Opinion Forum

Best Notable Quotables

December 28th, 2008

The conservative Media Research Center has just released “The Best Notable Quotables of 2008: The 21st Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting.” Given the political orientation of the Media Research Center, you can rightly expect that their report will highlight liberal bias in the media. But then, where else would you find a report like this? MoveOn.org?

The winners were picked by 44 “distinguished media observers,” most of them decidedly conservative. But again, who’s going to be doing this sort of thing? A panel selected by the Columbia Journalism Review? Don’t hold your breath.

It didn’t take a media critic to see that the mainstream media were eyeball deep in the tank for Obama during the general election. However, with a few notable exceptions, liberals just couldn’t see it. During the primaries, though, liberals in the Hillary tank were outraged over the pro-Obama bias of most of the media. Guess it proves that the guy doing the screaming is the one getting his toes stomped.

The “notable quotables” selected by the panel not only reflect bias in the media, they’re often hilarious. You have to see the report to get all of them. Here are just a few examples of “the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2008,” beginning with the obvious winner:

I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My–I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often. Chris Matthews, MSNBC.

Could global warming one day force us into space to live? Sam Champion, ABC (obviously not an expert on living conditions on Mars or the Moon).

You’ve seen those videotapes of Walter Cronkite the night that man landed on the moon for the first time, when Neil Armstrong stepped out and he could just barely get out monosyllables. Politically, that’s what this is. This is man on the moon. Keith Olbermann, MSNBC (apparently trying to best Chris Matthews in adoration of The One).

You know, the one thing that I don’t think anybody’s said yet is that she’s very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it in for these poor polar bear and the caribou and she aerial kills wolves? That’s a very mean thing to do. I think that that’s an important point. Joy Behar, one of the left’s leading intellectuals, discussing Sarah Palin on ABC’s “The View.”

To see his [Jeremiah Wright’s] career completely destroyed by three 20-second sound bites, all of the work he has done, his entire legacy gone down the drain, has been absolutely devastating to me–to him, sorry…. We are still a racist country…. I think that so many white people who had never been inside a black church were absolutely shocked by the tone and language that they heard [from Wright]…. I think it brought out a lot of latent racism. Sally Quinn, The Washington Post.

Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. CNN founder Ted Turner, obviously no one’s leading intellectual, on PBS.

This has been one of the most active, deadly tornado seasons in a long time…. I talked to three people, casual conversation today, all of them smart, saying, ‘I don’t know, we must be doing something to our Earth.’ So once and for all, what’s going on? Brian Williams, NBC.

And finally, the one I would have selected ahead of Chris Matthews’ tingling leg as the most hilarious of the year:

Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race. Reuters headline for November 6 story claiming that there was no media bias for Obama.

Read the report and watch the videos. It’s remarkable to see such supposedly intelligent adults all aswoon over a politician and in thrall to the theology of global warming.

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: conservative, Humor, liberal, press
Categories: Humor, Media, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

5 Responses to “Best Notable Quotables”

Chuck Butcher | December 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

I suppose it really does matter whose horse gets gored by whom in regard to reactions. I don’t mind opinion by commentators, I object to it in news.

Tom | December 28th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

Chuck, I agree completely. Where editorials or opinion columns are concerned, everything is fair game. News reporting, however, should be factual and without bias. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to tell the difference, and that’s a problem. In the case of the Matthews and Olbermann quotes, they were statements made during MSNBC’s “news” coverage during the election.

The incredibly dumb statements, even if only opinion and not news, are worth a laugh in any case.

Jan | December 28th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Having grown up in a Republican family, I’m not sure what conservatives are laughing about these days. The voters just said they are tired of the high-jinks politics of the right. In any case, if anything that appears on TV can be called the media, my media hero was Sgt. Joe Friday in an old TV show called Dragnet. I tried my best to emulate him when I worked as a news reporter. Joe was famous for cutting people who were babbling short and say: “Just the facts, M’am.”

Tom | December 28th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

I liked Sgt Joe Friday, too, but I’m afraid we’re revealing too much about our ages. Maybe it would be a good idea for J-schools to have a required seminar titled “Just the facts, M’am” to teach straight reporting.

I don’t know what Republicans really have to laugh about, either. But still, this stuff is funny, and maybe Republicans deserve a few chuckles as they lick their wounds.