The main reason year-end awards exists is to fill space with non-deadline content during the Christmas holidays so staff members can spend time with their families )or go on a trip). The Media Research Center took this space-filling strategy to new extremes at the end of 2024. We’ve already documented how Nicholas Fondacaro cranked out eight year-end posts to document his obsessive hatred of “The View,” but other MRC staffers made their own contributions as well.
A Dec. 18 post by Geoffrey Dickens awarded the “The Brian Stelter Award for Worst Quote of the Year” to Joe Scarborough — but doesn’t explain why the award is named after Stelter other than the fact that he continues to live rent-free in the collective heads of the MRC. The award’s name had to be adjusted a bit from last year, when it was called “The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Worst Quote of the Year” — never mind that Stelter wasn’t actually dead but had merely departed CNN. With Stelter’s return to the channel, the MRC had to stop calling it a “memorial” award.
From there, it was on to numerous other “WORST OF 2024” compilations:
- The Craziest Analysis Award
- The Trashing Trump Award
- The Damn Those Conservatives Award
- The Joy of Hate Award for Joy Reid Rants
- The Worst 10 Moments From Late Night Comedy Guests In 2024
- The Praising and Protecting Old Joe Award
- Carrying Kamala’s Water Award for Helping Harris
- Cursing the Conservative Court Award
- Celebrity Freak-Out Award
If the MRC kept the same criteria, it would likely award some of honors to itself at the end of 2025. There will be lots of crazy analysis, damning of liberals, freaking out over celebrities who are even slightly to its left, and it will definitely praising and protecting old Donny.