Wrapping up the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2014,” it’s time to present the “Quote of the Year” for 2014, and the top two runners-up, as selected by our panel of 40 expert judges, who were extremely generous with their time as they reviewed a large ballot of outrageous quotes.

“Winning” the award: CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello for endorsing (“the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across”) a tape of Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol describing how a man shoved her, dragged her on the ground and repeatedly cursed at her.

“Okay. I’m just going to come right out and say it: This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across — well, come across in a long time anyway. A massive brawl in Anchorage, Alaska, reportedly involving Sarah Palin’s kids and her husband. It was sparked after someone pushed one of her daughters at a party....And now police have released audio of that interview. It does include some rather colorful language from Bristol. Here now is Bristol’s recollection of how that night unfolded. So sit back and enjoy.”



Second place went to The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift, for claiming on the May 11 McLaughlin Group that Ambassador Chris Stevens was not “murdered” in Benghazi, but merely “died of smoke inhalation.”

“Every media organization has investigated this [Benghazi] to death. This animates the right wing of the Republican Party. And I would like to point out that Ambassador [Chris] Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation.”

Lastly, MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson took third place for comparing Barack Obama to Jesus Christ on the August 23 edition of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, as he argued for Obama to visit Ferguson, Missouri.

“You know, I’m a Christian preacher, and God finally said, ‘Look, I can’t send nobody else. I got to go myself.’ And I ain’t saying that Obama is Jesus, but for many of his followers he is.”

You can read all of the NewsBusters' posts reviewing each of the 2014 categories here, or you can check out the entire package at www.MRC.org.