Welcome to the Media Research Center’s annual awards issue, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2006 (December 2005 through November 2006). To determine this year’s winners, a panel of 58 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 "Quote of the Year" denoting the most outrageous quote of 2006.
A list of the judges, who were generous with their time, appears on the back page. The MRC’s Michelle Humphrey, Karen Hanna and Kristine Looney 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 Michael Gibbons posted the entire package on the MRC’s Web site: www.mrc.org.
And please save this date: Thursday, March 29, 2007. At the Media Research Center’s 20th Anniversary Gala celebration that night in Washington, DC, the MRC will announce the winners of the DisHonors Awards of 2007: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters. Check www.mrc.org in early 2007 for additional information.
"It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry."See the Runners-Up for the Quote Of The Year
CBS Evening News (72 points)
Anchor Katie Couric: "Gas is the lowest it’s been all year, a nationwide average of $2.23 a gallon. It hasn’t been that low since last Christmas. But is this an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?"
Reporter Anthony Mason: "...Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don’t think so."
Man in a car: "And I think it’s basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let’s vote Republican."
ABC’s World News (69 points)
ABC’s Steve Osunsami: "In many black neighborhoods, they actually believe that white residents sent the barge that destroyed the levee and flooded their communities."
Unidentified black man, in HBO’s film by Spike Lee: "They had a bomb. They bombed that sucker."
Osunsami: "To this day, the conspiracy theories are so widely held, director Spike Lee put them on film...."
Spike Lee, director: "As an African-American in this country, I don’t put anything past the government."
Jack Cafferty (59 points)
"The last time we got a tape from Osama bin Laden was right before the 2004 presidential election. Now here we are, four days away from hearings starting in Washington into the wiretapping of America’s telephones without bothering to get a court order or a warrant, and up pops another tape from Osama bin Laden. Coincidence? Who knows."
Keith Olbermann (39 points)
"Late in the same week that an NSA whistleblower suggests the illicit tapping of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less focused than the President claims, suddenly we have FBI sources linking stories about Middle Easterners trying to buy vast quantities of untraceable, disposable American cell phones from K-Marts and Target stores. Which, if true, makes the wiretapping look like a good idea and its leakers look like they’ve already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping. Boy, you can’t buy timing like that. I mean it. I’m asking seriously, you can’t buy timing like that, right?...We’ll never know for sure if that is or is not just an amazing coincidence that it falls right after the whole NSA whistleblower issue comes up but, as we had pointed out here before, the administration sure gets a lot of these breaks."
U.S. News & World Report (59 points)
"Vote Democratic, Earn More."
Eleanor Clift (56 points)
"There’s nothing this administration won’t do under the guise of battling terrorism....The only way the American people can stop Bush’s imperial expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or the other body of Congress from Republican control."
Jonathan Alter (54 points)
"This word, ‘values,’ ‘values voters,’ which is just driving me nuts. This idea that somehow certain people have a monopoly on values, and that, you know, if you are not with them on these issues, that you somehow [mock tone of horror] ‘don’t share our values,’ and you’re not just wrong, but you’re somehow morally inferior if you’re on the other side. And I hope that this election is going to mark the demise of the ‘values voters,’ this idea that somehow people who feel so strongly about, you know, these so-called traditional values, that they don’t determine the election the way they were seen to have the last time around, and the indications are that they do have less clout this time out."
Chris Matthews (53 points)
Hotline’s Chuck Todd: "Our line here is about 25 or 30 House seats [for the Democrats]. If it gets over 25 or 30 House seats, you’re going to see six Senate seats...."
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: "Well, that’ll be fantastic news. It’ll be huge news, I should say, because if that happens, then we have a government run by the Democrats, and an executive branch run by the Republicans, President George W. Bush, having to actually negotiate every aspect of national policy, including the war in Iraq."
CNN’s The Situation Room (77 points)
Anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Let’s get some words of wisdom from Jack Cafferty. He’s in New York right now. Jack?"
CNN’s Jack Cafferty: "I don’t know about wisdom, but you’ll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country....Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn’t, it sure as hell ought to...."
Blitzer: "Words of wisdom, as I said, Jack, outraged, as you clearly are. Thanks very much."
Keith Olbermann (71 points)
"We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from....We have never before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow. You, sir, have now befouled that spring. You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order. You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom....These things you have done, Mr. Bush — they would constitute the beginning of the end of America."
Eleanor Clift (59 points)
"[Russia’s Vladimir Putin is] the only one of those leaders who goes in there [the G8 summit] with a commanding popularity among his own people, because he is perceived to be an effective dictator. What we have in this country is a dictator who’s ineffective."
Keith Olbermann (34 points)
"The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on the false premise that it had something to do with 9/11 is ‘lying by implication.’ The impolite phrase is ‘impeachable offense.’...When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of that freedom, we are somehow un-American; when we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have ‘forgotten the lessons of 9/11;’ look into this empty space behind me and the bipartisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me this: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you."
Vanessa Arrington (83 points)
"When outsiders think of Cuba, it’s often the lack of political freedoms and economic power that comes to mind. Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends....For all its flaws, life in Castro’s Cuba has its comforts, and unknown alternatives are not automatically more attractive....Many foreigners consider it propaganda when Castro’s government enumerates its accomplishments, but many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying."
Name (NUM points)
Diane Sawyer: "It is a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school....Ask them about their country, and they can’t say enough."
North Korean girl, in English: "We are the happiest children in the world."
Sawyer to class: "What do you know about America?"
Sawyer voiceover: "We show them an American magazine. They tell us, they know nothing about American movies, American movie stars....and then, it becomes clear that they have seen some movies from a strange place...."
Sawyer to class: "You know The Sound of Music?"
Voices: "Yes."
Sawyer, singing with the class: "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a drop of golden sun...."
Charles Gibson: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea."
Claire Shipman (53 points)
"Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the ‘Iron Curtain’ that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union."
Howard French (52 points)
"Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980s, China’s socialized medical system, with ‘barefoot doctors’ at its core, worked public health wonders....Since then, in one of the great policy reversals of modern times, China has dissolved its rural communes, privatized vast swaths of the economy and shifted public health resources away from rural areas and toward the cities."
Linda Greenhouse (61 points)
"Our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let’s not forget the sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."
Andy Rooney (44 points)
"Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]. Americans are puzzled over why so many people in the world hate us....We’re trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn’t make so many people in the world want to kill us."
Terry Moran (22 points)
"I’d like to put this personally, if I can. You’re a grandfather. I’m a father. When we look at those girls and we think that the country we’re about to pass to them is a country where the Vice President can’t say whether or not we have secret prisons around the world, whether water-boarding and mock executions is consistent with our values, and a country where the government is surveilling Americans without the warrant of a court — is that the country we want to pass on to them?"
Keith Olbermann (73 points)
"It [Dean’s book, Conservatives Without Conscience] deals with psychological principles that are frightening and that may have faced other nations at other times in — Germany and Italy in the ’30s coming to mind in particular. How does it apply now? And to what degree should it scare us?...This whole edifice requires an enemy — communism, al-Qaeda, Democrats, me, whoever — for the Two-Minute Hate....Are you actually saying here they [conservative Republicans] would set up, encourage, terrorism from other countries to set them up as a bogeyman to have again that group to hate here, that group to more importantly be afraid of here?...This all seems to require not merely venality or immorality, but a kind of amorality where morals don’t enter into it at all....You’ve been at one of the central moments of history in the 20th century. What kind of danger — are we facing a legitimate threat to the concept of democracy in this country?"
John Mashek (56 points)
"Leave it to the right wing to cross the preposterous line just when you think it reached that point long ago. The Media Research Center, an outfit dedicated to proving that every story in the newspapers or on TV is slanted left, every year hands out its DisHonors Award....For this gang to come along with its award is laughable. You could fill a Bible with the mistakes they make in their accusations against the press. They can dish it out but can’t take it."
Mark Shields (55 points)
"I don’t think what happened in West Virginia is totally divorced from the K Street project. It was all about deregulation. Tom DeLay fervently and sincerely believes that every regulation — the regulations that have removed 99 percent of lead from the air, the regulations that have saved the Great Lakes — they are a burden and an onerous intrusion upon American business, and I think that what you’ve seen is Tom DeLay’s America in action."
Diane Sawyer (71 points)
NSA bombshell: A new report that the government is secretly tracking your phone calls, seeking information on every call made in the U.S. The war on terror vs. your privacy."
Jack Cafferty (70 points)
"There are laws on the books against what the administration is doing, and it’s about time somebody said it out loud. This federal district judge ruled today President Bush is breaking the law by spying on people in this country without a warrant....It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things, when he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It means he’s been lying to us about the program since it started, when he’s been telling us there’s nothing illegal about what he’s doing. A court has ruled it is illegal....I hope it means the arrogant inner circle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may finally have to start answering to the people who own that address — that would be us — about how they conduct our country’s affairs."
Sam Donaldson (48 points)
"[The leak] is a victory for the American people....Remember the great American saying, ‘Disobedience to tyranny is obedience to God.’ In this case, it was something that clearly, I think, most Americans would agree is not what we want to do, secret prisons....Exposing something like that does not hurt us. It helps us."
NBC’s Today (109 points)
Katie Couric: "In this movie, at different turns you’re funny, vulnerable, disarming, self-effacing, and someone said after watching it, quote, ‘If only he was like this before, maybe things would’ve turned out differently in 2000.’"
Al Gore: "Well, I benefit from low expectations...."
Couric: "What do you see happening in say 15 to 20 years or even 50 years if nothing changes?"
Gore: "...Sea-level increases of 20 feet or more worldwide. Of course, Florida and Louisiana and Texas are particularly vulnerable. The San Francisco Bay area, Manila. And we have seen the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees from an environmental crisis. [Footage of Hurricane Katrina] Imagine 100 million or 200 million."
Couric: "Even Manhattan would be in deep water, right?"
Gore: "Yes, in fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater....Unfortunately, Mother Nature is weighing in very powerfully and very loudly."
Jeffrey Kluger (62 points)
"No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth....Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us....Something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming....It’s undeniable that the White House’s environmental record — from the abandonment of Kyoto to the President’s broken campaign pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission standards — has been dismal."
Harry Smith (46 points)
"Since his still-controversial loss to George Bush in the 2000 election, [former Vice President Al] Gore has recast himself as a road warrior for the environment. Traveling from town to town, country to country with a message of warning, a message that’s now been made into a movie.... Out of the shadows of yesterday’s news, Al Gore has suddenly emerged as the comeback kid...." "I’m watching you in this film, you look so comfortable in your own skin. You look like Al Gore in full, as it were.... The box office receipts would indicate that it’s an action movie — you did better per screening than almost anything that’s come out this week."
Eleanor Clift (29 points)
"He’s [Gore is] campaigning to awaken the political leadership to the threat of global warming, but it’s a campaign that can easily turn into a campaign for himself if he sees an opening. And he’s following the Nixonian play book, the Nixonian in a very good way. Just as Richard Nixon was edged out of the presidency very narrowly in 1960 and then came back after eight years to win....There’s some regret, even among the media, that Al Gore was mocked and ridiculed in 2000, and he didn’t deserve it. And we’re ready for a serious politician."
CBS Evening News (79 points)
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi: "They’re used to living on fixed incomes, but now skyrocketing gas prices are forcing seniors to make difficult choices. Some are cutting back on medicine, others say they’re eating less. [To retiree Delbert Osborne] What do you think when you fill up your car with gasoline now?"
Delbert Osborne: "I think, ‘Have I got enough money to pay for all this and still get a loaf of bread?’"
Alfonsi: "Fortunately, 91-year-old Delbert Osborne doesn’t drive that much anymore. He relies on Meals on Wheels, a group that’s also in a squeeze. Volunteer drivers, most who are retirees on fixed incomes, are dropping out every day."
Volunteer: "Do they eat or do they help someone else? You know, that’s a hard decision for them to make."
Geraldo Rivera (75 points)
"Arlen Specter says Congress should consider taxing the windfall profits being reaped by the oil companies, which I think is a no-brainer. These guys aren’t entrepreneurs — they are pirates."
ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson (67 points)
Charles Gibson: "Today, ExxonMobil reported a profit number so big, it was staggering, even by oil company standards. ABC’s Betsy Stark takes a look at the numbers."
Reporter Betsy Stark: "The earnings reported today are astounding....Look at it this way: In 30 seconds, the ExxonMobil corporation makes about what an average American family earns in an entire year."
Charles Gibson (50 points)
"The estimates are that the six large U.S. [oil] companies will have a total of $135 billion in profits for the year 2006. Don’t consumers have a right to be angry?"
"The public looks at a total of $135 billion over the year, that’s larger than the gross domestic product of Israel, and says isn’t that an obscene amount?"
Terry Moran (85 points)
"You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You’re looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat’s not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today...And the question you can sense on everyone’s mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?...Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they’re even naming babies after him."
Joe Klein (59 points)
"Obama’s personal appeal is made manifest when he steps down from the podium and is swarmed by well-wishers of all ages and hues....Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow — a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy....There aren’t very many people — ebony, ivory or other — who have Obama’s distinctive portfolio of talents....Obama’s candor is reminiscent of John McCain....He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions — and answer all the impossible questions — plaguing American public life."
Katie Couric (50 points)
"He’s known as a liberal lion, and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has roared more than once during his more than 40 years in the Senate. Now Kennedy says America is on the wrong path, and in his new book America Back on Track, Kennedy details seven challenges facing this country....You talk about the things that need to be done, Senator, from ‘reclaiming our constitutional democracy, to protecting our national security, to guaranteeing health care for every American.’ Noble, noble goals for sure. Are they do-able, and is there a national will to achieve these things, in your view?"
Meredith Vieira (45 points)
"You know you are the equivalent of a rock star in politics....Many people, afterwards [after Obama’s 2004 Democratic convention speech], they weren’t sure how to pronounce your name but they were moved by you. People were crying. You tapped into something. You touched people. What did you tap into that, that was missing?...If your party says to you, ‘We need you,’ and, and there’s already a drumbeat out there, will you respond?"
Harry Belafonte (81 points)
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you."
Bill Maher (44 points)
"When they say ‘the terrorists want the Democrats to win,’ you say ‘are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorist’s wet dream.’...When they say that actual combat veterans like John Kerry are ‘denigrating the troops,’ you say ‘you’re completely full of sh*t.’...If I was a troop, the support I would want back home would mainly come in the form of people pressuring Washington to get me out of this pointless nightmare. [applause] That’s how I would feel supported....There’s your talking point. Vote Republican and you vote to enable George Bush to keep ruling as an emperor — a retarded child emperor [laughter], but an emperor."
Bill Maher (35 points)
"Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction — and that’s what global warming is — in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits for me the definition of treason."
Bryant Gumbel (72 points)
"Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like ’em and won’t watch ’em. In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine said, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ he must have been talking about the start of another Winter Olympics. Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try, too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks, who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."
Matt Lauer (64 points)
"Today, life on Earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason....Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid. Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives....The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home....It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies."
CBS’s 60 Minutes (55 points)
Katie Couric: "A passionate student of history, Condi Rice believes turmoil often precedes periods of peace and stability. And she rejects the notion that the U.S. is a bully, imposing its values on the world."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "What’s wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?"
Couric to Rice: "To quote my daughter, ‘Who made us the boss of them?’"
Katie Couric (79 points)
"Some of the values, depending on your perspective... may be deemed wholesome, but in other ways, I think, people will see this community as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance....Do you think the tenets of the community might result in de facto segregation as a result of some of the beliefs that are being espoused by the majority of the residents there?...You can understand how people would hear some of these things and be like, wow, this is really infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech and right to privacy and all sorts of basic tenets that this country was founded on. Right?"
Katie Couric (75 points)
"You signed a $13 million book deal, which I understand is bigger than Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, and Pope John Paul II, so how do you square your wealth with the tenets of Christianity?...[The Bible] said, this is Matthew 19, verses 23 and 24, ‘Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."’...It makes you wonder about your claim that wealth is a positive thing."
NBC’s Today (57 points)
Co-host Meredith Vieira: "Everybody’s calling you ‘the Genie,’ and they want you to grant some wishes. If you had a genie, what wish would you want granted?...Where do you think he [Osama bin Laden] is? Everybody’s wondering where the heck he is, where do you think he is?"
Former President Bill Clinton: "I think he’s probably in, I have no intelligence, okay? I think he’s probably-"
Vieira, interrupting: "You have lots of intelligence."
Clinton: "No, I mean government intelligence."
Vieira, laughing: "I know, I’m kidding."
Gene Shalit (45 points)
"Think global warming isn’t real? Ask Manny the Mammoth, Diego the Tiger or Sid the Sloth....The herd’s 88 happy minutes will melt away your out-of-theater cares while attesting that global warming is no snow job."
Keith Olbermann (90 points)
"A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back....The nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit....As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon."
Jack Cafferty (70 points)
"It didn’t exactly represent a profile in courage for the Vice President to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit-down with Brit Hume. I mean, that’s a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain’t it?...I mean, running over there to the Fox network to, I mean, that’s — talk about seeking a safe haven. He’s not going to get any high hard ones from anybody at the F-word network. I think we know that."
Inside Washington (47 points)
Substitute host Kathleen Matthews: "Evan, nothing has lit up the telephones on talk radio more than this Dubai ports deal. Why did it resonate so much with the American people?"
Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas: "Because it’s something that simple idiots can understand [other panelists snicker]. I mean, it was an idiotic issue, and it is a classic for talk radio. You can get it on a bumper sticker. But I’m with the elites on this one. It was really, it was ridiculous. We need Dubai as an ally. On balance, it would be better that the deal went through, but it was an easy one to demagogue on talk radio."
Andrea Mitchell (36 points)
"The kind of hateful speech that we have seen, on the floor of the United States Congress and in a lot of the blogosphere, is what seems to dominate. And I do think it goes back, in my own experience, to 1989 when the talk radio shows went crazy about the congressional pay raise which was supported by Common Cause and some other groups in Washington who felt there needed to be a higher-paid salary....The anti-Washington, anti-bureaucrat bias that was built into that debate was then taken up by cable talk hosts as well and that became the kind of really combative conversation that displaced reasoned discussions about controversial issues."
Dan Rather (102 points)
Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather: "We had a lot, a lot, of corroboration of what we broadcast about President Bush’s military record. It wasn’t just the documents. But it’s a very old technique used, that when those who don’t like what you’re reporting believe it can be hurtful, then they look for the weakest spot and attack it, which is fair enough. It’s a diversionary technique." CNN’s Larry King: "You’re saying that was a fair report, I mean that was — you believe that report to this day?" Rather: "Do I believe the truth of the story? Absolutely."
Katie Couric (70 points)
"I know that I’ve tried my best through my career to ask challenging questions to whomever I’m speaking, and whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat, I try to raise important issues depending on their particular position.... Oftentimes people put their, they see you from their own individual prisms. And if you’re not reflecting their point of view, or you’re asking an antagonistic question of someone they might agree with in terms of policy, they see you as the enemy, and I think that’s just a mistake....You have Fox, which espouses a particular point of view."
Dan Rather (56 points)
"[I am] biased — I have a very strong bias toward independent journalism....Some of what you describe as ‘baggage’ comes from people who have the following view: Their view is, ‘You report the news the way I want it reported or I’m going to make you pay a price and hang a sign around your neck saying you’re a bomb-toting Bolshevik.’"
Thomas Edsall (96 points)
Former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall: "I agree that the — whatever you want to call it, mainstream media — presents itself as unbiased when, in fact, there are built into it many biases and they are overwhelmingly to the left."
Host Hugh Hewitt: "Well, that’s very candid....Given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?"
Edsall: "It’s probably in the range of 15 to 25:1 Democrat....There is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be, to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an alien world."
Mark Halperin (91 points)
Radio host Hugh Hewitt: "And so everyone that you work with, or 95 percent of people you work with, are old liberals."
ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin: "I don’t know if it’s 95 percent, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper....It’s an endemic problem. And again, it’s the reason why for 40 years, conservatives have rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake."
Mark Halperin (82 points)
"If I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break....The mindset at ABC, where you and I used to be colleagues at, at the other big news organizations, it’s just too focused on being more favorable to Nancy Pelosi, say, than Newt Gingrich; being more down on the Republicans’ chances than perhaps is warranted; singling out — you’re seeing here a 60 Minutes piece about Nancy Pelosi. I don’t remember Newt Gingrich getting a piece that favorable in 1994."
Arthur Sulzberger
"It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry."
ABC’s The View
Co-host Rosie O’Donnell: "As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries."
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "But do you understand that, that the belief funding those attacks, okay, that is widespread. And if you take radical Islam and if you want to talk about what’s going on there, you have to-"
O’Donnell, interrupting: "Wait just one second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam [loud applause] in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state. We’re a democracy."
Joel Stein
"I don’t support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse....I’m not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea."
Lee Anderson, Associate Publisher, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Chuck Asay, editorial cartoonist, The Gazette in Colorado Springs
Brent H. Baker, MRC’s Vice President for Research and Publications; Editor of CyberAlert and Editor-at-Large of 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
Priscilla Buckley, Contributing Editor for National Review
Bill Cotterell, political editor at the Tallahassee Democrat
Blanquita Cullum, Radio America broadcaster
Bill Cunningham, radio talk show host, WLW in Cincinnati
Midge Decter, author
Bob Dutko, radio talk show host, WMUZ in Detroit
Jim Eason, San Francisco radio talk show host emeritus
Don Feder, former Boston Herald columnist; author, media consultant at Don Feder & Associates
John Fund, columnist for OpinionJournal.com
Ryan Frazier, commentary editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mike Gallagher, syndicated radio host, Fox News contributor
Greg Garrison, radio talk show host, WIBC in Indianapolis
David Gold, radio host, KSFO in San Francisco
Lucianne Goldberg, publisher of Lucianne.com Media, Inc.
Michael Graham, radio talk show host, 96.9 FM Talk, WTKK in Boston
Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis, Media Research Center; Senior Editor of the NewsBusters blog
Steven Greenhut, columnist, Orange County Register
Kirk Healy, Executive Producer, WDBO Radio in Orlando
Matthew Hill, VP at WPWT, Tri-Cities of Tenn/Va
Quin Hillyer, Senior Editor, The American Spectator
Fred Honsberger, radio talk show host, 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, talk show host, Newsradio 600 KOGO in San Diego
Jason Lewis, talk show host, KTLK in Minneapolis, the FM News Talk
Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online
Patrick McGuigan, Contributing Editor, MidCity Advocate and Tulsa Today
Vicki McKenna, radio talk show host, WIBA in Madison, WI
Colin McNickle, editorial page editor, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; Director of Editorial Pages for Tribune Review Publishing Co.
Joe McQuaid, Publisher, New Hampshire Union-Leader
Wes Minter, libertarian radio talk show host and business executive
Paul Mirengoff, co-author of PowerLine blog
Robert D. Novak, syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times; FNC commentator
Rich Noyes, Director of Research, Media Research Center; Senior Editor of the NewsBusters blog
Kate O’Beirne, Washington Editor of National Review
Marvin Olasky, journalism professor University of Texas at Austin; Editor-in-Chief of World magazine
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
Tom Sullivan, radio talk show host, KFBK in Sacramento
James Taranto, Editor of OpinionJournal.com
Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist; panelist on FNC’s Fox Newswatch
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, The American Spectator
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
The following was published in the "Media Monitor" column of The Jewish Press, December 20, 2006.
(Link to source no longer exsists)
Media Monitor
by Jason Moaz, senior editor
In Their Own Words
The Media Research Center, which does an excellent job tracking liberal bias among journalists, is out with its Best Notable Quotables of 2006, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from December 2005 through November 2006. The following are some of the Monitor’s favorites (the full, categorized list can be viewed at mediaresearch.org).
● "[Russia’s Vladimir Putin is] the only one of those leaders who goes in there [the G8 summit] with a commanding popularity among his own people, because he is perceived to be an effective dictator. What we have in this country is a dictator who’s ineffective."
– Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on "The McLaughlin Group," July 15.
● "Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]. Americans are puzzled over why so many people in the world hate us.... We’re trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn’t make so many people in the world want to kill us."
– CBS’s Andy Rooney on "60 Minutes," September 10.
● "You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You’re looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat’s not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today... And the question you can sense on everyone’s mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?… Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they’re even naming babies after him."
– Co-anchor Terry Moran profiling Obama on ABC’s "Nightline," November 6.
●Katie Couric: "A passionate student of history, Condi Rice believes turmoil often precedes periods of peace and stability. And she rejects the notion that the U.S. is a bully, imposing its values on the world." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "What’s wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?" Couric to Rice: "To quote my daughter, ‘Who made us the boss of them?’" – CBS’s "60 Minutes," September 24.
● Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather: "We had a lot, a lot, of corroboration of what we broadcast about President Bush’s military record. It wasn’t just the documents. But it’s a very old technique used, that when those who don’t like what you’re reporting believe it can be hurtful, then they look for the weakest spot and attack it, which is fair enough. It’s a diversionary technique." CNN’s Larry King: "You’re saying that was a fair report, I mean that was – you believe that report to this day?" Rather: "Do I believe the truth of the story? Absolutely." – Discussing Rather’s 2004 "60 Minutes" story that relied on forged documents to challenge Bush’s National Guard record, CNN’s "Larry King Live," July 12.
MRC’s Quote of the Year
"It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry." – From New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.’s May 21 graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shown on C-SPAN May 27.
"HOIST BY THEIR OWN PETARD," an editorial in the December 30, 2006 New York Post.
(Link to source no longer exsists)
HOIST ON THEIR OWN PETARD
For 19 years, the Media Research Center has been compiling its list of notable quotables. The quotes, from prominent members of the mainstream news media, provide a clear window into the leftist mindset that pervades most of America's large news organizations. At the end of the year, the center (helped by a panel of judges) chooses the best examples. As usual, this year's crop reveals the media's perennial contempt for all things conservative. Actually, the winners more or less explain themselves. (The full set of winners and finalists can be found at the center's Web site, mrc.org.) Happy New Year!
Madness of King George Award for Bush-Bashing
"We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country. . . . Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn't, it sure as hell ought to."
- Jack Cafferty on CNN's "The Situation Room"
Slam Uncle Sam Award
"Our government has turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."
- New York Times legal reporter Linda Greenhouse in a speech at Harvard
Media Hero Award
"You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has been the Democrats' not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today . . . And the question you can sense on everyone's mind, as they listen so intently to him: Is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country? . . . Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for president, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they're even naming babies after him."
- ABC's Terry Moran, on "Nightline"
Streisand Award for Celebrity Vapidity
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you."
- Harry Belafonte, to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, at a televised rally
Politics of Meaninglessness Award
"Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em . . . Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."
- Bryant Gumbel, on HBO's "Real Sports"
Good Morning Morons Award
"Some of the values, depending on your perspective . . . may be deemed wholesome, but in other ways, I think, people will see this community as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance. . . Do you think the tenets of the community might result in de facto segregation as a result of some of the beliefs that are being espoused by the majority of the residents there? . . . You can understand how people would hear some of these things and be like, wow, this is really infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech and right to privacy and all sorts of basic tenets that this country was founded on. Right?"
- Katie Couric, on NBC's "Today," questioning Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and developer Paul Marinelli, who are building a community based on Catholic values in Florida
Quote of the Year
"It wasn't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren't. But you are. And for that, I'm sorry."
- New York Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger in a commencement speech at SUNY-New Paltz
"Liberal Lowlights of 2006," a column by Mike Rosen in the December 29, 2006 Rocky Mountain News.
(Link to source no longer exsists)
Rosen: Liberal lowlights of 2006
It's time for the 19th annual Media Research Center's awards for the most biased, manipulative or downright goofy quotes from liberals in the "mainstream" media. I'm honored to serve, once again, on MRC's distinguished panel of conservatively biased judges. Here are some of the lowlights from among the winners and runners-up of Best Notable Quotables of 2006:
• QUOTE OF THE YEAR
"It wasn't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren't. But you are. And for that, I'm sorry."
From "New York Times" Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s May 21 graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shown on C-SPAN May 27
This would be liberal guilt run amuck if it weren't make-believe guilt, in this case. Sulzberger, personally, has nothing to apologize for. For years, he's done his darndest to turn the Times into a shameless propaganda platform for the liberal agenda.
• POLITICS OF MEANINGLESSNESS AWARD FOR THE SILLIEST ANALYSIS
Katie Couric: "A passionate student of history, Condi Rice believes turmoil often precedes periods of peace and stability. And she rejects the notion that the U.S. is a bully, imposing its values on the world."
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: "What's wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?"
Couric: "To quote my daughter, 'Who made us the boss of them?' "
CBS' "60 Minutes," Sept. 24
• GOOD MORNING MORONS AWARD
Meredith Vieira: "Everybody's calling you 'the Genie.' And they want you to grant some wishes. If you had a genie, what wish would you want granted? . . . Where do you think (Osama bin Laden) is? Everybody's wondering where the heck he is, where do you think he is?"
Former President Bill Clinton: "I think he's probably in, I have no intelligence, OK? I think he's probably . . ."
Vieira, interrupting: "You have plenty of intelligence."
Clinton: "No, I mean government intelligence."
Vieira: "I know, I'm kidding."
NBC's "Today," Sept. 21
• TIN FOIL HAT AWARD FOR CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIES
ABC's Steve Osunsami, speaking about Hurricane Katrina: "In many black neighborhoods, they actually believe that white residents sent the barge that destroyed the levee and flooded communities."
Unidentified black man in HBO's film When the Levees Broke by Spike Lee: "They had a bomb. They bombed that sucker."
Osunsami: "To this day, the conspiracy theories are so widely held, director Spike Lee put them on film."
Spike Lee: "As an African-American in this country, I don't put anything past the government."
ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson," Aug. 29
• BRING BACK THE IRON CURTAIN AWARD
Diane Sawyer: "It is a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school. . . . Ask them about their country, and they can't say enough."
North Korean girl: "We are the happiest children in the world."
Sawyer to class: "What do you know about America?"
Sawyer voice-over: "We show them an American magazine. They tell us they know nothing about American movies, American movie stars . . . and then, it becomes clear that they have seen some movies from a strange place."
Sawyer to class: "You know The Sound of Music?"
Voices: "Yes."
Sawyer, singing with class: "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a drop of golden sun . . ."
Charles Gibson: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea."
ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson," Oct. 19
• MADNESS OF KING GEORGE AWARD FOR BUSH BASHING
"We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from. . . . We have never before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow. You, sir, have now befouled that spring. You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order. You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom. . . . These things you have done, Mr. Bush - they would constitute the beginning of the end of America."
Keith Olbermann in a "Special Comment" on the setting up of military trials for terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, MSNBC's "Countdown," Oct. 18.
Mr. Olbermann, you, sir, are hyperventilating.
• If your stomach is strong enough to handle the complete awards list, you can get it online at www.mediaresearch.org.
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. He can be reached by e-mail at mikerosen@850koa.com.
"A year of intense media bias," a Chattanooga Free Press editorial originally published on January 2, 2007 (page 14).
Survey after survey has shown the liberalism of U.S. journalists — particularly those in the top ranks of their profession. Most Hollywood celebrities share those left-wing views. Yet it is still shocking to review examples of bias from the past year in the worlds of journalism and entertainment.
The Media Research Center, a watchdog group, has made that eye-opening task easier by presenting its 19 th annual "awards" for the most outrageous examples of bias. The Free Press editorial page was among 58 judges nationwide of the dubious "awards."
Here are some "winners" and runners-up:
"It wasn’t supposed to be this way.You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry." — New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at a commencement address in New York.
"Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam." — ABC’s "The View" co-hostess Rosie O’Donnell.
"Vote Democratic, Earn More." — U.S. News & World Report headline.
"We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fearmongering: a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from." — Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s "Countdown."
"Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends." — Associated Press writer Vanessa Arrington.
ABC’s Diane Sawyer on school in totalitarian Communist North Korea: "It is a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school," she said, then reported a North Korean girl saying, "We are the happiest children in the world."
"Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the ‘Iron Curtain.’" — ABC’s Claire Shipman. (Actually, President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other Western advocates of freedom deserve the credit for toppling Soviet Communism.)
"We’re trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn’t make so many people in the world want to kill us." — CBS’s Andy Rooney.
"Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow — a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy. ... He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions — and answer all the impossible questions — plaguing American public life." — Time magazine’s Joe Klein on inexperienced Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you." — Singer Harry Belafonte on Marxist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who later used a U.N. forum in New York to call President Bush "the devil."
"Think global warming isn’t real? Ask Manny the Mammoth, Diego the Tiger or Sid the Sloth. The herd’s 88 happy minutes will melt away your out-of-theater cares while attesting that global warming is no snow job." — NBC film critic Gene Shalit’s review of the cartoon "Ice Age: The Meltdown." (The real Ice Age melted long before man was creating "greenhouse gases.")
And a rare admission: "I agree that the — whatever you want to call it, mainstream media — presents itself as unbiased when, in fact, there are built into it many biases and they are overwhelmingly to the left." — Former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall. He said there may be 15 to 25 media Democrats to one Republican.
A good New Year’s resolution, at least for journalists who claim to be objective, might be to live up to that claim in 2007.
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:
December 7, 2006 column by Marvin Olasky in Denver's Rocky Mountain News: "Journalistic Hysteria, Year 19."
December 20, 2006 editorial in the "Media Monitor" column of The Jewish Press: "In Their Own Words." Text as posted by MRC.
December 20 column by L. Brent Bozell III in Brent Bozell’s News Column: "The Worst Bleats Of The Year."
December 30, 2006 editorial in the New York Post: "HOIST BY THEIR OWN PETARD." Text as posted by MRC.
December 29 column by Mike Rosen in Denver's Rocky Mountain News: “Liberals Lowlights of 2006.” Text as posted by MRC.
January 2, 2007 editorial in the Chattanooga Free Press: "A year of intense media bias." Text as posted by MRC.