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:




Damn Those Conservatives Award

Winner

Allison Yarrow / Ramin Setoodeh (69 points)

Newsweek/Daily Beast assignment editor Allison Yarrow: “Can you imagine being that organ donor? I mean, it’s such a difficult decision to say ‘I want to give my body to someone else after I’m dead.’”

Newsweek senior writer Ramin Setoodeh: “To Dick Cheney? I would never give my heart to Dick Cheney. It would freeze over.”

Yarrow: “I would never do it. I’d say ‘give me my heart back.’ Exactly …”

Host/columnist John Avlon: “Seriously, the ill will toward Dick Cheney getting a heart transplant is stunning.”

Yarrow: “He may be one of the most evil people in the world.”

— Exchange on NewsweekDaily Beast’s daily “NewsBeast” Web show, March 26. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Martin Bashir (64 points)

Host Martin Bashir: “When we last saw the Republican front-runner Rick Santorum speaking before a crowd yesterday, all we could think of was George Orwell’s novel 1984 about a society dominated by the most extreme form of totalitarianism….”

Clip from 1984: “The forces of darkness and the treasonable maggots who collaborate with them, must, can and will be wiped from the face of the Earth.”

Bashir: “In reviewing his book, It Takes a Family, one writer said, ‘Mr. Santorum has one of the finest minds of the 13th century.’ But I’m not so sure. If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like Stalin than Pope Innocent III.”

— MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, February 14. [MP3 Audio]


Bill Keller (32 points)

“Remember earlier in the campaign when Newt Gingrich was worrying everyone about Sharia law: the Muslims were going to impose Sharia law in America? Sometimes Santorum sounds like he’s creeping up on a Christian version of Sharia law.”
— Ex-New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, now a columnist for the paper, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 28. [MP3 Audio]


Lawrence O’Donnell (27 points)

“I want to see hard core Republican conservatism put up there on a debate stage with President Obama’s practical approach to governing, and I want to see hard core Republican conservatism crushed.”
— MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell during live coverage of the Super Tuesday primaries, March 6. [MP3 Audio]