Best of NQ 2000 Contents
  Aiding & Abetting in an Election Theft Award
  Kiss Me, Too, Al Award
  Kosher Kiss-Up Award
  I Am Woman Award
  Carve Clinton Into Mount Rushmore Award
  Media Hero Award
  The Real Reagan Legacy Award
  Flirting with Disaster Award
  The Galloping Ghost of Gingrich Award
  W is for Woeful Award
  If He Didn't Sink, Send Him Back to the Clink Award
  Little Havana Banana Republic Award
  Semper Fidel Award
  Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award
  Damn Those Conservatives Award
  Good Morning Morons Award
  Politics of Meaninglessness Award
  Too Late for the Ballot
  Quote of the Year
  2000 Award Judges
  Press Coverage

Publications & Analysis
  30-Day Archive
  CyberAlerts
  Media Reality Check
  Notable Quotables
Media Bias Videos
Bozell Columns
  News
  Entertainment
MRC Divisions
  News
  Free Market Project
  CNSNews.com
MRC Information
  About the MRC
  MRC in the News
  Support the MRC
  MRC Bookstore
  What Others Say
  Home
  Site Search
  Links
  Media Addresses
Contact the MRC
Planned Giving


RealPlayer

Free RealPlayer plug-in required to watch video clips.


Get Acrobat

Free Adobe Acrobat Reader software required to view PDF files.


 

top

The Best Notable Quotables of 2000:

The Thirteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting



W is for Woeful Award (for Bashing Bush)

First Place

Dean Reynolds



"He went along with having an openly gay Congressman address the convention last night, yet Bush opposes hate crimes legislation, gay marriage and gay adoption. He is the candidate who talks of making health insurance available to all who want it, but has fought to limit federal insurance for children. Bush is the candidate who has proposed a huge tax cut as a way to help the working class. But more than sixty percent of the relief would go to the richest ten percent of Americans. And while he speaks of the need to protect the environment, Bush supports mostly voluntary efforts to do it."
-- ABC’s Dean Reynolds, Aug. 2 World News Tonight. [44]
Runners-up:


Jack White


 


"When he picked a running mate, he picked a running mate who was straight out of the red meat, right-wing part of the party. When he was asked about who he wants, everybody’s talking about how he’s not making a litmus test about abortion for Supreme Court nominees, but he says his two favorite Supreme Court nominees are Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hardly people that most blacks or Hispanics think are ideal candidates for the court. There’s still some kind of a disconnect between this wonderful public face, comfortable with Hispanics or whatever, and the decisions this guy has actually made."

-- Time’s Jack White on Inside Washington, Aug. 5. [40]

"A new poll shows that nearly 60 percent of Texans believe the state has, at some point, executed the innocent. No matter. These voters apparently view state-sanctioned murder as a fair price to pay for maintaining the status quo. A real leader would try to take his people to a better place. Will Bush? I have reasonable doubt."
-- Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, July 3. [39]
Dan Rather
"On one bit of campaign meanness and nastiness in particular, George Bush now says he’s sorry his gutter language and personal attack was picked up by a microphone at a campaign stop yesterday, but he refuses to apologize for the substance of his comment. Bush’s remark was about Adam Clymer, a New York Times reporter whose coverage he doesn’t like."
-- Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, Sept. 5. [31]

 

If He Didn’t Sink, Send Him Back to the Clink Award (for Portraying a Cuban Paradise Awaiting Elian)

First Place

Dan Rather

"While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I recognize this might be controversial, but there’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we really want this child back here.’"
-- Dan Rather, live on CBS the morning of the Elian raid, April 22. [65 points]
Runners-up:
"Elian might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his upbringing in Miami. Because Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, works as a cashier in a tourist resort, the family already belonged to the nation’s well-off stratum, who has access to American dollars. The boy’s relatives in Miami can offer further support: Cuba now even has ATMs that dispense dollars from foreign banks. The education and health-care systems, both built since the revolution, are among the best in the Americas, despite chronic shortages of supplies...
"The boy will nestle again in a more peaceable society that treasures its children. But his life will oscillate to the contrary rhythms of this central Cuban paradox. As a shining symbol of the communist state, he will have access to the corrupting fruits of the new economy. He’ll enjoy the best Cuba has to offer, the things only dollars can buy."

-- Brook Larmer and John Leland, Apr. 17 Newsweek. [46]

Peter Jennings

"Good evening. In Miami today, immigration officials met with the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez again and once again the government has failed to get the kind of cooperation from the relatives that might allow the case of this young boy to end in a civilized manner that is best for him."
-- Peter Jennings opening ABC’s World News Tonight, March 28. [45]

Cynthia McFadden

 

 

 



"Part of what the children talked about was their fear of the United States and how they felt they didn’t want to come to the United States because it was a place where they kidnap children, a direct reference, of course, to Elian Gonzalez. The children also said that the United States was just a place where there was money and money wasn’t what was most important. I should mention, Peter, that, you know, as you talk about the global community, Cuba is a place, because of the small number of computers here -- in the classrooms we visited yesterday there was certainly no computers and almost no paper that we could see -- this is a place where the children’s role models and their idols are not the baseball players or Madonna or pop stars. Their role models are engineers and teachers and librarians."
-- ABC’s Cynthia McFadden referring to her visit to elementary-school-age kids, live from Havana during ABC 2000 coverage, December 31, 1999. [43]

 

Little Havana Banana Republic Award

First Place

Katie Couric


"Some suggested over the weekend that it’s wrong to expect Elian Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami. All eyes on south Florida and its image this morning. Another writer this weekend called it ‘an out of control banana republic within America.’ What effect is the Elian Gonzalez story having on perception of Miami? We will talk with a well-known columnist for the Miami Herald about that."
-- NBC’s Katie Couric opening the April 3 Today. [60 pts.]


Runners-up:


"The ‘banana republic’ label sticking to Miami in the final throes of the Elian Gonzalez crisis is a source of snide humor for most Americans. But many younger Cuban Americans are getting tired of the hard-line anti-Castro operatives who have helped manufacture that stereotype – especially the privileged, imperious elite who set themselves up as a pueblo sufrido, a suffering people, as martyred as black slaves and Holocaust Jews, but ever ready to jump on expensive speedboats to reclaim huge family estates the moment the old communist dictator stops breathing."
-- Time Miami reporter Tim Padgett, April 17 issue. [59]

Bryant Gumbel

"Cuban-Americans, Ms. Falk, have been quick to point fingers at Castro for exploiting the little boy. Are their actions any less reprehensible?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to CBS News consultant Pam Falk, April 14 The Early Show. [51]

 


"Elian and his family will spend the next three weeks in a seaside Havana house....ostensibly to let Elian get caught up in school so he can enter the second grade in September. But critics in the U.S. warn that the quarantine is meant to deprogram Elian. (If so, he’ll be used to it: the private school he attended in Miami, owned by a right-wing Cuban-exile leader, was just as dogmatic)."
-- Time Miami correspondent Tim Padgett, July 10. [48]

 

 


 

View the 8-page printed version of this newsletter in
Adobe Acrobat PDF


[Free RealPlayer plug-in required to watch video clips]


[Free Adobe Acrobat Reader software required to view PDF version.]

 

 


Home | News Division | Bozell Columns | CyberAlerts 
Media Reality Check | Notable Quotables | Contact the MRC | Subscribe

Founded in 1987, the MRC is a 501(c) (3) non-profit research and education foundation
 that does not support or oppose any political party or candidate for office.

Privacy Statement

Media Research Center
325 S. Patrick Street
Alexandria, VA 22314