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The Best Notable Quotables of 1996:
The Ninth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Craig Livingstone Award
(for Clinton Scandal Denial)
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First
Place
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"If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor he will bring this to a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated."
-- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on independent counsel Ken Starr's investigation, February 10
McLaughlin Group. [76 points] |
Runners-up: |
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"Have you any doubt that Kenneth Starr and his deputies are pursuing an agenda that is purely political?" "Bobby McDaniel, you said that your client is being used as a political pawn. Have you any legal recourse but to sit there and watch this unfold?" "Given that you think this is all just a Republican witch hunt, do you expect the pressure to ease somewhat after the election?"
-- Some of Bryant Gumbel's questions to former Clinton business partner and convicted felon Susan McDougal and her attorney, September 17
Today. [69]
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"In a year when you talk about corporations who give $25,000 chunks of money, why are people particularly outraged when people with last names like Cabrera and people from India and Korea and Indonesia and China all of a sudden get -- there just seems to be a lot of foreigner bashing as a subtext in some of the criticism."
-- NBC News reporter Gwen Ifill on PBS's Washington Week in
Review, October 25. Cabrera is now serving a 19-year sentence for smuggling 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. [61]
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"It's not impossible that some peripheral venality was involved (if anyone asked Livingstone for, say, travel factotum Billy Dale's FBI file, I'm sure he'd prove useful). But a massive conspiracy to gather dirt on the opposition? Oh, please....Gradually, even the most rabid partisans on the committee seemed to understand they were confronted with a case of serious numbskullery rather than clever skullduggery....But if Clinton does survive this pounding, it may mean the revulsion against the -gate' phenomenon -- 20 years of ever-diminishing scandals -- is now more intense than the disgust caused by any individual charge. If so, it would be the President's most memorable public service."
-- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein on the FBI files story, July 8. [34]
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Freddy Krueger Award
(for Campaign Coverage Nastiness)
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First
Place |
"Some of your staff members, not by name, have been saying `Yes, the President thinks Bob Dole is a nice person and has been a pretty good leader in some ways, but, say they, he's been captured by extremists in the Republican Party, the radical part of the Republican Party, including Newt Gingrich.' Is that what you think?"
-- Dan Rather interviewing President Clinton, August 18 60
Minutes. [86 points] |
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Runners-up: |
"The politics of Campaign '96 are getting very ugly, very early. Today Bob Dole accused the White House of using the FBI to wage war against its political enemies, and if that sounds like another political scandal, that's the point."
-- NBC anchor Brian Williams just as the FBI files story broke, June 8
Nightly News. [66] |
"I know that was a major goal of the Dole campaign [in the debate], to make sure people saw this compassionate side of Bob Dole. Do you think that he is in some ways paying the price for a Republican Congress that enacted, or tried to enact measures, in the views of many were simply too harsh or too draconian?"
-- Katie Couric to Elizabeth Dole, October 8 Today. [58]
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Chris Dodd Talking Points Award
(for Republican Convention Bashing)
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First
Place |
"Do you think this is a party that is dominated by men and this convention is dominated by men as well...Do you think before tonight they thought very much what happens in America with rape?"
-- Tom Brokaw to rape victim Jan Licence after her victims-rights speech, August 13 convention coverage.[80 points]
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Runners-up:
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"It was grand TV, well-scripted, well-staged, craftily designed for a broadcast image of tolerance and diversity that's starkly at odds with reality."
-- ABC's Jim Wooten on Colin Powell's speech at the Republican convention, August 13
World News Tonight. [74] |
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"TV viewers saw a well-orchestrated image of a moderated Republican Party, portraying itself as pro-woman, pro-minorities, and pro-tolerance. This is in sharp contrast to the delegates on the floor, sixty percent of whom self-identified as conservative Christians."
-- NBC Radio News/Westwood One reporter Bonnie Erbe hosting To the Contrary on PBS, August 16. [61]
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