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| Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories | |
 Anchor Katie Couric: "Gas is
the lowest it’s been all year, a nationwide average of $2.23 a gallon. It
hasn’t been that low since last Christmas. But is this an election-year
present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?"Reporter Anthony Mason: "...Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don’t think so." Man in a car: "And I think it’s basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let’s vote Republican." — CBS Evening News, October 16. As Mason spoke, the camera zoomed in on the driver’s bumper sticker, "GOP: Grand Oil Party." [72 Points]
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ABC’s Steve Osunsami: "In many black neighborhoods, they actually
believe that white residents sent the barge that destroyed the levee and
flooded their communities." Unidentified black man, in HBO’s film by Spike Lee: "They had a bomb. They bombed that sucker." Osunsami: "To this day, the conspiracy theories are so widely held, director Spike Lee put them on film...." Spike Lee, director: "As an African-American in this country, I don’t put anything past the government." — ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson, August 29. [69] |
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"The last time we got a tape from Osama bin Laden was right before the 2004
presidential election. Now here we are, four days away from hearings starting
in Washington into the wiretapping of America’s telephones without bothering
to get a court order or a warrant, and up pops another tape from Osama bin
Laden. Coincidence? Who knows." — CNN’s Jack Cafferty during the 4pm EST hour of The Situation Room, January 19. [59] |
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"Late in the same week that an NSA whistleblower suggests the illicit tapping
of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less
focused than the President claims, suddenly we have FBI sources linking
stories about Middle Easterners trying to buy vast quantities of untraceable,
disposable American cell phones from K-Marts and Target stores. Which, if
true, makes the wiretapping look like a good idea and its leakers look like
they’ve already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping. Boy, you can’t
buy timing like that. I mean it. I’m asking seriously, you can’t buy timing
like that, right?...We’ll never know for sure if that is or is not just an
amazing coincidence that it falls right after the whole NSA whistleblower
issue comes up but, as we had pointed out here before, the administration sure
gets a lot of these breaks." — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann to Time reporter Mike Allen on the January 13 Countdown. [39] |
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| Blue State Brigade Award for Campaign Reporting | |
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"Vote Democratic, Earn More." — Headline in the May 1 U.S. News & World Report’s table of contents, pointing to a story about a campaign to increase the minimum wage. [59 points]
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"There’s nothing this administration won’t do under the guise of battling
terrorism....The only way the American people can stop Bush’s imperial
expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or
the other body of Congress from Republican control." — Eleanor Clift in her weekly "Capitol Letter" column posted on the Newsweek Web site, April 7. [56] |
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"This word, ‘values,’ ‘values voters,’ which is just driving me nuts. This
idea that somehow certain people have a monopoly on values, and that, you
know, if you are not with them on these issues, that you somehow [mock tone of
horror] ‘don’t share our values,’ and you’re not just wrong, but you’re
somehow morally inferior if you’re on the other side. And I hope that this
election is going to mark the demise of the ‘values voters,’ this idea that
somehow people who feel so strongly about, you know, these so-called
traditional values, that they don’t determine the election the way they were
seen to have the last time around, and the indications are that they do have
less clout this time out." — Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, October 16. [54] |
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Hotline’s Chuck Todd: "Our line here is about 25 or 30 House
seats [for the Democrats]. If it gets over 25 or 30 House seats, you’re going
to see six Senate seats...." MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: "Well, that’ll be fantastic news. It’ll be huge news, I should say, because if that happens, then we have a government run by the Democrats, and an executive branch run by the Republicans, President George W. Bush, having to actually negotiate every aspect of national policy, including the war in Iraq." — Exchange at about 7:36pm EST during MSNBC’s election night coverage, November 7. [53] |
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| Madness of King George Award for Bush Bashing | |
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Anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Let’s get
some words of wisdom from Jack Cafferty. He’s in New York right now. Jack?" CNN’s Jack Cafferty: "I don’t know about wisdom, but you’ll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country....Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn’t, it sure as hell ought to...." Blitzer: "Words of wisdom, as I said, Jack, outraged, as you clearly are. Thanks very much." — CNN’s The Situation Room, May 11. [77 points]
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"We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and
melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty than
is the enemy it claims to protect us from....We have never before codified the
poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all
essential liberties flow. You, sir, have now befouled that spring. You, sir,
have now given us chaos and called it order. You, sir, have now imposed
subjugation and called it freedom....These things you have done, Mr. Bush —
they would constitute the beginning of the end of America." — Keith Olbermann in a "Special Comment" on the setting up of military trials for terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, MSNBC’s Countdown, October 18. [71] |
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"[Russia’s Vladimir Putin is] the only one of those leaders who goes in there
[the G8 summit] with a commanding popularity among his own people, because he
is perceived to be an effective dictator. What we have in this country is a
dictator who’s ineffective." — Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, July 15. [59] |
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"The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on
the false premise that it had something to do with 9/11 is ‘lying by
implication.’ The impolite phrase is ‘impeachable offense.’...When those who
dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the
President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving
our freedom, but that if we use any of that freedom, we are somehow
un-American; when we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have
‘forgotten the lessons of 9/11;’ look into this empty space behind me and the
bipartisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me
this: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr.
President. You have. May this country forgive you." — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on September 11, ending his Countdown with a commentary delivered from the site of the World Trade Center. [34] |
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| Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award | |
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"When outsiders think of Cuba, it’s
often the lack of political freedoms and economic power that comes to mind.
Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out
the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely
lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends....For all its flaws, life in
Castro’s Cuba has its comforts, and unknown alternatives are not automatically
more attractive....Many foreigners consider it propaganda when Castro’s
government enumerates its accomplishments, but many Cubans take pride in their
free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent
Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish,
superficial, and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying." — Associated Press writer Vanessa Arrington in an August 4 dispatch, "Some Cubans enjoy comforts of communism." [83 points]
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Diane Sawyer: "It is a world away from the unruly individualism of any
American school....Ask them about their country, and they can’t say enough." North Korean girl, in English: "We are the happiest children in the world." Sawyer to class: "What do you know about America?" Sawyer voiceover: "We show them an American magazine. They tell us, they know nothing about American movies, American movie stars....and then, it becomes clear that they have seen some movies from a strange place...." Sawyer to class: "You know The Sound of Music?" Voices: "Yes." Sawyer, singing with the class: "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a drop of golden sun...." Charles Gibson: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea." — Sawyer reporting from North Korea for ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson, October 19. [73] |
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"Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the ‘Iron
Curtain’ that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold
War between the United States and the Soviet Union." — ABC’s Claire Shipman beginning a report summarizing Gorbachev’s criticisms of current U.S. foreign policy, posted on ABCNews.com July 12. [53] |
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"Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980s, China’s
socialized medical system, with ‘barefoot doctors’ at its core, worked public
health wonders....Since then, in one of the great policy reversals of modern
times, China has dissolved its rural communes, privatized vast swaths of the
economy and shifted public health resources away from rural areas and toward
the cities." — New York Times reporter Howard French, January 14. According to a new biography of Mao, the communist dictator who ruled China from 1949 to 1976 "was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader." [52] |
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