Politics: Notable Quotes Of 2003

[DudeAsInCool]

What Liberal Media? Award

First Place

CBS’s Lesley Stahl: “Today you have broadcast journalists who are avowedly conservative....The voices that are being heard in broadcast media today, are far more – the ones who are being heard – are far more likely to be on the right and avowedly so, and therefore, more – almost stridently so, than what you’re talking about.”

Host Cal Thomas: “Can you name a conservative journalist at CBS News?”

Stahl: “I don’t know of anybody’s political bias at CBS News....We try very hard to get any opinion that we have out of our stories, and most of our stories are balanced.”

– Exchange on Fox News Channel’s After Hours with Cal Thomas, January 18. [51 points]

***

Runners-up:

“I don’t think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are a left-wing or a right-wing organization.”

– Peter Jennings, as quoted by USA Today’s Peter Johnson in a September 9 article on Jennings’ 20 years as sole anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. [42]

“I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did....The entire body politic...did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels.”

– CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown, September 10. [40]

“It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that – except for a few liberal columnists – there is any such thing as the big liberal media. The media world now includes (1) talk radio, (2) cable television and (3) the traditional news sources (newspapers, newsmagazines and the old broadcast networks). Two of these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism....What it adds up to is a media heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians.”

– Former Washington Post and New York Times reporter E.J. Dionne in a Dec. 6, 2002 Washington Post op-ed. [33]

 

Quote of the Year

First Place

“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.”

– Charles Pierce in a January 5 Boston Globe Magazine article. Kopechne drowned while trapped in Kennedy’s submerged car off Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969, an accident Kennedy did not report for several hours. (Picture of Charles Pierce)

 

Runners-up:

“Within the United States, there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here....help those who oppose the war. 

“Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces....And I personally do not understand how that happened, because I’ve been here many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country. But me, and others who felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration. 

“Now America is re-appraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week, and re-writing the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance; now they are trying to write another war plan.”

– Then-NBC/MSNBC/National Geographic Explorer correspondent Peter Arnett’s comments on Iraq’s state-controlled television network, March 30, shown by C-SPAN.

“Our greatest accomplishment as a profession is the development since World War II of a news reporting craft that is truly non-partisan, and non-ideological, and that strives to be independent of undue commercial or governmental influence....

“It is that legacy we must protect with our diligent stewardship. To do so means we must be aware of the energetic effort that is now underway to convince our readers that we are ideologues. It is an exercise of, in disinformation, of alarming proportions, this attempt to convince the audience of the world’s most ideology-free newspapers that they’re being subjected to agenda-driven news reflecting a liberal bias. I don’t believe our viewers and readers will be, in the long-run, misled by those who advocate biased journalism.”

– Then-New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines accepting the “George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award” at a National Press Foundation dinner shown live on C-SPAN2, February 20.

2003 Award Judges

Lee Anderson, Editorial Page Editor, Chattanooga Free Press

Chuck Asay, editorial cartoonist, The Gazette in Colorado Springs

Brent Baker, MRC VP, Editor of Cyberalert and Notable Quotables

Mark Belling, talk show host, WISN in Milwaukee

Neal Boortz, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

L. Brent Bozell III, President of the Media Research Center

David Brudnoy, radio talk show host, WBZ in Boston; journalism professor at Boston University; film critic

Priscilla Buckley, Contributing Editor of National Review

William R. Cotterell, political editor, Tallahassee Democrat

Blanquita Cullum, syndicated talk show host for Radio America

Midge Decter, author, Rumsfeld : A Personal Portrait

Bob Dutko, talk show host, WMUZ in Detroit

Eric Fettmann, columnist & Associate Editorial Page Editor, NY Post

Ryan Frazier, editorial writer, Richmond Times-Dispatch

Mike Gallagher, syndicated talk show host for Salem Radio Network; Fox News Channel contributor

Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis for the MRC

Karen Grant, talk show host, KION in Monterey/Salinas/Santa Cruz

Betsy Hart, columnist, Scripps Howard News Service

Stephen Hayes, staff writer for The Weekly Standard

Kirk Healy, Executive Producer, WDBO Radio in Orlando

Matthew Hill, talk show host, WPWT in the Tri-Cities of Tenn/Va

Quin Hillyer, editorial writer for the Mobile Register

Jeff Jacoby, columnist for the Boston Globe

Marie Kaigler, radio talk show host and media consultant, Detroit

Cliff Kincaid, Editor of the AIM Report

Mark Larson, talk show host, KCBQ in San Diego

Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online

Patrick B. McGuigan, Contributing Editor of Tulsa Today

Joe McQuaid, Publisher, The Union Leader in Manchester, NH

Robert D. Novak, CNN commentator; Chicago Sun-Times columnist

Rich Noyes, Director of Research for the Media Research Center

Kate O’Beirne, Washington Editor of National Review

Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-Chief of World magazine and professor of

journalism at the University of Texas-Austin

Janet Parshall, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

Henry Payne, editorial cartoonist, The Detroit News

Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, Executive Editor of The American Spectator

Michael Reagan, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

Mike Rosen, talk show host, KOA in Denver; columnist, Denver Rocky Mountain News

William A. Rusher, Distinguished Fellow, Claremont Institute

Ted J. Smith III, Professor of journalism, Virginia Commonwealth U.

Tom Sullivan, talk show host, KFBK in Sacramento

Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist and host of After Hours with Cal Thomas on the Fox News Channel

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Editor-in-Chief of The American Spectator

Dick Williams, columnist; host of Atlanta's Georgia Gang

Walter E. Williams, Professor of economics, George Mason University

Thomas Winter, Editor-in-Chief of Human Events