Runners-up:

"Karl Rove is a liability in the war on terror....In his ‘story guidance’ to Matthew Cooper of Time, Rove did more damage to your safety than the most thumb-sucking liberal or guard at Abu Ghraib. He destroyed an intelligence asset like Valerie Plame merely to deflect criticism of a politician. We have all the damned politicians, of every stripe, that we need. The best of them isn’t worth half a Valerie Plame."
— Countdown host Keith Olbermann in a July 11 posting to his "Bloggerman" page on MSNBC’s Web site. [37]
 

Captain Dan the Forgery Man Award

Dan Rather: "My principal problem was that I stuck by the [Memogate] story, I stuck by our people for too long. I’m guilty of that. I believed in the story, and the facts of the story were correct. One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question. To this day no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not....You know, I didn’t give up on my people, our people. I didn’t and I won’t." [Applause] Marvin Kalb: "Dan, thank you. You said, I believe you just said, that you think the story is accurate." Rather: "The story is accurate." — From The Kalb Report, an interview series produced by the George Washington University and Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University, and shown live on C-SPAN September 26. [80]

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Runners-up:

"As was the practice in all he did, Dan was meticulously careful to be fair and balanced and accurate. When did we stop believing that this is indeed how we all perform our jobs, or try to? When did we allow those with questionable agendas to take the lead and convince people of something quite the opposite? It’s shameful. But I digress." — MSNBC President and former ABC and CNN news executive Rick Kaplan praising ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather on September 19 as the latter received a lifetime achievement award from the National Television Academy, a ceremony televised on C-SPAN on October 1. [58]

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"A panel was appointed by CBS News to look into this ....They concluded that whatever happened, whatever you thought about it, it was not motivated by political bias, and they said that, although they had four months and millions of dollars, they could not demonstrate that the documents were not authentic, that they were forgeries. They said they couldn’t make that conclusion....Whatever one thinks of what we did or didn’t do with the story in question here, nobody broke the law, nobody lied. Depending on your point of view, it was a mistake, and who hasn’t made a mistake somewhere along the line?" — Outgoing CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather discussing the investigation into his forged memo story, on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, March 3. [35]

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"Baghdad Bob" Was Correct Award
Co-host Mike Jerrick: "What do you think’s going to happen Sunday?" FNC reporter Steve Harrigan, just back from Iraq: "I think there’s going to be a bloodbath on Sunday....All over the place, especially in Baghdad and a few other cities." — FNC’s Fox & Friends, January 28, two days before Iraq’s largely peaceful elections. [71 points]	| |

Runners-up:

"I’m Bob Schieffer. It just keeps getting worse in Iraq. The death toll is rising. Tension is growing between Shiites and Sunnis. Is the country sliding toward civil war?" — Schieffer beginning the May 19 CBS Evening News. [60]

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Chris Matthews: "What does it smell like over there [in Baghdad]? Do you sense fireworks?" NBC’s Campbell Brown: "You do, Chris....On the street, you get the sense that something big is about to happen, something big and fairly ugly." — Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball January 28, just before Iraq’s first free elections. [50]

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"In other parts of the Sunni Muslim heartland tonight, it looks as if the election process has been rejected. In many places we’re told the polling stations didn’t even open. This is a huge problem for Iraq as a whole. Without Sunni participation, somehow, the future here is still pretty bleak." — ABC’s Peter Jennings on the January 30 World News Tonight, just hours after voting ended in Iraq. [42]

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"According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the insurgency could last another 12 years....I think most Americans say, ‘Oh my goodness!’And they gasp because that seems like such an extended period of time for these very powerful, very tenacious insurgents to have control of the situation....It must be very frustrating at times to see things unraveling so." — NBC’s Katie Couric to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Today, June 28. [37]

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Crazy Chris Award for Chris Matthews’ Left-Wing Lunacy

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan: "We’re not going to cure terrorism and spread peace and good will in the Middle East by killing innocent people or — I’m not even saying our bullets and bombs are killing them. The occupation — they don’t have food, they don’t have clean water, they don’t have electricity. They don’t have medicine, they don’t have doctors. We need to get our military presence out of there, and that’s what’s gonna start building good will....I see Iraq as the base for spreading imperialism...." Host Chris Matthews: "Are you considering running for Congress, Cindy?" Sheehan: "No, not this time...." Matthews: "Okay. Well, I have to tell you, you sound more informed than most U.S. Congresspeople, so maybe you should run." — Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 15. [93 points]

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Runners-up:

Actress Jane Fonda: "From an historical point of view, they were defending their country. If we had been invaded and an invading force came into this country and divided us in half at the Mississippi River...we would understand why people were fighting....We should never have been there [in Vietnam]." Chris Matthews: "There were a lot of people, Jane, who....can’t imagine slipping out of their American skin, their American soul and becoming so objective, as you just were a minute ago....How do you step out of being an American to make such an objective judgment?" — Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball on April 15. Fonda was promoting her new book, My Life So Far. [91]

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Chris Matthews: "Do you think President Bush used this [emotional hug at the State of the Union between an Iraqi voter and Janet Norwood, the mother of a Marine killed in Iraq] to push his numbers on Social Security reform, just to get his general appeal up a bit, a couple of points?" MSNBC political analyst Ron Reagan: "Well, I don’t want to speculate on what was in President Bush’s mind." Matthews: "How about his handlers? Do you think the PR guys...around the White House did this to promote the President’s agenda?" MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: "Please, come on." Reagan: "Well, of course they did. Oh, sure they did." Scarborough: "Oh, come on!...I mean, that’s just the height of cynicism." Matthews: "No, I’m just asking you, I’m not taking sides here, but you know who makes these decisions, the PR people around the President....They make the decision about who sits in the box and where they’re seated....The only question is whether that Iraqi woman was prompted to go up and hug Janet Norwood by some staffer." — Exchange during MSNBC’s live coverage following Bush’s State of the Union address, February 2. [59]

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