2005 WORST Cheeziest Journalist of the Year

[Pithy Cherub]

2005 will forever be seared in our collective memories with some of the worst journalistic excesses displayed. The editorial and executive leadership was inadequate and incompetent both in print and just save us from the television media mercenaries. We suffered painfully through the Runaway Bride, the sad story of one teen missing in Aruba with more coverage than missing Katrina victims, a faux War on Happy Holiday people and cotton candy entertainment moments masquerading as media justification for their paychecks. There has got to be somebody who will put up big money for the safe return of journalistic ethics in 2006.

There were journalists hired by the Bush White House to favorably report their slants. Abramoff hired journalists/columnists to present puff pieces. Journalists who are on career rehabilitation cruises or having Ahab identity crises and defiantly going down with their flawed views of the world. Tokyo Roses with stenography by legions of lazy media people is rampant - shouldn't somebody give a class on the First Amendment for those who may have forgotten it exists?

The media entities themselves girded for battle in a dive for the Worst Velveeta Journalism Prize at the bottom of the Cheeziest barrel. The New York Times has a heralded place in infamy. The LA Times is having some sort of musical chair conservative contest for who gets to write. And The Washington Post was determined to make sure they got a prize by entering multiple applicants including a vaunted former investigative reporter. Time Inc., fought for one journalist, while another Timer secretly held the access card knowing of the skulduggery. CBS makes an anchor walk the plank because he got the story right, but tripped over details.

There are some very good and thoughtful journalists out there - they are so rare they cause wonder, like seeing a meteor or a comet. An excellent movie about a journalist who does his job, causes consternation because courage was on display - on behalf of the public good, yikes could it be again? But this ain't about the good.

I am at a loss to pick the Worst Cheeziest Journalist of the 2005. Who's your pick out of the legion of applicants? So many to choose from says something about the state of affairs in journalism...

:popcorn:

[Maestro]

1. I saw we give a collective award to

Faux News!

[DemGirl7]

18. I agree....we need a collective award to be given to FOX News

Every single asshole on that channel is an embarrassment to the profession of Journalism. It is nothing more than state run propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. gotta go with Miller

[Mz Pip]

3. Does Rita Cosby count?

Don't think she really counts as a journalist, though.

Bill O'Lielly calls himself a journalist. Saying he is doesn't make it so.

Wolf Blitzer? Daryn Kagan? Brit Hume?

I'll go with O'Lielly and give him the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not he really is a journalist. Just so he can have this award. He deserves nothing less.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Bill O'Liely

because of his phony "war on Christmas" and the fact that he considers himself a journalist.

[tonka023]

6. seconds on O'Lielly

so many reasons, but telling terrorists
to hit San Fran comes immediately to mind...

[fishwax]

14. yes, merely considering himself a journalist

is almost enough to win him the award in my book. What a tool. :eyes:

[Initech]

23. Biggest douche in the universe!

[Chipper Chat]

5. Cheese-whizziest?

Tucker Carlson - hands down.

[tularetom]

7. I too don't know whether or not

O'lielly is a "journalist". But he is sort of a human being and he's the cheeziest one of those there is so I guess that would qualify him for the honor.

[BlueManDude]

8. Judy Judy Judy...

[Eugene]

9. Is Jeff Gannon eligible?

If not, I'll pick Judith Miller. Even though her worst excesses happened before 2005,
she betrayed her profession, her paper, and her country.

Dishonorable Mention #1: Armstrong Williams and other secretly paid shills.

Dishonorable Mention #2: Neal Cavuto. A good journalist is not a bad American.

[Pithy Cherub]

10. It's hard work choosing...

Definitely...the White House Press Corpse didn't object to him being their equal. :evilgrin:

[Armstead]

11. CNN and MSNBC for wasted potential

Fox, at least is what it is and makes no bones about it (despite thir laughable "Fair nd Balanced motto").

But CNN and MSNBC coule be so good, but insted they have chosen to be bad, which makes them worse.

CNN used to be a straight news outfit -- competent and reasonably trustworthy. But they have morphed into an irritating imitation of what they used to be....The pretend to be a network of record, while simultaneously deteriorating to the Slam Bang tyle of Fox News, where noise and flashy graphics substitute for substance....CNN also desrves a raspberry for pandering to the sex and sleaze tabloid mentality.

They also have become "personality driven." Unfortunatly their personalities are so shallow and clueless that they can't be taken seriously....CNN also still has some decent journalists working thre, but even they have been tainted by the overall fucked up tone of the place, so it's hard to even trust the hard-working real journalists who are scatrtered among the bimbos.

Ditto for MSNBC. Evn wore because it reflcts the decline of its' parent NBC News, which once upon a time was a real news operation.

[lpbk2713]

12. I'll exclude all the slugs associated with Faux Net.....

for obvious reasons. It's understood what their slant is on any given topic before they even open their mouths.

Having said that I would have to nominate Kagan. It just seems like she could at least feign an attempt at journalistic objectivity now and then. But no. It looks like she prefers to be predictable. Must have something to do with the company she keeps.

[babylonsister]

13. MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell is right up there; she's so

clearly partisan it's scary and revolting; she should be working for Faux!
CNN's Candy Crowley isn't far behind.
And Mike Allen shouldn't be working for Time;
he's cheesy and transparent.
How 'bout that beatch from the NY Post (edit to add Deborah Orrin?)
(can't remember her name), or Byron York?

Yep, there are just too many to choose from.

[fishwax]

15. Lauer and Couric for the Macy's Parade debacle

hardly the biggest journalistic sin of the year, i know, but somehow it captures much of what's wrong with corporate journalism today ...

[Midnight Rambler]

16. John Gibson

For condoning terrorism as well as writing an entire book about how serious the phony war on Christmas is.

[shenmue]

17. I nominate...

Chris Matthews. Whenever he speaks, I see white and my ears go beeeeeeeeeep.

:crazy:

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. No contest here

[Pithy Cherub]

20. LOL! Baghdad Bob Woodward whored shamelessly to be the WORST.

Bob lied to save his million dollar book deal by collaborating openly with the culture of corruption. The O'Loofah perp is just plain nuts. So many ethically challenged folks in one profession...

Great pics! :)

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. I guess I need a pic of Woodward

[punpirate]

21. So many variants on a theme that it's hard...

... to find the penultimate bad journalist in such a corrupt bunch. If one chooses to believe that honest reporting on the Bushies' assertions about WMD might have halted the war, then the award has to go to Judith Miller--because she helped get an awful lot of people killed. But, if one believes that the war would have happened no matter what she reported, then the award ought to go to every goddamned television network for glorifying the damned war as they did--and for submitting to an "embedded" arrangement which, in practice, made them mouthpieces for the administration and the military.

I don't include people like O'Really in the class of journalists because he's not in any way a journalist. I'm not sure he's ever been one in his career. He's a pundit with obvious biases--which puts him in the company of most people on television these days.

Elisabeth Bumiller of the NYT should get a few lashes of the cat-o'-nine-tails for her puff pieces on Bush which tried, with a bit too much desperation, to put a human face on inhuman behavior. Bob Woodward deserves to be locked in a dark closet for a month or two, staining himself with his own urine and feces, just to remind him that he's just another mortal who's not even close to being a demi-god. Dana Milbank needs to have the outermost quarter-inch of his nose clipped off with lineman's pliers for his hatchet job on the Conyers' hearing on WMD and the Downing Street memos. Brian Williams should have his pants pulled down in the middle of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center and be paddled by everyone who watched his fawning interview with Bush in which the phrase "follow-up question" never entered his mind, before, during or after. Juan Williams wins the "kiss up and kick down" award for throwing only softballs to every administration official he interviewed for NPR--now, there's a guy who needs some butter on his ears to help get his head out of Rumsfeld's ass.

But, right now, the grand prize ought to go to another NYT so-called reporter: James Risen, for happily agreeing with his editors to hold the NSA-domestic spying story for more than a year, until it could be used to generate publicity for his forthcoming book. That was one of the most reprehensible things a reporter can do--hold a major story for personal and political reasons. Can't think of a suitable punishment for that twit.

[Initech]

22. While as much as I loathe O'Reilly, I gotta go with Bernie Goldberg

Mr. "100 LIBERALS who are screwing up Ameriaca".