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The Best Notable Quotables of 1990:
The Linda
Ellerbee Awards
For Distinguished Reporting
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Award for the Silliest Analysis |
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First
Place
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"The reporters (at Capital News) work for a shining institution, basically the last uncorrupted institution you can find. Hospitals are corrupt. Judges are corrupt. Everybody in the world is corrupt. But our newspapers are essentially a monument to idealism."
-- Former Washington Post editor Christian Williams, Executive Producer of ABC's short-lived series
Capital News, April 9 Newark Star Ledger. |
Runners-up: |
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"In many ways, in outlook and behavior the U.S. has begun to act like a primitive warrior culture. We seem to believe that leadership is expressed, in no small part, by a willingness to cause the deaths of others....Our collective fantasies center on mayhem, cruelty, and violent death. Loving images of the human body -- especially of bodies seeking pleasure or expressing love -- inspire us with the urge to censor."
-- Time essayist Barbara Ehrenreich, October 15.
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"It used to be that the United States was number one, dominant....So right now, we are fast losing our position as number one, Connie....Yes, we're no longer dominant, we're no longer the number one nation, Connie...so we are no longer that number one, dominant nation. That's the big change here now."
-- CBS economics reporter Ray Brady on the Evening News, July 8.
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Nothing To Do With the Media,
But We Couldn't Resist
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First
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"I wish I'd done this before I'd run for President. It would've given me insight into the anxiety any independent businessman or farmer must have....Now I've had to meet a payroll every week. I've got to pay the bank every month....I've got to pay the state of Connecticut taxes....It gives you a whole new perspective on what other people worry about."
-- Former Senator George McGovern on owning a Connecticut hotel, his first-ever business venture, in the March 1
Washington Post. |
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Quote of the Year
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First
Place |
"Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany's eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some subsidies, or the whole East German system, which covered everyone in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall."
-- CBS reporter Bob Simon on the March 16 Evening News. |
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Runners-up: |
"The 'balanced' report, in some cases, may no longer be the most effective, or even the most informative. Indeed, it can be debilitating. Can we afford to wait for our audience to come to its own conclusions? I think not."
-- Teya Ryan, Senior Producer of Turner Broadcasting's CNN-produced Network Earth series, in the Summer 1990
Gannett Center Journal.
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"Modern man has reached the point where his demands for space are ravaging the planet, and wiping out other life forms in the process. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich is back with more of his series 'Assignment Earth,' and this morning he begins with a report on how man is destroying the entire ecological system with something that appears to be completely harmless."
-- Deborah Norville introducing Paul Ehrlich's report on cows, January 9
Today.
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"Congress changed the Soviet Constitution to permit limited private ownership of small factories, although laws remain against exploitation of everyone else."
-- NBC Moscow reporter Bob Abernethy on Nightly News, March 13.
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