There seems to be a distinctive political bias here - though I suppose your panel of judges were never claiming to be neutral.

I think it’s very unfair of the Observer media diary to call Martin Bright “sartorially challenged”. Despite being such a dedicated and brilliant Political Editor, I’m sure he’s also always immaculately turned out.

I can’t imagine why the New Statesman selected a site dedicated to Islamophobia and promoting war on behalf of Israel into it’s list of finalists. Does the NS really want to help push the agenda at Harry’s Place?

Wow!

I am really surprised to see The New Statesman associating itself with a site like Harry’s Place. This is a strongly islamophobic site.

You might as well be promoting the BNP.

Who next as a finalist - David Duke?

Amazing.

I am surprised to see edinburghsucks in the finalists.
Its a well done and effective propaganda device but at its core is something as corrupt as those it challenges and defames - a festering bitterness which will stoop to guilt by association in order to manipulate opinion for its own ends.
It sees itself as some kind of Private Eye when really its just another Sun.
All of its contributions are conveniently anonymous and all legal issues are dealt by an umbrella company in the USA. And it considers itself democratic?
The muck raking it has infested local community forums with is bordering on the fascistic.

Harry’s Place is not monolithically ‘Islamophobic’, but it does have a pronounced Zionist squint on matters Middle Eastern, and a more general tendency to endorse whatever New Labour happens to be up to in foreign policy at any given moment.

HP is part of the coterie who keep the Euston Manifesto, Unite Against Terror, Democratiya and suchlike mutual admiration societies in business. Its American blogger, ‘Gene’, is a tireless apologist for Israel; the principal British contributor, ‘David T’, fancies himself as a sniffer-out of British Muslim fanatics who masquerade as reasonable community spokesmen. (De facto, and much to its indignant embarrassment, this puts HP in the same camp as the BNP.)

The site is much narrower in its choice of topics than when its eponymous founder was involved 2-3 years ago. It tends to attract comments from reflexive, perpetual-studenty haters of religion– overcompensating, one suspects, for their middle-aged drift into pro-US and anti-socialist opinions. It has a smug, easily mocked belief in its monopoly of ‘decency’, and spends endless ammunition on the small beer of the ‘indecent’ Left: George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley, Madeleine Bunting, Gilad Atzmon, etc. This adds to the impression of playground feuding: unfinished business from NUS/ANL days 25 years ago.

Against all that, HP should be commended for keeping a reasonably uncensored comments policy– though it does delete some, with or without admitting it– and it retains a vestigial ability to laugh at itself.

But would it be kind to give HP a prize? All the main contributors are resolutely anonymous, so if there is an award ceremony they would have to wear paper bags.