The Twenty-Sixth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting
The Obamagasm Award
Winner
stillshot
(51 points)
“The Second Coming. America Expects. Can He Deliver?”
— Headline for Newsweek’s “Inauguration 2013” cover, January 18.
Runners-Up
Chris Matthews (41 points)
“Is Barack Obama going for it? Is he set on becoming one of the great presidents in history? I’m not talking about Mount Rushmore, but perhaps the level right below it. I’m talking, to use his word, ‘transformational.’... If he [Obama] were hearing us talking about him, maybe, mounting Mount Rushmore, getting up there with the great presidents, secretly, not what he would say to other people, what would he be thinking — ‘that’s exactly what I’m doing’?”
— MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Hardball, February 18. [MP3 Audio]
Bob Schieffer (39 points)
“This was a speech that had some music to it, as they used to say. He coined a few phrases in there, talked about the ‘unfinished task before us,’ sort of reminiscent of what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address.”
— Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer during CBS’s post-State of the Union coverage, February 12. [MP3 Audio]
Lionel Barber (36 points)
Financial Times editor Lionel Barber: “If we see 3.5 percent growth [in] 2014-15, no conflict with Iran, President Obama will go down as one of the top American presidents.”
Host Charlie Rose: “Really?”
Barber: “I believe so.... Solid economic legacy, growing the economy, no war abroad. He will have brought the troops home. I’m writing a biography already.”
— Exchange on PBS’s Charlie Rose, May 1. [MP3 Audio]
http://www.mrc.org/notable-quotables/year-end-awards-best-notable-quotables-2013?cat=6
