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 5 of 16

The Gunning for the Second Amendment Award

Winner

Piers Morgan (90 points)

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt: “I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible.”
CNN host Piers Morgan: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?...You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever....You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America?...I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It’s down to idiots like you. Mr. Pratt.... You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. And you shame your country.”
— From the imported British host’s anti-gun tirade on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 18, 2012. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Tom Brokaw (42 points)

“It reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn’t speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of the fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become the face of it. And now a lot of people who I know who grew up during that time have deep regrets about not speaking out.”
— Ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, January 17, urging more restrictions on gun rights. [MP3 Audio]


Martin Bashir (36 points)

“As the gun lobby has armed its barricades since that horrific shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, one of the arguments that they continue to use against any kind of regulation is to unashamedly invoke the name of Adolf Hitler. Supporters of the NRA say that history proves tyrannical leaders begin by robbing law-abiding citizens of their firearms....Of course, for a nation hell bent on genocide, Hitler did not allow the Jews to possess firearms, but virtually everyone else was free to do so. Which I guess turns this story on its head. Because if anyone deserves to be equated with Hitler on the issue of firearms, then it’s not the President, it’s the NRA.”
— Host Martin Bashir on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir January 14. [MP3 Audio]


Bob Schieffer (25 points)

“Surely, finding Osama bin Laden; surely passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby. This is a turning point in this country....Unless we figure out a way to make sure that something like Newtown never happens again, we’re not the country that we once were.”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer during live coverage of Obama’s gun control speech, January 16. [MP3 Audio]