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



The Real Reagan Legacy Award

First Place

Bryant Gumbel



Co-host Bryant Gumbel: "Well, later on this morning we’re going to be talking on this President’s Day about this presidential survey. Who would you think finished first?...Of all the Presidents when they did first to worst. Oh c’mon, you would know."
Clayson: "Ronald Reagan."
Gumbel, dropping his pen: "First?!?!"
Clayson: "Who was it?"
Gumbel: "No! Reagan wasn’t even in the top ten. Abraham Lincoln. Maybe you’ve heard of him."
-- Exchange on CBS’s The Early Show about C-SPAN poll of historians which ranked Reagan 11th, February 21. [95 points]
Runners-up:


Bruce Morton

 


"His presidency ended more than a decade ago, but politicians, Democrat and Republican, still talk about Ronald Reagan. Al Gore has an ad noting that in Congress he opposed the Reagan budget cuts. He says that because Bill Bradley was one of 36 Democratic Senators who voted for the cuts. Gore doesn’t point out that Bradley also voted against the popular Reagan tax cuts and that it was the tax cuts that piled up those enormous deficits, a snowballing national debt."
-- Bruce Morton on CNN’s Late Edition, February 6. [75]


Margaret Carlson

 

 


"We went through that whole period, get government off our backs. Remember the Competitive Council? Let the corporations voluntarily regulate themselves and come up with safety standards, so that the Carter administration could come up with new standards for tires, the Reagan administration came in and cut them out, abolished them and cut the budget of that very agency, that the Republicans are now criticizing, by 50 percent. And it’s never come back. It’s never come back."
-- Time’s Margaret Carlson holding Reagan accountable for bad Firestone tires, Sept. 9 CNN Capital Gang. [47]

 

Flirting with Disaster Award (for Proximity to Conservatives)

First Place

Charles Gibson

"The platform is, again, very strongly pro-life and rejects abortion rights, and the platform specifically comes out against gay unions, and against legal protections based on sexual preferences. So is this really an open, compassionate, tolerant party?"
-- Charles Gibson to Lynne Cheney, August 2 Good Morning America. [54 points]
Runners-up:

Dan Rather
Dan Rather: "One issue that is sure to come up in the fall campaign that has already surfaced is Bush cozying up to the self-described religious right, including the Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell."
Richard Schlesinger: "....Pollsters and pundits and politicians like to describe the primary season as a search for the soul of a party. Now the question is: Did George Bush sell his soul to the wrong group?"
-- March 13 CBS Evening News. [53]

Maria Shriver

"You said you ended up with a more conservative platform than you originally drafted. How disappointed are you?"
-- NBC’s Maria Shriver to platform committee chairman Tommy Thompson, during MSNBC Republican convention coverage, July 31. [32]


Andrea Mitchell "How does that broaden the appeal of the party? You’re talking here tonight about being more inclusive, yet 59 percent of the people here describe themselves as conservative."
-- Andrea Mitchell asking New York Governor George Pataki about Dick Cheney, July 31 MSNBC prime time coverage of the Republican convention. [29]
Tom Brokaw "Well, you put Tom Ridge out there for example, the Governor of Pennsylvania, big and important state, a guy with a great record, pro-choice, immediately the Catholic Church and Jesse Helms said no way."
-- Tom Brokaw to George W. Bush on potential VP picks, July 24 NBC Nightly News. [26]

 

The Galloping Ghost of Gingrich Award (for Chiding Cheney)

First Place

Matt Lauer "And when you talk about votes like that, that he made while in Congress, anti-affirmative action, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-equal rights, how does George Bush portray him as a compassionate conservative?"
-- Today co-host Matt Lauer to Tim Russert, July 26. [41]


Runners-up:


Margaret Carlson

 


"This week we learned that citizen Dick Cheney didn’t vote in 14 of the last 16 state elections in Texas. His excuse? He was, quote, ‘focused on global concerns.’ Was part of his concern Halliburton’s policy abroad of segregating bathrooms for Americans only? Halliburton’s excuse was they were providing for, quote, ‘cultural needs.’ Didn’t they say something like that in Mississippi in defense of whites-only toilets?"
-- Time columnist Margaret Carlson’s "Outrage of the Week" on CNN’s Capital Gang, September 9. [40]
 

"I have to ask you, as an African-American, if you have any difficulty supporting a man who voted against releasing Nelson Mandela from prison....
Is that kind of vote acceptable under any circumstance?"
-- Jane Clayson to Republican Congressman J.C. Watts on CBS’s The Early Show, July 31. [34]

Bryant Gumbel
"Cheney’s politics are of the hard-right variety. He’s opposed to abortion and gun control and favors both capital punishment and school prayer."
-- Bryant Gumbel on CBS’s The Early Show, July 25. [31]

 


Gloria Borger

"But Bush is portraying himself as a compassionate conservative. If he’s running with somebody who voted for all the Reagan budget cuts, for example, wouldn’t that prove a bit of a problem?"
-- Gloria Borger to Karl Rove, July 23 Face the Nation. [30]

Dan Rather

 

 

 


"[T]he official announcement and first photo-op today of Republican George Bush and his running mate Richard Cheney. Democrats were quick to portray the ticket as quote ‘two Texas oilmen’ because Cheney was chief of a big Dallas-based oil supply conglomerate. They also blast Cheney’s voting record in Congress as again quote, ‘outside the American mainstream’ because of Cheney’s votes against the Equal Rights for Women Amendment, against a woman’s right to choose abortion -- against abortion as Cheney prefers to put it -- and Cheney’s votes against gun control. Republicans see it all differently, most of them hailing Bush’s choice and Cheney’s experience."
-- Dan Rather on the July 25 CBS Evening News introducing that night’s story on the Bush-Cheney debut. [30]

 

 


 

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