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 15 of 17

The Denying the Obvious Award
for Refusing to Acknowledge Liberal Bias

Winner

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Andrew Rosenthal (67 points)

Host Stephen Dubner: “There is a kind of, I think, common analog, I hope I’m not overstating it by saying that it’s common, that Fox News is to the right what the New York Times is to the left. I’m guessing you would see that as a false equivalency on a lot of levels….”

Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal: “The word I want to use here….begins with ‘bull’ and ends in ‘it’ and you can figure out what comes in between. I think it’s absolute pernicious nonsense….Fox News presents the news in a way that is deliberately skewed to promote political causes, and the New York Times simply does not.”

— Exchange during the New York Times “Freakonomics” radio podcast, February 16. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Dan Rather (64 points)

“I know that it’s widely believed that CBS, NBC, ABC — chock full of liberals. Not true. What it’s chock full of is people who wanted to give honest news, straightforward news, and voted both ways in many elections. I’m not saying that nobody in the newsroom was liberal any more than I would say anybody was conservative. Frequently what happened people who were described as conservatives want to say, ‘I worked at CBS News, and you know, almost everybody there was liberal.’ What they really mean is not everybody there agreed with them all the time. This is a sham. It’s a camouflage...”
— Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, May 30. [MP3 Audio]


Rachel Maddow (56 points)

“I think the thing that is underappreciated about MSNBC is that we don’t really do anything as a company, that we all sorta get to do our own thing....There may be liberals on TV at MSNBC, but the network is not operating with a political objective.”
— MSNBC 9pm ET host Rachel Maddow in a December 21, 2011 interview posted at Slate.com. [MP3 Audio]


Barbara Walters (35 points)

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg: “The journalists today don’t do what journalists did [back in the Cronkite era], which was keep their opinions to ourselves….”

Co-host Barbara Walters: “There are journalists where the whole thing is how opinionated can you be?…But, most of us, do not — you don’t know whether we’re Republicans or Democrats or exhibitionists.”

— Exchange on ABC’s The View, April 9. [MP3 Audio]