Israel's Media Watch awarded its Abramowitz Israeli Prize for Media Criticism for 2011 to the satirical website Latma (wecontheworld.org) and to journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.
This year, for the first time, a voting project was set up at a special website that was visited by 15,000 people with almost 4,000 actually voting. Latma won by a large margin over the closest competitor. The satirical nationalist group, founded and headed by Jerusalem Post Deputy Editor Caroline Glick, produces skits and video clips in addition to direct media criticism pieces.
While directed originally at an Israeli audience, Latma also presents English versions of its skits, and occasionally translates them into other languages, too. Its most prominent international success to date has been "We Con the World," a takeoff on a Michael Jackson song that leveled biting criticism at Western media's portrayal of the terrorists aboard the Mavi Marmara as peace activists.
Latma's "Tribal Update" mock newscast is probably the most widely viewed satirical program in Israel that is not controlled by the Left. There have been attempts to get it broadcast on one of Israel's television channels, but they have not been successful.
The Abramowitz Media Criticism Prize has been awarded for the past eleven years to persons or institutions that have made "a courageous, significant contribution of quality to media criticism."