Best of NQ 2011

The Twenty-Fourth 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:

  • FNC's Hannity. MRC President Brent Bozell discussed the award-winning quotes with guest host Mark Steyn on the Fox News Channel on Thursday, December 22. Video
    • .

Online:

Print:

Category 14 of 17

America Is the Real Evil Empire Award



Winner

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Paul Krugman (91 points)

“What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons....The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”
— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a September 11 posting to his NYTimes.com blog


Runners-up

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Chris Hedges (70 points)

“The dead in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were used to sanctify the state’s lust for war....Because few cared to examine our activities in the Muslim world, the attacks became certified as incomprehensible by the state and its lap dogs, the press....Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.”
— Ex-New York Times reporter Chris Hedges writing on Truthdig.com, September 10.


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Benedict Carey (42 points)

“Some Americans celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden loudly, with chanting and frat-party revelry in the streets. Others were appalled — not by the killing, but by the celebrations.... ‘The worst kind of jingoistic hubris,’ a University of Virginia student wrote in the college newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. In blogs and online forums, some people asked: Doesn’t taking revenge and glorying in it make us look just like the terrorists?”
— New York Times reporter Benedict Carey in a May 6 news story, “Celebrating a Death: Ugly, Maybe, but Only Human.”


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Petula Dvorak (36 points)

“At the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, thousands of people — most of them college-aged and in requisite flip-floppy collegiate gear — whipped up a raucous celebration right outside the White House gates that was one part Mardi Gras and two parts Bon Jovi concert....It felt a little crazy, a bit much. Almost vulgar....When I saw that folks were celebrating in the streets at the news of bin Laden’s death, my first reaction was a cringe. Remember how we all felt watching videos of those al-Qaeda guys dancing on Sept. 11?”
— Washington Post “Metro” section columnist Petula Dvorak, May 3.