Our annual gleaning of the Media Research Center's Notable Quotes:

60 Minutes

Andy Rooney, evidencing his growing senility:

“We should change our attitude toward the United Nations. There has to be some power in the world superior to our own....We should not have attacked Iraq without the okay of the United Nations....Now we have to live with that mistake. We’re living with it, and too many of our guys are dying with it.”

[October 12, 2003]
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Billionaire Malthusian Ted Turner surveys the future and conjures a nuclear winter and worldwide halitosis:

“I’d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.”

[September 29, 2003]
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This Week

When George Stephanopoulos wants to know how the freest country on earth should proceed against terrorist aggression he looks no further than malcontent bench-warmer Moammar Qaddafi:

“What would you advise the United States to do today to fight al-Qaeda?...What would be the wise course for the United States to follow now in Iraq?”

[August 3, 2003]
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National Press Foundation

Some three months before the Jayson Blair controversy starts the fraudulent journalism dominos toppling at the New York Times, Howell Raines parades equal amounts of self-esteem and crippling myopia before an adoring audience:

“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....“It is that legacy we must protect with our diligent stewardship. To do so means we must be aware of the energetic effort that is now underway to convince our readers that we are ideologues. It is an exercise of, in disinformation, of alarming proportions, this attempt to convince the audience of the world’s most ideology-free newspapers that they’re being subjected to agenda-driven news reflecting a liberal bias. I don’t believe our viewers and readers will be, in the long-run, misled by those who advocate biased journalism.”

[February 20, 2003]