The American Spectator

For a McClatchy News Service story by reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein, the headline: “As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.”

In a column for the Indianapolis Star, from former CNN and NBC newsman Ken Bode, now the ombudsman — yes, that’s right, the person whose very job it is to ensure fairness and accuracy and good journalistic ethics — for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting: “The list of Bush administration crimes is very real, but I have not paid much attention to the blogs, petitions and other efforts to promote impeachment, on the theory that they are diversionary to the more important efforts to end the war in Iraq…. The crimes are real and probably impeachable, and the monarchial arrogance of the Bush-Cheney administration is monumental. But the timing is wrong.”

The MRC provided dozens and dozens of other, similar examples from which to choose. All together, the nastiness and bias were, literally (not figuratively), queasiness-inducing.

Now, an explanation of the quote I chose (with help from my wife) as the worst of the year. Others were more outrageous, perhaps. But because of my criterion that the worst violations are those that come in supposedly straight news settings, with the most egregious ones being the ones with the broadest audiences that have a right to expect the reporter to be balanced, fair, and reasonable, this one, simple question from Katie Couric as host of CBS Evening News takes the prize. Interviewing two actors from The Nativity Story about Hollywood movies based on Biblical themes, Couric asked if such movies might actually be harmful: “Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we’re so divided about so much?”

Poor little non-believers, unable to fend for themselves. Now, if only Miss Katie would worry half as much about all the conservatives who feel excluded and diminished by almost every one of her “news”casts…