For a few hours yesterday, there was some buzz going around that Cindy Sheehan was on the short list for the Nobel Peace Prize. She didn't get it, of course, and that rumor now seems to have been pretty well debunked, except over at World Net Daily, where Melanie Morgan is still using it to hype her new book.
News accounts confirm the rumors that Cindy Sheehan was passing along to her friends: Sheehan made the short list of leading candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Except that they don't confirm any such thing. This is one of those instances where a link (you know, one of those hyperlink gizmos that actually lend a modicum of credence to statements like this) might have come in handy, unless there really wasn't one that supported the point. Let's take a look for ourselves.
The National Ledger says she's a candidate, but cites its source as "a bookmaker." In an article about her book signing, the Rocky Mountain News says "she was told she is on the short list," but doesn't cite a source at all, so it's probably simply repeating what she announced at that event. NewsMax seems to have summed up the situation nicely last night:
At a signing for her new book "Peace Mom†in Austin, Texas, Sheehan — President Bush’s most vocal critic against the war in Iraq — announced that she is a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the committee that selects the winner of the prize, which is to be awarded on Friday, Oct. 13, has not revealed the list of nominees to Sheehan or anyone else, and has stated only that it had received 191 names by the Feb. 1 deadline.
And that's pretty much it for unique news accounts on the Sheehan nomination. Go ahead. Google it.
Look, to be clear, it's highly likely that she was nominated. Just look at the list of people who are qualified to submit Peace Prize nominations (members of national assemblies, governments, and international courts of law; university chancellors, professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology; leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs; previous years' Peace Prize Winners, board members of organizations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize; present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and former advisers of the Norwegian Nobel Institute). So while it's always nice to get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, all it really means is that at least one person who fits the above description thinks you've made a worthwhile contribution to world peace. Chances are ...
But the short list is a different matter. That's what comes out of a review and analysis of the nominees by the Nobel Committee, and requires some actual merit. Regardless of what you think of the choices that have been made through that process and the mindset that informs those choices, at least some thought and consensus goes into them.
But the bottom line is that the statutes of the Nobel Foundation (§ 10) require that the names of all nominees be kept secret for at least 50 years, and the Committee claims that it has never had a leak (stories to the contrary by disgruntled non-winners notwithstanding). Leaks, such as they are, appear to be the province of those who have made the nominations, or who say they have made the nominations (it's a hard claim to disprove, unless you want to wait 50 years).
So while Sheehan may have been told by someone that they nominated her (almost certainly) and while that may have been true (highly likely), it's extremely unlikely that she had any way of finding out whether she was on the short list. But it sounded good at her book signing, and it got her some more attention, which she so desparately craves.
Perhaps we can keep that in mind when the rumors start flying again next year.
