Best of NQ 2012

The Twenty-Fifth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting


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Media Coverage

In addition to discussions on numerous radio talk shows where hosts cited quotes or interviewed MRC representatives, the Best of NQ Awards issue has been highlighted by these outlets:

Television:

  • FNC's Hannity on December 17 played several clips with MRC President Brent Bozell as a guest to offer comment. Video
  • FNC's Fox NewsWatch on December 29 highlighted the winners in two categories. Video

Print:

Online:




Category 14 of 17

Good Morning Morons Award

Winner

Bill Press (68 points)

“I mean, when you think about it, it’s ‘bombs bursting in air,’ ‘rocket’s red glare,’ it’s all kinds of — you know a lot of national anthems are that way, too — all kinds of military jargon, and the land — there’s only one phrase ‘the land of the free,’ which is kind of nice, and ‘the home of the brave?’ I don’t know….Are we [Americans] the only ones who are brave on the planet? I mean, all the brave people live here. I mean, it’s just stupid, I think. I’m embarrassed, I’m embarrassed every time I hear it.”
— Former CNN and MSNBC host Bill Press on his Full Court Press nationally-syndicated radio show, June 5. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Chris Hayes (57 points)

“I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes.’… I feel comfortable — ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war, and I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”
— Host Chris Hayes talking about “The Meaning of Memorial Day” on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes, May 27. (The next day, he apologized in a statement posted on MSNBC.com: “I don’t think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I’ve set for myself.”) [MP3 Audio]


Melissa Harris-Perry (53 points)

“The land on which they [the Founders] formed this Union was stolen. The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation are second class….This is the imperfect fabric of our nation, at times we’ve torn and stained it, and at other moments, we mend and repair it. But it’s ours, all of it. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, also the liberation and the hope and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie ahead of us.”
— MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous July 1 program, delivering what she called “my footnote for the Fourth of July.” [MP3 Audio]


Ann Curry (33 points)

“It’s about those with money having an easier life than those who don’t. And there’s something fundamentally unfair about that. Not everyone has access to being able to get money, to work for money….Until America becomes fair in terms of how able people are — can be to make money, until the playing field is fair, it is unfair.”
— Co-host Ann Curry talking about a new book on financial ethics on NBC’s Today, April 25. [MP3 Audio]