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The Best Notable Quotables of 1995:
The Eighth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Afraid of the Competition Award
(for Impugning Talk Radio)
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First
Place
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"Cut off the funding for NPR, or gradually reduce its funding to the point where it becomes a mere shadow of its usually robust, sensible self, and the American people may find themselves left with nothing much more than Rush and dozens of his mini-clones for information about the world. For Limbaugh's `dittoheads,' this may be the most splendid of tomorrows, but for other more thoughtful listeners, it may be the bleakest of forecasts."
-- Marvin Kalb, former CBS and NBC reporter and current Director of the Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, reviewing three books on talk radio, May 21
Washington Post. |
Runners-up: |
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"Some people are very concerned about talk shows, radio talk shows in general, of course. Most of them around the country have a decidedly conservative bent. The rap that some people give them is that they reflect the views of a very vocal minority, the extremists in this country, and don't really reflect the true nature of political debate in the United States. And, as a matter of fact, they tend to be quite divisive and sort of have a bad, a negative impact on the country."
-- Katie Couric to Oliver North, March 13 Today.
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"The issue is whether what's going out over the airwaves here and elsewhere is fanning the flames, is making the situation worse, that talk radio is not democracy in action, but democracy run amok."
-- NBC reporter Bob Faw concluding a January 3 Nightly News story.
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Purveyors of Hate and Division Award
(for Post-Oklahoma Talk Radio Bashing)
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First
Place |
"In a nation that has entertained and appalled itself for years with hot talk on the radio and the campaign trail, the inflamed rhetoric of the '90s is suddenly an unindicted co-conspirator in the blast."
-- Time Senior Writer Richard Lacayo, May 8 issue. |
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Runners-up: |
"The bombing in Oklahoma City has focused renewed attention on the rhetoric that's been coming from the right and those who cater to angry white men. While no one's suggesting right-wing radio jocks approve of violence, the extent to which their approach fosters violence is being questioned by many observers, including the President....Right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Bob Grant, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, and others take to the air every day with basically the same format: detail a problem, blame the government or a group, and invite invective from like-minded people. Never do most of the radio hosts encourage outright violence, but the extent to which their attitudes may embolden and encourage some extremists has clearly become an issue."
-- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, April 25. |
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Americans with Mathematical Disabilities
Award (for Calling Hikes a Cut)
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First
Place |
"House Republicans denied any impropriety when they approved federal budget reductions of $17 billion and outlined $190 billion more, slashing programs that largely benefit women, children, and the poor, to pay for that `pouting sex kitten' mistress of their dreams -- tax cuts."
-- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Gerald Parshall, March 27 story.
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Runners-up:
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"When NBC Nightly News continues: in Washington, if they cut food stamps, who doesn't eat?"
-- Tom Brokaw, March 22. |
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"The Democrats, the big mistake they've made is they ought to have advertisements about deterioration of quality, they ought to show an elderly person in a hospital bed, ringing for a nurse who doesn't show up. That's where the cutbacks are going to be."
-- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, September 16 McLaughlin
Group.
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"March madness has begun on Capitol Hill, and almost as predictable as a B horror film, the slashing has begun. House Republicans have made a small down payment on their plan to make massive budget cuts."
-- CNN anchor Judy Woodruff on Inside Politics, March 16.
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