First Runners-Up in MRC’s ‘Notable Quotables’ Contest



Editor's Note: What follows are the first runners-up quotes in the Media Research Center's “Best Notable Quotables of 2001: The Fourteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting,” a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2001 — actually December 2000 through November 2001.



Swiss Press Corps Award for Remaining Neutral in War Coverage

“We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist….To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack.”

— Steven Jukes, global head of news for Reuters News Service, in an internal memo cited by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz in a Sept. 24 article. [67 points]

Media Hero Award

“He's only the most important political leader alive in the world today, historically speaking….If you look over the course of our lifetimes, who was the most, well, you go back to Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt….If I look back over my lifetime, who is the world leader who changed things the most, and I don't actually think it is a close call.”

— Newsweek's Jonathan Alter on Mikhail Gorbachev, April 27 Imus in the Morning on MSNBC. [47]

Pushing Bush to the Left Award

“George W. Bush was so indifferent to the world that in the years before he became President he made only two overseas trips, both for business, neither for curiosity. No wonder he wants to break the missile treaty, alienate NATO, ignore global warming and reinstall Russia and China as enemies: Those foreign countries scarcely exist in his imagination. Why go to Australia when you have the Outback Steakhouse right here at home?”

— Movie reviewer Roger Ebert in a July 24 Chicago Sun-Times op-ed. [48]

Poisoning the Planet Award for Portraying Bush as Destroyer of the Earth

“Around the world, the anger runs as deep as the flood waters being blamed on the global warming the Kyoto treaty was supposed to fight. President Bush says he's putting American economic interests first in rejecting Kyoto, and in Britain, where they're having their wettest winter ever, they sadly agree….Others point to severe weather conditions around the planet — flooding for the second consecutive year in Mozambique, drought and famine in the Sudan — and they say the U.S. is substantially to blame. With only about four percent of the world's population, the United States famously produces about twenty-five percent of the world's harmful greenhouse gas pollution.”

— Mark Phillips on the March 29 CBS Evening News. [36]

Picking the Lockbox Award for Denouncing Bush's Tax Cut

“Democrats, collaborating on a smaller tax cut proposal, have vowed to fight the Bush plan, targeting it as a budget buster that caters to the rich….On the Republican side, Mr. Bush faces a different problem. Already they're talking up adding more tax cuts to his plan. And then, there's the lobbyists who wonder why Mr. Bush gave nothing to corporate America. Critics charge the bill could eventually top $3 trillion….Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice can't forget the last time Congress went on a tax cut spree in 1981. America is still paying the bill.”

— CBS White House correspondent John Roberts in a February 5 CBS Evening News story which cited a critic but not a supporter of Reagan's tax cuts. [36 points]

Carve Clinton Into Mount Rushmore Award

“Now, the return of the Prodigal Son. The, you know, the man who left office disgraced, burdened down by at least three major scandals that I can think of, got a hero's welcome today, and I couldn't be happier….After impeachment, after Pardongate, after the fake stories about their pilfering of the White House, Bill Clinton's appearance today in Harlem must have been the feel-good event of the season for the former President, and he soaked up the sunshine and love.”

— Geraldo Rivera discussing Bill Clinton's “heroic re-emergence” at the opening of his new Harlem offices, on CNBC's Rivera Live, July 30. [40]

Good Morning Morons Award

Charles Gibson: “Have you ever — it just occurred to me — have you ever, in the first hundred days, consulted or called former President Clinton?”

President Bush: “No, I haven't.”

Gibson: “To talk to him?”

President Bush: “No, I have not.”

Gibson: “Don't feel the need?”

— Exchange during taped interview aired on the April 25 Good Morning America. [47]

Damn Those Conservatives Award

“And we can't let Justice Thomas pass on this. There's no opinion of his in here, he doesn't ask questions in court. Does he do anything besides vote and rubber stamp Scalia?”

— Bryant Gumbel to CBS legal analyst Jonathan Turley on Bush vs. Gore, Dec. 13, 2000 The Early Show. [38]



Selected Not Elected Award for Claiming Bush Is an Illegitimate President

“Should five of our nation's nine Supreme Court Justices be imprisoned?That's the opinion of famed former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. He says the Justices who supported George W. Bush in the election dispute are almost treasonous white-collar criminals. He'll explain why.”

“It is a scathing indictment of the high court of the United States, at least these five conservative Justices. And I really, really, I urge law students especially, but anyone who's interested in the machinations of the Court, to check this out: Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America.”

— Beginning and end of Geraldo Rivera's interview with Bugliosi, CNBC's Rivera Live, June 25. [50]

Department of Injustice Award for Denigrating John Ashcroft

“In John Ashcroft's America, he said in 1999, 'We have no king but Jesus.' But President-elect George W. Bush has nominated Ashcroft to the position of Attorney General of the United States. In the venerable halls of the Justice Department, where he will work, it is the Constitution that is king….Ashcroft will need to assure the nation that he can enforce the Constitution and the laws of Congress when they run contrary to the laws of Jesus, as they surely will. A larger question, spoken or unspoken, will be: Can a deeply religious person be Attorney General?”

— Opening of Jan. 16 USA Today op-ed piece by former USA Today Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro. [51]

Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis

Bill O'Reilly: “I want to ask you flat out, do you think President Clinton's an honest man?”

Dan Rather: “Yes, I think he's an honest man.”

O'Reilly: “Do you, really?”

Rather: “I do.”

O'Reilly: “Even though he lied to Jim Lehrer's face about the Lewinsky case?”

Rather: “Who among us has not lied about something?”

O'Reilly: “Well, I didn't lie to anybody's face on national television. I don't think you have, have you?”

Rather: “I don't think I ever have. I hope I never have. But, look, it's one thing – ”

O'Reilly: “How can you say he's an honest guy then?”

Rather: “Well, because I think he is. I think at core he's an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”

— Exchange on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, May 15. [64]

Euro-Envy Award for Advocating More Government Spending

“The U.S. is actually the least generous of the industrialized nations. In Sweden, a new mother gets 18 months of maternity and parental leave, and she gets 80 percent of her salary for the first year. Mother or father can take the parental leave any time until a child is eight. England gives 18 weeks maternity leave. For the first six weeks, a mother gets 90 percent of her salary from the government and $86 a week thereafter. German women get two months of fully paid leave after giving birth. The government and the company kick in, and either parent has the option of three full years in parental leave with some of their salary paid and their jobs protected.”

— Peter Jennings, April 19 World News Tonight, following a story on a study showing more aggression in children who attend day care. [73]

Nobody Here But Us Apolitical Observers Award for Denying Liberal Bias

Diane Sawyer: “Watching you and watching you cover the news over the past year, you are so much about passion for politics, and it doesn't matter to you, I mean — I really mean this.”

George Stephanopoulos: “Thank you.”

Sawyer: “You've been completely non-partisan in covering the news.”

— Exchange on ABC's Good Morning America, July 24. [54]

Blame America First Award

“We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, not cowardly.”

— ABC's Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect, Sept. 17. [52]

Glimpses of Patriotism Award

“The United States had a spirit before it had a name — one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers — we are again today. We once were a nation under God — we are again today. Our enemies attacked one nation, they will encounter another, for they underestimated us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and hope, we've summoned what's best and noblest in us. We are again Americans.”

— Tony Snow at the conclusion of the September 16 Fox News Sunday. [54]



To view the award winners and the top runners-up, as well as RealPlayer video clips for many of the broadcast quotes, go here.

(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)

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