First Runners-Up Quotes in the MRC’s Best of NQ Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting
The first runners-up quotes in the MRC’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2014: The Twenty-Seventh Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting,” which this year we’ve dubbed the “Worst of the Worst.” As announced in a December 18 CyberAlert Special, the awards issue was posted, with videos, that day, and a category a day has been posted on our NewsBusters blog. (All of the NewsBusters posts by Rich Noyes)
Today the first runners-up quotes in 14 categories.
The page linked above also has links for the text of the entire issue in MS Word or WordPerfect formats as well as a colorful and easily read-able PDF version.
Some judges have already posted their takes on the quotes. In addition to several talk radio segments:
# Genevieve Wood discussed the awards on Tuesday’s Fox & Friends. Video.
# Mike Rosen in the Denver Post: “Liberal media ravings of 2014”
# “Here Are the Most Biased Media Quotes of 2014,” by Genevieve Wood on TheDailySignal.
# From Quin Hillyer on National Review Online: “H8ers Gotta H8: In 2014, the media delivered a torrent of anti-conservative bile”
# Plus, MRC President Brent Bozell discussed the awards on FNC’s Hannity. Video.
To determine this year’s winners, a panel of 40 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to seven quotes in each category [List of Judges]. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed alongside each quote. Each judge was also asked to choose a “Quote of the Year” denoting the most outrageous quote of 2014.
The MRC’s Kristine Lawrence distributed the ballots and tabulated the results. Senior news analyst Scott Whitlock rounded up the numerous video clips included in the Web-posted version. Rich Noyes and Brent Baker assembled this issue and Brad Ash posted the entire package to the MRC’s Web site.
The list of the judges, who were generous with their time, is posted online and listed below after the winning quotes.
> Now, the first runners-up quotes in the 14 award categories, plus Quote of the Year (see the “Best Notable Quotables of 2014" pages for video and audio clips for the quotes):
The Move Along, Nothing to See Here Award
for Denying Obama’s Scandals [first runner-up]
✔ “Without the IRS, or something like it, we wouldn’t have a government. In fact, it’s the cornerstone upon which the entire edifice of the federal government is built. And that is precisely the reason conservatives have so consistently taken a sledgehammer to it....Conservatives recognize that one of the only things standing between us and a genuine plutocracy are thousands of anonymous bureaucrats doing the basic work of enforcing our nation’s laws.”
— MSNBC host Chris Hayes on criticism of Lois Lerner, April 15 All In. [40 points]
The Obamagasm Award [first runner-up]
✔ “Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history....I don’t care about the fact that Obama hasn’t lived up to the golden dreams of 2008, and I care even less about his approval rating. I do care that he has, when all is said and done, achieved a lot. That is, as Joe Biden didn’t quite say, a big deal.”
— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writing the cover story for the October 23 edition of Rolling Stone, “In Defense of Obama.” [47]
The Blue State Brigade Award
for Biased Campaign Coverage [first runner-up]
✔ “If November comes and goes and Democrats hold the Senate and break even in the House, I think we’re going to look back at the month of July as the month Republicans lost their shot at the Senate.”
— Incoming NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, August 1, talking about Boehner’s lawsuit and the House immigration bill. [47]
The Media Hero Award [first runner-up]
✔ Anchor Diane Sawyer: “Back here at home, a firebrand is back in the news with a big alert for middle class Americans, the bedrock of the nation....”
Correspondent David Muir: “It’s long been part of the American dream. Families hoping to secure their spot in America’s cherished middle class. And she is the firebrand who’s made a name fighting for them.”
Clip of Senator Elizabeth Warren: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.”...
Muir: “She says she’s not running for president, Diane, but she’s clearly campaigning for the middle class tonight.”
— ABC’s World News, April 21. [50]
The Planet in Peril Award
for Climate Hysteria [first runner-up]
✔ Co-host Joe Scarborough: “What’s a greater threat to civilization, Christian extremism, Jewish extremism or Muslim extremism?”
NBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin: “To civilization?...I would not say any of those. I would not say radical Islam is the greatest threat to civilization today.”
Scarborough: “What is?”
New York Times political reporter Nicholas Confessore: “Global warming.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, October 6. [50]
The Obama’s Orderlies Award
for Championing ObamaCare [first runner-up]
✔ “I’ll tell you what I think God thinks of the Affordable Care Act — it’s a big ‘amen.’”
— Ed Schultz answering viewers’ questions on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, December 4, 2013. [57]
The Ku Klux Con Job Award
for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges [first runner-up]
✔ “I want to talk today about a controversial word. It’s a word that has been with us for years and, like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments.... Y’all know the word that I’m talking about: ObamaCare.”
— Host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous MSNBC show, December 8, 2013. [48]
Damn Those Conservatives Award [first runner-up]
✔ “[Senator John] McCain should pay a heavy price for unleashing this ignorant, two-wheeled bilewagon [Sarah Palin] on the country’s politics. If you think she’s a legitimate political leader, you’re an idiot and a sucker and I feel sorry for you....She is the living representation of the infantilization of American politics, a poisonous Grimm Sister telling toxic fairy tales to audiences drunk on fear, and hate and nonsense....It was the address of a malignant child delivered to an audience of malignant children. If you applauded, you’re an idiot and I feel sorry for you.”
— Esquire’s Charles Pierce in a March 8 blog post about Palin’s CPAC speech. [47 points]
The Pantsuit Patrol Award
for Boosting Hillary Clinton [first runner-up]
✔ “Maya Angelou, the late Maya Angelou, wrote a poem about her during the 2008 presidential campaign. It contains these lines: ‘There is a world of difference between being a woman and a being an old female. If you’re born a girl, grow up, and live long enough, you can become an old female. But to become a woman is a serious matter. A woman takes responsibility for the time she takes up and the space she occupies. Hillary Clinton is a woman.’ Some say she may be the first woman in the White House. I am pleased to have Hillary Clinton back at this table. Welcome.”
— Host Charlie Rose setting up an interview with Clinton on his PBS program, July 17. [49]
America’s Royal Baby Award [first runner-up]
✔ “Leading astrologers say that Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky is destined for a future working on social justice and will enjoy a strong relationship with her proud grandparents, Hillary and Bill. After Chelsea Clinton and Mark Mezvinsky’s daughter was born..., Politico asked astrologers to weigh in on what is written in the stars for the former first daughter’s first daughter.”
— Politico’s Kendall Breitman in a September 29 article. [55]
MSNBC = Mean-Spirited, Nasty, Belligerent Chris Award [first runner-up]
✔ “What’s worse, Thom Tillis or Ebola?”
— Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 27. [50]
The Twisted Tweets Award [first runner-up]
✔ “I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.”
— August 14 Twitter message posted by Alan Pyke, deputy economic policy editor for the far-left Think Progress blog, in reaction to the Fox News Channel’s coverage of the unrest in Ferguson. [51]
The Audacity of Dopes Award
for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year [first runner-up]
✔ “With the 2015 budget request, [President] Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans.”
— Washington Post business reporter Zachary Goldfarb in a February 21 front-page article, “Obama budget to rebuff austerity.” The federal government’s total public debt rose from $10.63 trillion when Obama took office to $17.42 trillion at the time Goldfarb’s article appeared. [40]
The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award
for Celebrity Vapidity [first runner-up]
✔ “This is the only country in the world where we don’t have health care. Countries embarrass us around the world. And this is the only country in the world where we don’t have a gun law. I watched you, you know, talk about that. You know, quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. Obama is not embarrassing. The country is embarrassing.”
— Movie producer Harvey Weinstein on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live, November 15, 2013. [44]
Quote of the Year [first runner-up]
✔ “Every media organization has investigated this [Benghazi] to death. This animates the right wing of the Republican Party. And I would like to point out that Ambassador [Chris] Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation.”
— The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, May 11.
> The 40 judges:
# Brent H. Baker, MRC’s Vice President for Research & Publications; Editor at Large of the MRC’s NewsBusters blog
# Mark Belling, radio talk show host, WISN-AM in Milwaukee
# Neal Boortz, retired nationally syndicated radio talk show host
# L. Brent Bozell III, Founder and President of the Media Research Center
# Monica Crowley, news analyst for the Fox News Channel, nationally syndicated talk radio host and online opinion editor for the Washington Times
# Mark Davis, talk host on KSKY (660 AM The Answer) in Dallas-Ft. Worth and Salem Radio Network; Dallas Morning News columnist
# Midge Decter, author; Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees
# Bob Dutko, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, WMUZ in Detroit
# Jim Eason, retired radio talk show host
# Erick Erickson, Editor of RedState.com
# Eric Fettmann, Associate Editorial Page Editor, New York Post
# Lucianne Goldberg, publisher of Lucianne.com media forum
# Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis, Media Research Center; Executive Editor of the MRC’s NewsBusters blog
# Quin Hillyer, contributing editor to National Review
# Mark Hyman, commentator, Behind the Headlines, for the Sinclair Broadcast Group
# Jeff Jacoby, syndicated Boston Globe columnist
# Cliff Kincaid, Director, Accuracy in Media’s Center for Investigative Journalism
# Mark Larson, radio talk show host, KCBQ-AM 1170 ; news analyst for KUSI-TV in San Diego
# Mark Levin, nationally syndicated radio talk show host; President, Landmark Legal Foundation
# Jeffrey Lord, blogger for NewsBusters and contributing editor to The American Spectator
# Steve Malzberg, host of The Steve Malzberg Show on NewsmaxTV
# Patrick McGuigan, Editor of CapitolBeatOK.com and Publisher of The City Sentinel in Oklahoma City
# Vicki McKenna, host, the Vicki Mckenna Show on WIBA and Madison and WISN in Milwaukee
# Jan Mickelson, radio talk show host, WHO in Des Moines
# Rich Noyes, Director of Research, Media Research Center; Senior Editor of the MRC’s NewsBusters blog
# Kate O’Beirne, former Washington Editor of National Review
# Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-Chief of World News Group
# Katie Pavlich, News Editor for TownHall.com
# James Pinkerton, Fox News contributor
# Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, Editorial Director, The American Spectator
# Chris Reed, editorial writer, San Diego Union-Tribune
# Mike Rosen, radio host at KOA; columnist for the Denver Post
# Tron Simpson, radio host at TronShow.com and KVOR in Colorado Springs
# James Taranto, editorial board member, The Wall Street Journal and Editor of “Best of the Web Today”
# Cal Thomas, syndicated and USA Today columnist and Fox News contributor
# David Webb, SiriusXM radio talk host; Fox News contributor
# Walter E. Williams, Professor of economics, George Mason University
# Thomas S. Winter, Editor-in-Chief emeritus of Human Events
# Genevieve Wood, Senior Contributor to The Daily Signal
# Martha Zoller, Editor-in-Chief of zpolitics.com
Links for Web sites affiliated with the judges.
— Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Follow Brent Baker on Twitter.
