A year should never end without a review of some of the more outlandish things American mainstream media players have presented as news. Or so is the belief of the Media Research Center, which annually records the worst of the worst in their “Best of Notable Quotables.” (Full disclosure: I was one of their judges this year and last.)
2003’s winner for the worst of the year was jarring, from a piece in the Boston Globe Magazine. Writer Charles Pierce wrote, with no sense of irony, “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.” Miss Kopechne, of course, died in Kennedy’s car in the waters off Chappaquiddick Island in the summer of 1969. Had only Kennedy cared enough not to wait until the next morning to report the accident, she might have the blessing of his selfless legislative service today.
But it would be a disservice to let the new year begin without remembering Peter Arnett’s 2003 body of work–for now-defunct Saddam TV. Before the liberation of Iraq, Arnett was working for NBC and National Geographic when he went on Iraqi state TV and said:
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.
MRC was kind enough to put the clip on their website, in case you want to get outraged all over again. Saddam’s Disinformation Minister couldn’t have said it better himself.
There are more classics from the year–ones that will likely incite guffaws of laughter, appropriate for the holiday season. Like one former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, a runner-up for Quote of the Year: “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….” That, from the man responsible for Jayson Blair, responsible for the Gray Lady’s crusade against Augusta National…
Just about all of the quotes recorded by MRC are worth reading (or rereading), in particular the “Baghdad Bob Award for Parrotting Enemy Propaganda” (don’t forget that Saddam was ELECTED! Will women be better off in a liberated Iraq?), the “Damn Those Conservatives Award” (Ashcroft=Torquemada, says Cronkite, and that’s the way it is), the “Dominique de Villepin Snottiness Award for Whining About the War” (New York Times reporter Chris Hedges wins for railing against our “occupation” of Iraq in a commencement address), the “Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity” (Michael Moore wins, of course, but Garofalo and more get honorable mentions, too, don’t worry.)
Of course, a certain amount of the Media Research Center’s work is preaching to the choir: NRO readers, right-wing think tankers, probably someone at the Fox News Channel probably read the list and the useful daily newsletters religiously. Still, MRC’s annual compilation is as close a thing as there is to a warning label on network and cable news: “Warning: This could be hazardous to the truth.” Or, “Warning: The following broadcast probably does not represent the facts.” Or “Warning: We’re never unbiased.”
And I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the award winners or runners-up store their dishonor in their professional memory banks. Not all of the bias is necessarily intentional; after all, some of it’s only natural. When a newsroom is deeply biased, it’s only going to be outsiders who point out the most egregious examples of their institutional worldview in practice. In his 2003 book Arrogance former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg calls it “liberal groupthink” and Tim Russert, in Goldberg’s book, calls it “cultural bias.” If you take Goldberg’s view–a vet from the field–MRC’s probably just doing the media a favor. As he writes, “If the media elites maintain their arrogance and don’t change, they’ll cease to be serious players in the national conversation and become the journalistic equivalent of the leisure suit–harmless enough but hopelessly out of date.”
In other words, just think of MRC as the fourth estate’s ombudsman.