Best of NQ 2013

The Twenty-Sixth 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:

Print:

Video:

Online:

Radio

  • (Interviews as of 12/29) Portland, Oregon-based Lars Larson on his national show, Jan Mickelson on WHO in Des Moines, Bob Dutko on WMUZ in Detroit, Mark Larson on KCBQ in San Diego and Tron Simpson on KCMN in Colorado Springs, Mike Rosen on KOA in Denver and Greg Garrison on WIBC in Indianapolis.



Category 11 of 16

Let Them Eat Dog Food Award
for Freaking Out Over the Sequester’s Puny Cuts

Winner

stillshot

Ed Schultz (64 points)

“Now you’ve got a budget of three and a half trillion dollars in this fiscal year. This will take $85 billion out of it. That’s damn near a third....You can’t take 30, you can’t take 30 percent of operational money out and expect to have the same product. You can’t do it! It’s impossible!”
— Radio host and MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz on his February 25 radio show. In fact, $85 billion is a puny 2 percent of the $3.5 trillion annual federal budget, not 30 percent. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Josh Elliott (59 points)

“Deadline day. Hours, now, until massive government cuts go into effect that could impact every American: jobs vaporizing, flights delayed, even criminals walking free.”
— Fill-in co-host Josh Elliott at the top of ABC’s Good Morning America, March 1. [MP3 Audio]


David Kerley (37 points)

“It sounds like a disaster movie: Childcare canceled for tens of thousands of kids, long airport security lines, flight delays with a shortage of controllers, and military cuts that will leave us ‘second rate,’ according to the Defense Secretary.”
— ABC’s David Kerley on World News, February 24. [MP3 Audio]


Rachel Maddow / Savannah Guthrie (34 points)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “In Prohibition, the government came up with the brilliant idea that to stop people from drinking, they would put poison in industrial alcohol. They didn’t do anything to stop the underlying problem of people wanting to drink, and so what they did was poison a lot of people. This [the sequester] is the same kind of thing. It’s supposed to be aversion therapy. It’s supposed to be so awful we won’t do it. But we’ve gone and done it anyway. It’s self-imposed crisis.”
Co-host Savannah Guthrie: “And part of the effect though is this poison, to borrow your metaphor, it’s not a poison that kills you overnight. Apparently it’s a slow, rolling poison.”
— Exchange on NBC’s Today, March 5. [MP3 Audio]