The awards world has its fair share of drama and scandal, and it runs on a sliding scale of severity. In this article, we look at cases of impropriety and cheating that happened in both mainstream and niche spaces.
She won a Pulitzer for a kid who didn't exist
When Janet Cooke sat down to write “Jimmy’s World,” she wasn’t trying to win a Pulitzer. She was trying to write the most gripping story The Washington Post had ever run. She got there. On September 28, 1980, the Post put her front-page tale of an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C., in front of the whole city. Officials launched a search for the boy. The piece won the 1981 Pulitzer for Feature Writing.
Then it fell apart in about two days. Editors were tipped off to discrepancies in Cooke's official prize biography, which claimed she had graduated magna cum laude from Vassar and earned a master's from the University of Toledo. Once they pulled that thread, the rest came loose. Jimmy didn’t exist. She’d invented him, along with the quotes and the scenes. On April 15, 1981, she returned the prize and resigned. She’s still the only person ever to hand a Pulitzer back. [UPI]
What gets me is how thin the wall was. One fabricated line in a bio, and journalism’s top honor unwound in 48 hours. Cooke is the extreme case, but she’s not alone. Prizes are supposed to end arguments. Plenty of them have started bigger ones. Here are seven.
The Wildlife Photos That Weren’t Quite Wild
You’d think a competition run by London’s Natural History Museum would be hard to trick with a stuffed animal. It is not.
In 2009, Spanish photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez won the top Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize for a wolf leaping over a gate. A few months later, The Natural History Museum concluded that the wolf was likely a hired animal model named Ossian, available for hire from a park near Madrid, and disqualified the image and stripped the title. Rodríguez strongly denied wrongdoing. It was the first disqualification in the contest’s history.
Then in 2017, Brazilian photographer Marcio Cabral won a category with a shot of an anteater at a termite mound. An anonymous tip pointed experts to a taxidermy anteater kept on display at the entrance to the same park where the photo was taken. Cabral supplied RAW files from before and after the winning shot, but none showed the anteater. He said the animal had moved away after the long exposure and provided a witness who claimed to have seen it alive. [Telegraph]
Six Eurovision juries got caught voting for each other
At Eurovision 2022 in Turin, the European Broadcasting Union threw out the jury results of six countries after its voting partner spotted patterns that were, let’s say, suspiciously friendly.
The juries of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino showed unusually similar voting patterns, including ranking several of the other affected countries highly. Four of the six had five of the others stacked in their top five. The EBU called the pattern “unprecedented” and replaced all six jury scores with substitute results calculated from countries with similar voting records. [EBU] [Euronews]
Romania’s broadcaster, TVR, was furious. It says its jury gave top marks to Moldova, got no warning that anything was wrong, and only learned afterward that its votes had been swapped for a formula it called non-transparent. It asked the organizers for an official explanation.
Rick Astley Wasn’t Even Nominated and Then the Internet Arrived
This one is pure internet chaos. At the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, the fan-voted “Best Act Ever” category went to Rick Astley, riding the wave of the Rickrolling meme built around his 1987 hit. He beat out U2, Britney Spears, Green Day and Tokio Hotel.
Astley wasn’t even on the original shortlist. The public was allowed to nominate its own choices, and an online campaign quickly pushed him into the running. MTV then held a separate poll asking whether he deserved the nomination. It drew nearly 20 million positive responses, compared with about 5,000 negative ones. Astley ultimately won the award with a reported 100 million votes, more than all the other votes combined.
MTV effectively embraced the joke. Before the ceremony, MTV executive Richard Godfrey said the network had been “well and truly Rickrolled,” and after Astley won, he didn’t attend the ceremony; Perez Hilton accepted the award on his behalf. [Campaign]
The vote was not exactly a pristine democratic exercise. Contemporary reporting documented botting being used to stuff MTV’s online ballot, including one campaign that reported millions of recorded votes. So “fan-voted” is technically true, but the result was clearly shaped by coordinated online vote manipulation. [WIRED]
The Golden Globe Win That Came With Too Many Questions
In 1982, Pia Zadora won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture for Butterfly, beating Elizabeth McGovern for Ragtime, Kathleen Turner for Body Heat, Rachel Ward, Craig Wasson and Howard E. Rollins Jr.
The win immediately raised eyebrows. Zadora’s husband, businessman Meshulam Riklis, had flown members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to his Las Vegas casino just weeks before the voting. Riklis also hosted HFPA members at the couple’s Beverly Hills home for a private screening of Butterfly.
The controversy wasn’t that Zadora’s win was later proven to have been bought. It wasn’t. Zadora has maintained that Riklis didn’t buy the award. But the combination of a tiny voting body, lavish hospitality and a film that had been poorly received made the victory one of the most notorious Golden Globe wins in the organization’s history.
The controversy became part of the Golden Globes’ long history of questions about the relationship between HFPA members and the people campaigning for awards. CBS subsequently dropped its broadcast deal with the HFPA, although the available reporting doesn’t establish that Zadora’s win was the sole reason. Dick Clark Productions joined the Globes in 1983.
The movie went on to win three Razzies, including Worst New Star, which went to Zadora herself. [The Hollywood Reporter] [Uproxx]
The New Star categories quietly vanished after the next ceremony.
The Players Who Tried to Lose Their Way to Gold
On August 1, 2012, the Badminton World Federation disqualified eight women’s doubles players at the London Olympics for deliberately trying to lose.
Four pairs, one from China, two from South Korea and one from Indonesia, had already qualified for the knockout round and were trying to manipulate their quarterfinal matchups. They served into the net, hit shots out of bounds and made little effort to win. The crowd at Wembley Arena booed and jeered them. At one point, the referee even showed black cards to the South Korean and Indonesian pairs, though those were later rescinded and play continued.
The BWF ultimately found all eight players guilty of failing to use their best efforts to win and of conduct detrimental to the sport. South Korea appealed and lost. Indonesia withdrew its appeal. China accepted the ruling, and Chinese coach Li Yongbo apologized, saying, “It’s me to blame.” [The Guardian]
What makes the story interesting is that the players weren’t simply throwing matches for no reason. London 2012 had introduced a round-robin group stage to Olympic badminton, and the resulting matchups created an incentive to finish second rather than first in some groups. Losing could mean getting a more favorable quarterfinal draw. [BBC Sport]
IOC president Jacques Rogge said the IOC was considering whether to take further action against the players, including potentially expelling them from the Games. He had been at the badminton venue earlier that evening but had left before the most notorious match unfolded. [ESPN]
When a Grandmaster Got His Moves by SMS
At the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, 19-year-old French grandmaster Sébastien Feller won the individual gold medal for the best result on board five, along with a €5,000 prize. FIDE later sanctioned Feller, team captain Arnaud Hauchard and Cyril Marzolo over an organized cheating scheme.
The setup was almost absurdly analog. Marzolo, who was in France, followed Feller’s games live online, analyzed the positions with chess engines and sent suggested moves by SMS. Hauchard, who was at the tournament, then relayed the information to Feller using a code based on where he stood around the playing hall. The system was elaborate enough that different positions in the room represented different chessboard squares. [Chess.com]
The scheme came to light after Marzolo used a SIM card associated with French Chess Federation vice-president Joanna Pomian.
Pomian discovered suspicious messages connected to the operation and alerted federation officials. Investigators later found evidence of the SMS exchanges and testimony about how the system worked. [FIDE]
Marzolo eventually admitted his role in the cheating and said he had been paid to provide the assistance. Feller and Hauchard disputed the allegations and appealed the disciplinary findings. FIDE ultimately imposed lengthy suspensions on all three. [ChessBase]
ESPN Created Fake Producer to Collect Emmys
In January 2024, The Athletic reported, and ESPN confirmed, that the network had spent years submitting fictitious names for Sports Emmy entries so that on-air talent who were ineligible for certain program awards could receive the trophies. The practice dated back at least to 2010, while ESPN said some questionable submissions may have gone as far back as 1997.
The rules were designed to prevent on-air talent from double-dipping by winning both individual awards and certain show-wide awards. So ESPN personnel entered made-up “associate producers” whose names resembled the real stars: “Kirk Henry” for Kirk Herbstreit and “Dirk Howard” for Desmond Howard. When the entries won, the trophies were re-engraved with the recipients’ real names. Much of the scheme centered on College GameDay, which won multiple Outstanding Studio Show, Weekly Emmys during the period. [Variety]
ESPN apologized and returned the affected trophies. There was no evidence that the on-air recipients knew about the scheme. At least 37 statuettes were ultimately identified for return. Kirk Herbstreit later told The Pat McAfee Show that eight of his trophies were taken back from his home while he was away. [Sports Illustrated]
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