On January 2, 2018, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he will be announcing "the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year," supposedly on Monday, January 8. He said that the subjects covering the award will range from "Dishonesty" and "Bad News Reporting" in different categories from what he perceived is the "Fake News Media."
Ten days after the supposed announcement of the awards, the President finally delivered. The winners of the Fake News Awards. They were announced on his Twitter page at 8 PM EST.
Fake News Awards winners
The Winners of the awards include the following news outlets: ABC, CNN, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TIME.
As the New York Times pointed out, CNN was mentioned four times; The New York Times was mentioned twice; and ABC, The Washington Post, and Newsweek each have one mention.
Meanwhile, as many predicted, Fox News was not mentioned, especially considering that the president frequently shows support for Fox and its programs. Breitbart was another outlet that did not get any mentions at the awards.
Trump's beef with the "Fake News Media" winners
Noticeably, as noted by the coed.com, the outlets that were named wrote articles criticizing the Trump presidency, including, but not limited to the following:
- Paul Krugman of the New York Times claimed markets would "never" recover from Trump's time in office. The same media outlet also reported that the administration hid a climate-change report from the public.
- Dave Weigel from the Washington Post stated that Trump's rally in Pensacola, Florida, was not packed with supporters as the president claimed.
- A report from CNN claimed that President Trump's campaign actually had early access to the hacked WikiLeaks documents.
The president also mentioned in his tweets that there were "many great reporters I respect," adding that they defended his administration's record despite the reports from "a very biased media."
Media laughs and jokes about awards
The media, it seemed, were not too bothered with the awards, with members joking about the speeches they are preparing, and the tuxedos and gowns they would be donning at the show.
Some said that a nomination in itself is an honor. The Atlanta Journal Constitution even noted that Buzzfeed was outraged at the Fake News Awards snub.
Other than that, there is no big event -- no red carpets were laid out, no monologues were said, and no trophies were presented. In the end, it was just the President's Twitter feed that announced the "Fake News Awards" that many news companies were proud to have been winners of.
