Bill O'Reilly, who famously falsely claimed to be the winner of two Peabody Awards, has finally won something for real -- top spot on Pandagon.net's list of "the 20 most annoying conservatives of 2003." According to Pandagon webmasters Ezra Klein and Jesse Taylor, O'Reilly "had a hard time getting on this list.

Jay Rosen thinks coverage of the 2004 presidential election is shaping up as an exercise in "Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!" In this time-dishonored tradition of political journalism, reporters use sports as a metaphor for reporting on politics, relying for insights on political insiders who have learned how to spin the "race" as a game of "inside baseball." The result: "An army of sentries encircles the game, guarding every situation from which a glimmer of fresh truth might be allowed to escape."

The Guerrilla New Network has "picked the administration's packaging and sale of the case for war based on Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as our Spin of the Year. The case has turned out to be so flimsy that the administration has been forced to backtrack and deflect questions about the still missing weapons. Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair this summer that it was a 'bureaucratic' decision to focus on the WMD, and even Rumsfeld has repeatedly contradicted specific claims he made to reporters in the run-up to the invasion."