Out CNN anchor Don Lemon has been named one of the worst journalists of 2014 by the Columbia Journalism Review, a publication of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Writes David Uberti over at the CJR blog Darts & Laurels:
Live television is exceedingly difficult to produce, of course, but Lemon's gaffes this year offer a case study in how to choose words wisely — or not.
On March 20, he asked guests whether Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have been swallowed by a black hole: “I know it's preposterous, but is it preposterous?” He later compared spanking children to training dogs and probed similarities between the release of US Army POW Bowe Bergdahl and the Showtime series Homeland. When an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim appeared on his show on Nov. 18, he lectured, “You know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn't want to do it…Meaning the use of teeth, right?” Less than a week later, as protests turned violent in Ferguson, MO, he described the scene: “Obviously, there's a smell of marijuana in the air.”
Other winners of the dubious award this year include 60 Minutes, Fox and Friends, New York magazine, Breitbart News, and Rolling Stone for its University of Virginia campus rape story.
Check out the full list here.