The Twenty-Sixth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting
The Obama’s Orderlies Award
for Championing ObamaCare
Winner
Ed Schultz (60 points)
“This is the Web site folks, HealthCare.gov. If you go to this Web site, you will find out how easy it is to read, how easy it is to navigate all the information, all the basic questions, and all the direction you need to take to get involved, to get health care. This is a great guide, if I may say, for any of you out there who feel so confused by all of these right-wing commercials that are just permeating through your television screen.”
— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, September 30. [MP3 Audio]
Runners-Up
Krystal Ball (52 points)
“The GOP is saying to young people, ‘We would like to have the government stick an unnecessary transvaginal probe in you if you want an abortion, but when it comes to health insurance, don’t take any government help. Don’t go to the state or federal government-operated insurance exchanges to buy private insurance. Stay away. Stay uninsured. Skip that pap smear. Skip that tetanus shot. Skip that prenatal care. Skip that cholesterol test. And if you die an agonizing and unnecessary death, one that could have been prevented by the health insurance reform that bears the President’s name, at least you know your death will have not been in vain. You will have died to serve the noble and patriotic cause not of conservatism, but of hurting this President and denying him a victory.’...That is not conservative. It is a national disgrace.”
— Co-host Krystal Ball on MSNBC’s The Cycle, September 24. [MP3 Audio]
Jim Avila (34 points)
Correspondent Jim Avila: “Why is this happening? Because insurance companies, which offered cheap insurance like Julie’s, left out basics now required by ObamaCare, like hospital coverage, maternity, mental health or prescription drugs and are now forced to cancel those plans and replace them....Julie tells us that she doesn’t have hospital care on this cheap insurance plan. Is that dangerous?”
Consumers Union’s Lynn Quincy: “Absolutely. That’s an enormous hole in her coverage.”
— Talking about millions of insurance cancellations, ABC’s World News, October 29. [MP3 Audio]
Bob Schieffer (32 points)
CBS’s Bob Schieffer: “They’re going to pass this [measure to defund ObamaCare] in the House, I would assume, and it’s going to go nowhere in the Senate. When the Wall Street Journal compares them to, you know, those Japanese suicide pilots in World War II, I wonder if it isn’t — I think that’s apt. But even more apt, you remember — way on into the 1950s when they’d go into the jungles of the Philippines and they’d find these Japanese soldiers that thought World War II was still going on?”
Co-host Gayle King: “Good analogy.”
Schieffer: “I mean, you know, the war over ObamaCare is over. You know?...I think in the long run this is going to hurt the Republicans.”
— CBS This Morning, September 20. [MP3 Audio
http://www.mrc.org/notable-quotables/year-end-awards-best-notable-quotables-2013?cat=12
