Winning Quotes in MRC's Annual Awards for the Worst Reporting --12/27/2007
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2. List of the 53 Judges Who Selected the Winning Quotes
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The winning quotes in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2007: The Twentieth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting." As noted in previous CyberAlerts, the awards issue was posted, with videos, on Monday, December 17, but following tradition, today, Friday and Monday -- the last weekdays of the year -- CyberAlert will run the winning quotes followed on succeeding days by the runners-up.
The Media Research Center's annual awards issue provides a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2007 (December 2006 through November 2007). To determine this year's winners, a panel of 53 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote. Each judge was also asked to choose a " A list of the judges, who were generous with their time, appears in item #2 below. The MRC's Michelle Humphrey, Kristine Lawrence and Melissa Lopez distributed and counted the ballots, then produced the numerous audio and video clips that accompany the Web-posted version. Brent Baker and Rich Noyes assembled this issue and Eric Pairel posted the entire package, with dozens of Flash videos, on the MRC's Web site: www.mrc.org MS Word and Corel WordPerfect files of the entire text of the issue are also available at the above link. For an Adobe Acrobat PDF that matches the eight-page hard copy version: www.mrc.org Now, the winning quotes in the 17 award categories: Dynamic Duo Award for Idolizing Bill and Hillary "When I watched him [former President Bill Clinton] at Mrs. King's funeral, I just have never seen anything like it....There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity -- race, we call it, it's really ethnicity -- in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way." -- Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball, Feb. 28. [93 points]
"Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform....We pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?...[T]he recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary -- oops sorry, volunteer -- force that thinks it is doing the dirty work." -- WashingtonPost.com military columnist William Arkin in a January 30 column reacting to a report by NBC reporter Richard Engel. Arkin later apologized for using the word "mercenary." [107 points]
"I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact." -- Host Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset that an attempt to kill Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan had failed. [91 points]
Senator Barack Obama: "Let's roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, let's make certain that those resources go to the people who need it....We're not going to solve it by pretending that issues of poverty and struggle among working families are just going to go away magically because the stock market is going up."
-- Exchange at AFSCME Democratic candidates forum shown live on MSNBC, June 19. [78 points]
"You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought [they] were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc....Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of 'I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?'" -- Ex-Washington Post sports reporter and Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman in a June 20 Huffington Post blog item. [68 points]
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Russ Feingold wants to censure the President, the Vice President..."
-- MSNBC's Hardball, July 23. [79 points]
"It takes leadership. After World War II, we maintained the infrastructure we had and we built an incredible network of highways, and leaders in both parties agreed that these were priorities. Now we have this tax-averse society, rallied by the Republicans, tax-averse, where everything becomes sort of a right-wing, libertarian refusal to let government spend any money or raise any money." -- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift discussing the Minneapolis bridge collapse, August 25 McLaughlin Group. [74 points]
Co-host Harry Smith: "President Bush getting ready to go to Europe for the G-8. The folks in the European Union want to do emissions reductions. The President said yesterday we're not going to participate....If you were president, you would have probably signed on?"
-- Exchange on CBS's The Early Show, May 30. [64 points]
"Perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for [the falsely arrested Duke lacrosse players] Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced....As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives....They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team." -- Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran writing on his "Pushback" blog on ABCNews.com on April 12, the day after the North Carolina Attorney General declared the players innocent of highly-publicized rape charges. [66 points]
"So I'm running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this [warm weather] is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can't, I can't figure this out." -- Co-host Meredith Vieira talking about global warming on NBC's Today, January 8. [57 points]
"He was not what I expected. He was very dignified. He was warm, friendly. He likes the U.S. It's George Bush that he doesn't like. He also was very personal. He talked about how hard his life was, that he wished he could be in love but you can't be when you are heading a country." -- ABC's Barbara Walters recounting her interview with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, March 16 Nightline. [79]
Co-host Joy Behar: "Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him?..."
-- Discussing Democratic Senator Tim Johnson's illness on ABC's The View, December 14, 2006. [72 points]
"Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we're so divided about so much?" -- Katie Couric to The Nativity Story's Catherine Hardwicke and Mike Rich in a December 4, 2006 CBS Evening News story about Hollywood movies based on Biblical themes. [84 points]
"I just want to say something: 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?...If you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?" -- Co-host Rosie O'Donnell on ABC's The View, May 17. [64 points]
Matt Lauer: "He [Rush Limbaugh] makes a living poking fun at Democrats, but now some think he has gone a little too far in taking on Senator Barack Obama...."
-- NBC's Today, May 21. Limbaugh's parody was inspired by a black writer who used the term in a March 19 Los Angeles Times op-ed, "Obama the Magic Negro." [79 points]
"As we saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the plantation mentality that governs Washington turned the press corps into sitting ducks for the war party, for government, and neoconservative propaganda and manipulation....What's happened is not indifference or laziness or incompetence, but the fact that most journalists on the plantation have so internalized conventional wisdom that they simply accept that the system is working as it should. I'm doing a documentary this spring called Buying the War, and I can't tell you again how many reporters have told me that it just never occurred to them that high officials would manipulate intelligence in order to go to war. Hello?" -- PBS's Bill Moyers, in a January 12 speech to a conference on "media reform" aired four days later on the left-wing Pacifica network's Democracy Now. [95 points]
"As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch" -- Headline over an October 16 story by McClatchy News Service reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein.
In recognition of their time and effort, a listing of the names and affiliations of the judges for the "Best Notable Quotables of 2007: The Twentieth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."
As explained in item #1 above, the panel of 53 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers received a ballot and each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. - Lee Anderson, Associate Publisher and Editor, Chattanooga Times Free Press - Chuck Asay, editorial cartoonist via the Creators Syndicate - Brent H. Baker, MRC's Vice President for Research and Publications; Editor of CyberAlert and Editor the NewsBusters blog - Mark Belling, radio talk show host, WISN-AM in Milwaukee - Neal Boortz, nationally syndicated radio talk show host - L. Brent Bozell III, President of the Media Research Center and author of Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will - Priscilla Buckley, Contributing Editor for National Review - Bill Cotterell, political editor at the Tallahassee Democrat - Blanquita Cullum, Podjockey.com - Bill Cunningham, nationally syndicated radio talk show host from WLW in Cincinnati - Midge Decter, author, member of the Heritage Foundation's Board of Trustees - Bob Dutko, radio talk show host, WMUZ-FM in Detroit - Jim Eason, retired radio talk show host - Don Feder, former Boston Herald columnist; author, media consultant at Don Feder & Associates - Eric Fettmann, Associate Editorial Page Editor, New York Post - Ed Flynn, radio talk host on WATR in Waterbury, CT - Michael Graham, radio talk show host on WTKK in Boston and Boston Herald columnist - Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis, Media Research Center; Senior Editor of the NewsBusters blog - Steven Greenhut, senior editorial writer and columnist, Orange County Register - Kirk Healy, Executive Producer, WDBO Radio in Orlando -Quin Hillyer, Senior Editor, The American Spectator - Fred Honsberger, radio talk show host, Newsradio 1020 KDKA in Pittsburgh - Jeff Jacoby, columnist for the Boston Globe - Marie Kaigler, mass media and developmental consultant, Detroit - Cliff Kincaid, Editor, Accuracy in Media - Mark Larson, Program Director and talk show host on San Diego 1700 AM - Mark Levin, nationally syndicated radio talk show host - Jason Lewis, talk show host, 100.3 KTLK-FM in Minneapolis - Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online - Brian Maloney, radio analyst, creator of The RadioEqualizer blog - Steve Malzberg, nationally syndicated talk show host from WOR in New York City - Patrick McGuigan, Contributing Editor, The City Sentinel in Oklahoma City - Colin McNickle, Editorial Page Editor, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Joe McQuaid, Publisher, New Hampshire Union Leader - Jan Mickelson, talk show host on WHO in Des Moines - Paul Mirengoff, co-author of PowerLine blog - Robert D. Novak, syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times; author of The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington - Rich Noyes, Director of Research, Media Research Center; Senior Editor of the NewsBusters blog - Henry Payne, editorial cartoonist, The Detroit News - Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, Editorial Director, The American Spectator - Michael Reagan, nationally syndicated radio talk show host - Chris Reed, editorial writer, San Diego Union-Tribune - Mike Rosen, radio talk show host, KOA in Denver; columnist for the Rocky Mountain News - William A. Rusher, Distinguished Fellow, Claremont Institute; syndicated columnist - Matthew Sheffield, Executive Editor of NewsBusters, the MRC's blog - James Taranto, Editor of OpinionJournal.com - Philip Terzian, Literary Editor for The Weekly Standard - Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist; panelist on FNC's Fox News Watch - Chris Warden, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Troy University - Clay Waters, Editor of the MRC's TimesWatch.org - Walter E. Williams, economics professor, George Mason University - Thomas S. Winter, Editor-in-Chief of Human Events - Martha Zoller, radio talk show host for WDUN in Gainseville, GA For links to Web pages for the judges: www.mrc.org
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