Ross Gelbspan: Still Lying About the Pulitzer Prize

By Steven Milloy
August 8, 2006

Global warming hysteric Ross Gelbspan continues to have difficulty dealing with the fact that he has never won a Pulitzer Prize.

As part of last week’s article about California Attorney General Bill Lockyer attempting to silence those who dare question global warming orthodoxy, I mentioned that Lockyer relied on a passage from Gelbspan’s book, entitled “The Heat is On,” to support his attack against the so-called “climate skeptics.”

I also pointed out that Gelbspan infamously claimed that he had won a Pulitzer Prize when in fact he had not – a story that first broke on JunkScience.com in 1997.

In response to my article, Gelbspan posted on his web site a response, entitled “A Pathetic Attempt At Slander from Stephen Milloy,” in which he bizarrely continues to maintain that he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. (Although he’s worked as an editor, Gelbspan apparently doesn’t know the difference between libel and slander, as he apparently meant to say “libel” not “slander.” Slander is oral defamation while libel is written defamation. But I digress…)

In any event, Gelbspan says he won a Pulitzer Prize for the following reasons:

• “In 1983 as special projects editor of The Boston Globe, Gelbspan conceived a project, selected a team of reporters, directed the reporters and edited the resulting series of articles. That series won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.
• The Boston Globe acknowledged Gelbspan's role in the project by printing his photograph and a brief biography under a headline reading: Profiles of Globe Staffers Who Won Pulitzers."
• The Mayor of Boston sent Gelbspan an official letter congratulating him on the Pulitzer Prize.
• The newspaper's Board of Directors passed a resolution specifically congratulating the editors of the prize-winning series.
• When the industry campaign [exposing Gelbspan’s dishonesty about winning the Pulitzer Prize] surfaced, the lead reporter on the Pulitzer Prize-winning series (who had since moved to the Wall Street Journal) wrote a letter to The Washington Times denouncing the campaign and confirming Gelbspan's role.

Although Gelbspan has gone to the trouble of providing web hyperlinks to the above-mentioned documentation, sadly for Gelbspan, neither the Mayor of Boston, Boston Globe, nor a real Pulitzer Prize winner has the authority to declare Gelbspan a Pulitzer Prize winner.

That honor is reserved exclusively for the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University - and according to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Ross Gelbspan has never won the award. Check it out for yourself - search the Pulitzer Prize web site for “Gelbspan.” You won’t find him listed anywhere.

Not too long ago, Gelbspan’s brand of dishonesty – that is, lying to enhance one’s public image while simultaneously labeling those who point out the truth as liars – would be cause for general ridicule and scorn. But since Gelbspan fancies himself as trying to save the planet from global warming and an evil industry cabal, normal standards of truthfulness don’t seem to apply. Political correctness means never having to tell the truth.

Gelbspan calls the truth about his not winning the Pulitzer Prize “character assassination.” In reality, Gelbspan is a character who has assassinated the truth.

HOME