Best of NQ 2010

The Twenty-Third Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting



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Media Coverage

In addition to discussions on numerous talk radio shows where hosts cited quotes or interviewed MRC representatives, the Best of NQ Awards issue has been highlighted by these outlets:

Television:

Print/Online:

Hazing Arizona Award for Denigrating Immigration Enforcement



Winner

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Linda Greenhouse (76 points)

“I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon. Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state....Everyone remembers the wartime Danish king who drove through Copenhagen wearing a Star of David in support of his Jewish subjects [during the Nazi occupation]. It’s an apocryphal story, actually, but an inspiring one. Let the good people of Arizona — and anyone passing through — walk the streets of Tucson and Phoenix wearing buttons that say: ‘I Could Be Illegal.’”
— Ex-New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse in an April 27 op-ed.


Runners-up

Kelly Cobiella (43 points)

Anchor Katie Couric: “Hundreds of thousands of them [illegal immigrants] now live in Arizona. But as Kelly Cobiella reports, many no longer feel welcome.”

Reporter Kelly Cobiella: “On a dusty block in Phoenix, 15 years of the Quintana family’s possessions are for sale. [to Manuela Quintana] When did you decide to leave? [translating] ‘When the governor signed the immigration law,’ Manuela Quintana says, ‘I knew we had to move.’...The family packed up before dawn today and headed north to Colorado. Manuela says she’s lost hope in this state. She thinks she’ll find it again in another.”
CBS Evening News, May 3. [MP3 Audio]


Bill Weir (41 points)

Anchor Diane Sawyer: “Tonight, undocumented immigrants — many working in this country for decades — are fleeing the state, or hiding in fear....”

Correspondent Bill Weir: “There is a fear-driven exodus going on in Arizona tonight. More vacant apartments, more empty shops, more kids disappearing from school.... Francisco has been in Phoenix without papers for 14 years, but says now he’s afraid to walk the streets. So he’ll take his family and leave as soon as he can.”
— ABC’s World News, July 27. [MP3 Audio]


Bill Weir (37 points)

“With this new law, will you ramp it up? Will you, will you grab people on street corners? I mean, what will you do with this new law?”
— ABC’s Bill Weir to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Good Morning America, April 25. [MP3 Audio]