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The Best Notable Quotables of 1996:
The Ninth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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If the Bias Fits, We Won't Admit Award
(for Bias Denial)
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First
Place
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"When you're talking about pure journalists, I mean reporters, when you're talking about reporters, not columnists, I don't think there's any liberal bias. I don't think there really ever has been."
-- Los Angeles Times Senior Washington correspondent Jack Nelson on CNBC's
Politics '96, March 9. [71 points] |
Runners-up: |
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"People are just stunned. It's such a wacky charge, and a weird way to go about it....I don't know what Bernie was driving at. It just sounds bizarre."
-- CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer on CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg's charge of liberal bias made in a
Wall Street Journal op-ed, quoted by Howard Kurtz in the February 15
Washington Post. [67]
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Larry King: "Over all these fifteen years, how do you react to the constant, especially, far right-wing criticism that the news on CBS is mainstream biased?"
Dan Rather: "...Well, my answer to that is basically a good Texas phrase, which is
bullfeathers....I think the fact that if someone survives for four or five years at or near the top in network television, you can just about bet they are pretty good at keeping independence in their reporting. What happens is a lot of people don't want independence. They want the news reported the way they want it for their own special political agendas or ideological reasons."
-- CNN's Larry King Live, March 11. [49]
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What's the Frequency Award
(for Ratherisms)
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First
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"I'm all news, all the time. Full power, tall
tower. I want to break in when news breaks out. That's my agenda. Now
respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all
the, quote, liberal bias in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this
respectfully but candidly to you, I don't know what you're talking
about. Now if you want to talk about an issue, what do I believe as a
citizen of the United States of America, I can tell you what I believe
in. I believe in a strong defense, clean water, and tight money."
-- Dan Rather to talk radio host Mike Rosen of KOA in Denver,
November 28, 1995. [75 points] |
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Runners-up: |
"In New Hampshire, closest Senate race in the country, this race
between Dick Swett and Bob Smith is hot and tight as a too small
bathing suit on a too long car ride back from the beach."
-- Dan Rather during CBS News election night coverage,
November 5. [73] |
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Quote of the Year
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First
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"In her Wednesday Commentary page column, Linda Bowles stated that President Clinton and his former campaign adviser Dick Morris both were `guilty of callous unfaithfulness to their wives and children.' Neither man has admitted to being or been proven to have been unfaithful. The Tribune regrets the error."
-- Chicago Tribune correction, September 5. [88 points]
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Runners-up: |
"The Rapture, and I quote, `is the immediate departure from this Earth of over four million people in less than a fifth of a second,' unquote. This happily-volatilized mass of the saved were born again in Jesus Christ. Everybody left behind will basically go to Hell, but not before experiencing Armageddon, which is a really bad end of the world. If you find yourself in this situation, there isn't much you can do except one, starve yourself, and two, get your head cut off. This loving Christmas message coming as it did amid the jingle of the mall Santa and the twinkling manger at the corner of Canal and the Ramparts made it clear that the Rapture is indeed necessary. The evaporation of four million people who believe this crap would leave the world an instantly better place."
-- New Orleans-based National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu, December 19, 1995
All Things Considered. [79]
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"He [Jack Kemp] is a rare combination -- a nice conservative. These days conservatives are supposed to be mean. They're supposed to be haters."
-- CNN analyst Bill Schneider, August 9 Inside Politics.
[71]
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"He [Ted Kaczynski] wasn't a hypocrite. He lived as he wrote. His manifesto, and there are a lot of things in it that I would agree with and a lot of other people would, that industrialization and pollution all are terrible things, but he carried it to an extreme, and obviously murder is something that is far beyond any political philosophy, but he had a bike. He didn't have any plumbing, he didn't have any electricity."
-- Time Washington reporter Elaine Shannon talking about the Unabomber, April 7 C-SPAN Sunday Journal. [67]
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