The Media Research Center has unveiled their list of “Notable Quotables” of 2007, The 20th Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting.  And the winner is…

“As Violence Falls in Iraq, Cemetery Workers Feel the Pinch”  - Headline over an October 16 story by McClatchy News Service reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein.

Some others:

When I watched him [former President Bill Clinton] at Mrs. King’s funeral, I just have never seen anything like it….There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity — race, we call it, it’s really ethnicity — in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way.”
— Chris Matthews, MSNBC’s Hardball, Feb. 28.

“As part of our ongoing series of reports on the environment, ‘America Goes Green,’ we take on the question that can make otherwise competent adults quake with fear. We’ve all been there. You come to the end of the checkout line and then comes that question: ‘Paper or plastic?’ For that one brief moment, we grocery buyers are made to feel like the fate of the planet hinges on our decision.”
— NBC’s Brian Williams on the May 7 Nightly News.

“[High ratings for Fox’s American Idol] cannot solely be explained by technological advances or a regression in human nature. It cannot be a coincidence that television voting rights arose so soon after the 2000 election left slightly more than half the voting population feeling cheated. Those who didn’t go to the polls and fear that their abstention inadvertently made possible the invasion of Iraq may feel even worse. Idol could be a displacement ritual: a psychological release that allows people to vote — and even vote often — in a contest that has no dangerous or even lasting consequences.”
— New York Times TV reporter Alessandra Stanley in an April 4 article. [46]

“For the first time in the 218-year history of the Congress, a woman was voted by her colleagues to be Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California, took the gavel. But in a picture perhaps even more symbolic, the new Speaker was on the floor for a time, holding her 6-year-old [6-month-old] grandson, all the while giving directions on how events were to proceed. It seemed the ultimate in multitasking: Taking care of the children, and the country.”
— ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, Jan. 4.

“You’re also looking at a [global warming] solution here in Europe: smaller vehicles, more energy efficient, many which use diesel fuel which is more efficient. And the price of gas here is $6 a gallon to discourage guzzling. A lot of big ideas and innovations coming out of Europe.”
— ABC’s Chris Cuomo reporting from Paris for Earth Day, April 20 Good Morning America.

Co-host Matt Lauer: “The book is called The World Without Us, and it asks the question what would happen to planet Earth if human beings were to suddenly disappear….And really it’s all about trying to figure out how long it would take nature to reclaim what we’ve created.”
Co-host Meredith Vieira: “The mess.”
Lauer: “How long it would take nature to fix the mess we’ve made?…Would the Earth miss us at all? How long would it take for it to fix the problems we created?”
— NBC’s Today, September 4

And my personal favorite:

“So I’m running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this [warm weather] is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can’t, I can’t figure this out.”
— Co-host Meredith Vieira talking about global warming on NBC’s Today, January 8

For the rest of the winners of this year’s “Notable Quotables”, go to the Media Research Center.