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 15 of 17

Refusing to Acknowledge the Obvious Award for Denying Liberal Media Bias



Winner

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Chris Matthews (80 points)

“Hardball is absolutely non-partisan.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in an interview with local Washington, D.C. host Carol Joynt, as quoted by The Politico’s Patrick Gavin in a December 9, 2010 article.


Runners-up

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Jill Abramson (50 points)

“You know, I think that the people who see the Times as like a liberal rag are wrong and that they sometimes don’t understand the separation between our opinion side, which produces our editorials and our op-eds, and the news report....You know, the news reporters go into their stories with an open mind. And something I stress to our reporters at the Times is even when you think you know the story, go in ready to be surprised or illuminated by what somebody tells you.”
— New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, October 19. [MP3 Audio]


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Brooke Gladstone (44 points)

“It is true that journalists tend to be more ‘liberal’ than the average American. But hyper-awareness of that fact has caused some of our most respected mainstream media outlets to bend over backwards to compensate — offering far more conservative voices than liberal ones....”
— NPR’s On the Media host Brooke Gladstone in an interview with CNN.com’s “In the Arena” blog posted May 31.


Nina Totenberg (38 points)

NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “There is a reason that we are the only news organization, other than Fox, with a growing audience. It is because of our product which is straight-shooting, factual, and spends an enormous amount of money gathering news from all over the country and the world. Judge us by our product. The people in the newsroom were probably more mortified than Charles or anybody in the Tea Party, or any, any anybody else. I mean, we were just horrified, and not by the political incorrectness of what he [fired NPR executive Ron Schiller] said, but by the fact that he even thought this way.”

Moderator Gordon Peterson: “Well, this plays right into the belief that you’re a bunch of lefties.”

Totenberg: “I know it does, but it’s not true.”

— Exchange on Inside Washington, March 11. [MP3 Audio]


Piers Morgan / Christiane Amanpour (28 points)

Host Piers Morgan: “What I’ve always liked about your style is it’s — I wouldn’t say confrontational, but you’ve never shied away from being opinionated. And people have always got this quaint idea about CNN, that it doesn’t have opinions. What it doesn’t have is partisanship, which is a very different thing from having an opinion....”

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour: “I am not an American. I don’t vote. I don’t have an ideological bias. I actually have a lot of both — I believe in a lot of liberal policies and a lot of conservative policies.”

— Exchange on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, June 22. [MP3 Audio]