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:

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  • (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 7 of 16

Damn Those Conservatives Award

Winner

Martin Bashir (76 points)

“One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years....In 1756, he records that ‘a slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners’ savagery and inhumanity....When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”
— MSNBC host Martin Bashir on November 15, reacting to Sarah Palin’s comparison of excessive debt to slavery. Bashir apologized the following Monday, but MSNBC permitted him to stay on the air that entire week. After an extended Thanksgiving “vacation,” he quit on December 4. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-Up

Michael Eric Dyson (65 points)

“Clarence Thomas’s actions here today, though consistent, though tragic to me, are even more so in light of the bulk of decisions he’s rendered in the name of a judicial vote on the Supreme Court: A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”
— Georgetown professor and MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, June 25, talking about the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. [MP3 Audio]


Richard Wolffe (29 points)

“She most certainly punished communities. She punished branches of government. She punished industries, she took a brutal, brutal look at what industries were working and just said, ‘We’re going to close it down.’...Margaret Thatcher, no question, she stood up to communism. As I said before though, she had an attitude to her domestic enemies that, frankly, was the antithesis of freedom.”
— MSNBC.com editor and ex-Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe on Now with Alex Wagner, April 8, a few hours after news of Thatcher’s death was announced. [MP3 Audio]


(24 points)

“With his outrageous and horrible comments, he’s really more of a benefit to the Democratic Party....He is offensive in every way you can be offensive. He is racism in the big sense in terms of whole classes of people. There’s sexism in the big sense, and then there’s the direct personal attacks, which are also unbelievable.”
— MSNBC’s Krystal Ball on PoliticsNation, August 1, talking about the 25th anniversary of The Rush Limbaugh Show. [MP3 Audio]