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 16 of 17

The Audacity of Dopes Award for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year



Winner

Katie Couric (64 points)

“The bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface this year. Of course, a lot of noise was made about the Islamic Center, mosque, down near the World Trade Center, but I think there wasn’t enough sort of careful analysis and evaluation of where this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and how this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong, and so disappointing....Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show....I know that sounds crazy. But The Cosby Show did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of things they don’t understand.”
— CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric on her CBSNews.com @KatieCouric Web show, December 22, 2010. [MP3 Audio]


Runners-up

Ray Suarez (51 points)

“One of Cuba’s greatest prides is its health care system. Cuba’s government promotes the country’s free and universal medical care from the moment a baby is born as the cornerstone of its communist state....How can one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere provide free care and achieve such impressive health outcomes?...There’s no doctor shortage in Cuba, which means the health care system here can push doctors and nurses down to the smallest rural communities, providing a kind of care that’s both personal and persistent....In an era when countries are struggling to do more for less with limited health care dollars, Cuba’s successes in prevention are likely to be closely watched.”
— Correspondent Ray Suarez on PBS’s NewsHour, December 21, 2010. [MP3 Audio]


stillshot

Jill Abramson (47 points)

“Ms. Abramson said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of the Times to be like ‘ascending to Valhalla.’ ‘In my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion,’ she said. ‘If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth.’”
— From a June 2 NYTimes.com story by managing editor Jeremy Peters, quoting newly-named New York Times editor Jill Abramson. In the paper’s June 3 print edition, the second half of the quote was removed from Peters’ front-page story.


Don Lemon (31 points)

“Your colleague in New York, Gary Ackerman, said the Republicans invited the President, quote, ‘to negotiate at a strip poker table, and he showed up half naked.’ And then liberal columnist Paul Krugman calls the deal an ‘abject surrender.’ Would the President be better off running as a conservative in 2012?”
— Fill-in anchor Don Lemon to Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva, CNN’s In the Arena, August 1. [MP3 Audio]


Bob Schieffer (31 points)

“You also said at one point that you might want to back that [border] fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke, too?”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on the October 30 Face the Nation. [MP3 Audio]