This week we noted how Bloomberg had to retract an ad featuring anchor Betty Liu, because it said that she was “Pulitzer Prize-Nominated” when in fact, her work was simply submitted to the Pulitzer committee by her bosses.
Now Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino has been busted for the same thing. Once again, MSNBC.com’s Bill Dedman caught the error, and received a statement from Gasparino and FBN:
When asked on Tuesday in which year he was nominated, former boxer Gasparino jabbed back in a one-line email: “I was nominated by the wsj sir.”
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A Fox spokeswoman also sent over a statement:
“The Wall Street Journal submitted Charlie Gasparino’s reporting of Wall Street research scandals to the Pulitzer Board in 2002,” said the statement from Kevin Magee, executive vice president of Fox Business Network. “While Fox Business never claimed he was a finalist for the award, we’ve clarified his bio to reflect the submission as opposed to a nomination.”
To reiterate, anyone can be a Pulitzer “nominee,” all you need is enough cash for the submission fee. The Pulitzer Committee selects “finalists” (which neither Liu nor Gasparino have ever been) and names one of them a “winner.” Both Liu and Gasparino had their work submitted by their editors, which is an honor within their respective news outlets, but not quite at the level of “Pulitzer Prize Nominee.”
Update: FBN executive VP Kevin Magee tells TVNewser that this whole issue is “A tempest in a thimble.”
“I just think this whole thing is a tempest in a thimble at this point,” Magee tells us. “What we are talking about is the use of the word ‘nominated,’ Charlie was lucky enough, or worked hard enough to have his work selected by the Wall Street Journal editors to be submitted to the Pulitzer committee. It was never anything more than that, I would probably call that nominated myself. We both found out last week that they prefer you not call that nominated. So we changed his bio and his references, it was not a big deal for us and not a big deal for him. It is a gigantic honor to have your work chosen by the editors of the Wall Street Journal, and he is justifiably proud of that, as are we for that matter.”