Online Picks for Worst Media Bias of 2009 Unveiled; Official Results Due Monday

Nearly 8,000 of you participated in the public online voting for the Best Notable Quotables of 2009 (7,903 to be exact), weighing the idiocy and outrageousness of dozens of quotes from liberal reporters and celebrities. Check the results to see if the ones you picked have won.

If you didn't vote, you can still see the worst media quotes in 16 categories, most with matching video clips.

This first-ever online public ballot matched the one distributed to our 48 official judges — media experts including columnists, magazine editors, editorial writers and talk radio hosts — who are picking the official winners, as they have for 22 years.

The official results will be released Monday, December 21, but here are a few of the quotes that garnered strong support from the many NewsBusters readers and others who participated:

From the Long Live Camelot category:

“Mary Jo wasn’t a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan....We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history....[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.” — Discover magazine deputy web editor Melissa Lafsky, who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, writing at the Huffington Post, August 28. [3,277 votes]

From the Let Us Fluff Your Pillow category:

“You’re so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I’m not going to get the things done I want to get done, and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?” — CBS’s Katie Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on The Early Show, July 22. [2,888 votes]

From The Coronation of the Messiah Award for Fawning Inaugural Coverage category:

“What a day it [Inauguration Day] was. It may take days or years to really absorb the significance of what happened to America today....When he [Barack Obama] finally emerged, he seemed, even in this throng, so solitary, somber, perhaps already feeling the weight of the world, even before he was transformed into the leader of the free world....The mass flickering of cell phone cameras on the Mall seemed like stars shining back at him.” — NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the January 20 Nightly News. [2,755 votes]

From The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble category:

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks....Fox News loves to foment this anti-intellectualism because that’s their bread and butter. If you have a cerebral electorate, Fox News goes down the toilet, you know, very, very fast....They have tackled that elusive...Klan with a ‘K’ demo.” — Actress/activist Janeane Garofalo on MSNBC’s Countdown, April 16. [2,469 votes]

Let’s see how well these quotes fared with our official judges. Check back Monday for the official results, and our unveiling of the worst “Quote of the Year.”