captured roommate on surveillance video from the Al Shifa hospital. (“EXCLUSIVE: Survivor of Hamas Attack Identifies Hostage From Al Shifa Hospital Footage As His Roommate”).
She got the journalism itch earlier, taking the initiative, while still in college, to create the Lone Conservative, a blog to empower conservative students outnumbered on leftist campuses.
♦ 2024 MRC Bulldog Award for Outstanding Radio Talk Show Host: Dennis Prager
Radio talk show host, podcaster, author, columnist and business pioneer, Dennis Prager’s work ethic is the envy of many. Prager got his start in radio in 1982 at KABC in Los Angeles. He’s had a national show on the Salem Radio network since 2009 and now can also be watched via a simulcast on the Salem News Channel video streaming service.
His noontime ET national radio show delivers sober takes on the news of the day, which Prager uses to launch deeper expositions on the conservative principles that inform his political stands based on ethical monotheism. He’s genuinely interested in the perspectives of his callers, engaging them in informative exchanges.
Beyond radio, in 2009 he founded Prager University (PragerU), “the most viewed conservative video site in the world, with one billion views a year, more than half by people under the age of 35.” PragerU’s videos, with “the best ideas from the best minds distilled into five focused minutes,” extend the reach of conservative values to new audiences, particularly inquisitive high school and college-age students.
2024 Pulitzer Prizes. As noted above, the biggest journalism awards were announced on May 6. Inevitably, they honored journalists who pushed liberal agenda topics. Examples:
> The New Yorker earned the “explanatory reporting” Pulitzer for “a searing indictment of our legal system’s reliance on the felony murder charge and its disparate consequences, often devastating for communities of color.”
> The Washington Post won in “national reporting” for “its sobering examination of the AR 15 semiautomatic rifle which forced readers to reckon with the horrors wrought by the weapon often used for mass shootings.”
> ProPublica was awarded the “public service” prize for trying to discredit conservative Supreme Court justices, particularly Clarence Thomas. The friendly framing from the Pulitzer board praised the “groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court to reveal how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel.”
> 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winners
> 2023 MRC Bulldog Award for Lifetime Achievement: Brit Hume
> 2022 MRC Bulldog Award winners
> 2022 MRC Bulldog Award for Lifetime Achievement: Cal Thomas
