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The Best Notable Quotables of 2001:
The Fourteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Swiss Press Corps Award for Remaining Neutral in War Coverage First Place
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First
Place
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"The Pentagon as
a legitimate target? I actually don’t have an opinion on that,
and it’s important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here
in my capacity right now....I can say the Pentagon got hit, I
can say this is what their position is, this is what our
position is, but for me to take a position this was right or
wrong, I mean, that’s perhaps for me in my private life,
perhaps it’s for me dealing with my loved ones, perhaps it’s
for my minister at church. But as a journalist I feel strongly
that’s something that I should not be taking a position on. I’m
supposed to figure out what is and what is not, not what ought
to be."
– ABC News President David Westin at a Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism event on Oct. 23 shown four days
later on C-SPAN. [83 points]
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Runners-up: |
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"We all know that
one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and
that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word
terrorist....To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on
the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."
– Steven Jukes, global head of news for Reuters News
Service, in an internal memo cited by the Washington Post’s
Howard Kurtz in a Sept. 24 article. [67]
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"To Western
ears, calls for blood-soaked martyrdom are an alien concept, but
consider the way things are for millions of Muslims of all ages:
If you were born into grinding poverty where upward mobility isn’t
even a dream, and have little to sustain you in life beyond
religion, you too might find yourself screaming for the new
Messiah with a $5 million price on his head....Everywhere you go
in the world you will hear some version of the words ‘we are a
freedom-loving people,’ but like beauty, freedom is a
perception that lies in the eye of the beholder, and we ignore
other nations’ versions at our peril. The most dangerous
perception of all may be that one’s own side has an exclusive
claim to either the truth or patriotism."
– CBS News foreign correspondent Allen Pizzey on CBS’s Sunday
Morning, October 14. [39]
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Reporter Dan Harris: "According to
al-Jazeera, U.S. attacks on a village near Kandahar killed 93
civilians on Tuesday, including 18 members of one family. There has
been no independent confirmation. Across the border in the Pakistani
town of Quetta, five people arrived today at a hospital with injuries
they say they suffered in another U.S. attack....This boy is one of
the injured. His uncle says he had heard American radio broadcasts
promising civilians wouldn’t be targeted, but he says his village
was nowhere near any Taliban positions. Abdul Jabar is the doctor in
charge."
Harris to Jabar: "How do you feel when you see these kids?"
Jabar: "I feel very sad."
Harris: "Angry?"
Jabar: "Yes. My sympathies are with the Afghanis."
Harris: "Angry at the United States?"
Jabar: "Yes."
Harris: "Everyone we spoke with at this tiny hospital said the
ongoing raids have made the population here and across the border
angry at the U.S. and supportive of the Taliban."
– ABC’s World News Tonight, October 23. [28]
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Media Hero Award
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First
Place |
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"What an
exhilarating moment it must have been for her – the first
First Lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for
all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come
into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent,
and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as First
Lady, to ‘hide under a bushel.’ Still she was voted one of
America’s most admired women. Just wait. You ain’t seen
nothin’ yet."
– End of "On My Mind" ABCNews.com commentary by
ABC anchor Carole Simpson, January 7. [82 points]
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Runners-up: |
"He’s only the
most important political leader alive in the world today,
historically speaking....If you look over the course of our
lifetimes, who was the most, well, you go back to Lincoln and
Franklin Roosevelt....If I look back over my lifetime, who is
the world leader who changed things the most, and I don’t
actually think it is a close call."
– Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter on Mikhail Gorbachev,
April 27 Imus in the Morning on MSNBC. [47] |
"Five months into the Great
Electricity Crisis of 2001, the aura of impending disaster is
receding, at least for now, from Sacramento and the rest of the Golden
State. To be sure, [California Governor Gray] Davis still keeps the
lights low and the air conditioning tepid in his capital offices, and
when I saw him there it was like glimpsing Churchill in Whitehall
during the blitz....In a way, the energy crisis is a blessing for a
man such as this: a dramatic event that imperiled everyone in the
nation’s largest state and that called for a detail freak with an
iron butt."
– Howard Fineman’s July 25 "Living Politics" column,
posted on Newsweek’s section of MSNBC’s Web site. [45]
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"Today is the day
the Senate may pass that patients’ bill of rights, which would
guarantee your right to sue your HMO. When that happens, one big
winner out of Washington will be one of the bill’s key
Democratic backers, North Carolina’s newcomer John Edwards. He
is said to have the combined political skills – are you ready
for this? – of Clinton and Kennedy, Kennedy and Clinton
together, and also to have a very good shot at the White
House."
– Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, June 29. [24] |
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Pushing Bush to the Left
Award
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First
Place |
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"Arsenic in the
water. Starting up the Cold War. Make as much carbon dioxide as
you like. Laugh about it. Bush has set himself up as a huge
target. And the arsenic is going to be the equivalent of what
your boss [Newt Gingrich] did with cutting school lunches."
– Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, addressing Tony
Blankley, on the McLaughlin Group, March 24. [52 points]
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Runners-up:
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"George W. Bush
was so indifferent to the world that in the years before he
became President he made only two overseas trips, both for
business, neither for curiosity. No wonder he wants to break the
missile treaty, alienate NATO, ignore global warming and
reinstall Russia and China as enemies: Those foreign countries
scarcely exist in his imagination. Why go to Australia when you
have the Outback Steakhouse right here at home?"
– Movie reviewer Roger Ebert in a July 24 Chicago
Sun-Times op-ed. [48]
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"Last week the
Bush administration went beyond condiments, proposing to ax a
Clinton administration regulation that forces the meat industry
to perform salmonella tests on hamburger served in school
cafeterias. Given the heightened interest in the health of
cattle right now, the move wasn’t exactly well timed....
"What happened to the compassion that was supposed to go
with Bush’s conservatism? The campaign prepared us for some of
this – candidate Bush made plain his intention to drill in the
Arctic wildlife refuge, not a bad political calculus given
America’s preference for SUVs over caribou. But no one thought
his team would choose slaughterhouses over schoolchildren, even
if only for a day. What connects these decisions is a preference
for folks he knows: his oil-field buddies (mirrors of himself),
corporate executives and captains of industry, from the
Halliburton honcho to the Terminix franchisee."
– Margaret Carlson’s "Public Eye" column in the
April 16 Time magazine. [34]
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"The Bush White
House packaged in its first week an image of the President as a
uniter. But Mr. Bush’s message has often been at odds with the
mission: The Ashcroft nomination, new restrictions on abortion
counseling, plans for school vouchers, an in-your-face attitude
that has Democrats reluctant to let down their guard."
– Reporter John Roberts on the CBS Evening News,
January 26. [33]
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"George W. Bush’s
rhetoric is very inclusive. He means to be inclusive, and he’s
used very soft rhetoric in trying to reach out to minorities.
But the fact is he’s proposed no federal programs for
minorities. He hasn’t talked about using the federal
government to broaden the safety net."
– ABC News reporter Linda Douglass during the roundtable on
This Week, December 23, 2000. [33]
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