Matthews, Curry, Penn and Couric All ‘Winners’ at MRC’s ‘DisHonors Awards’
>> Special MRC 25th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards Web section, with videos of the entire event, plus all the nominee videos and archival compilations <<
Chris Plante, Laura Ingraham, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, Cal Thomas, Tony Perkins, Reince Priebus, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Lynn and Foster Friess and a performance by The Davisson Brothers Band, highlighted the MRC's “25th Anniversary Gala featuring the DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporting,” presented on Thursday night, September 27, before a boisterous audience of one thousand at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
In addition to the presentation of the DisHonors Awards videos in four categories and a look at some “funny clips,” the audience assigned the “Worst Reporter in the History of Man Award.” MRC President Brent Bozell led the audience in watching compilations of the most obnoxious bias from Dan Rather, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric and Brian Williams. He then asked the audience to show their derision via jeers and noisemakers and, after a head-to-head comparison of audience opinion toward Couric and Rather, Couric was declared the clear winner.
(Video of all the nominated quotes and archival compilations are already online. We’ll be loading up video highlights from the event starting late Friday morning, so check our “MRC 25th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards” section on MRC.org throughout the day.)
The MRC also honored the late Andrew Breitbart with the MRC’s sixth annual “William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence.” Cal Thomas, who earned the honor in 2011, presented the award to Breitbart’s father-in-law, Orson Bean.
DisHonors Awards winners were selected by a distinguished panel of 12 leading media observers, including Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Lou Dobbs, Mark Levin, David Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh, Walter E. Williams and Thomas S. Winter.
Winners: Chris Matthews earned “The Obamagasm Award,” MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts captured “The Vast Right-Wing Knuckle-Draggers Award,” NBC’s Ann Curry got the “Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award” and Sean Penn won “The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity.”
Chris Plante, a talk show host on Washington, DC’s WMAL, served as Master of Ceremonies. Laura Ingraham, a nationally-syndicated talk radio host and the principal substitute host of The O’Reilly Factor, presented the first two awards; followed by Weekly Standard senior writer and Fox News contributor Stephen Hayes who handled the “funnies,” and National Review Online founding editor Jonah Goldberg, who presented the third and fourth award categories.
To mark the MRC’s 25th anniversary, each award category was introduced with a “through the years” video retrospective of the worst bias on that topic over the MRC’s first 25 years.
In place of the journalist who won each award, a conservative accepted it in jest. Those standing in for the winners: Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council; Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List; and conservative philanthropists Foster and Lynn Friess. 
The evening began with an invocation by Father Terence Henry, President of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Dr. Seymour Fein, Chairman of the MRC’s Board of Trustees, came on stage to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, but instead directed the audience to a video from Marine Captain Joseph Bozell in Afghanistan whose squad recited the pledge.
When Bozell came to the podium for the “Worst Reporter in the History of Man,” he was soon interrupted by Karl Ottosen of the MRC’s Board of Directors. He introduced Fein who presented Bozell with a plaque commemorating his 25 years leading the MRC.
-- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.
