CNN was the big four-time award winner in President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night “Fake News Awards” unveiling that presented eleven total awards.
Trump tweeted out a link to the awards, which were presented on the GOP website. The website was down for a considerable period of time after Trump tweeted it out.
CNN won for four stories:
- “CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.” Directly below this award, third on the list, was a Fox News headline that read, “CNN botches dates, inaccurately reports Trump campaign had Wikileaks sneak peak”
- “CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding.” Below the award, sixth on the list, was a video clip of Abe tossing his box of fish food into the pond, followed immediately by Trump doing the same.
- “CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a “significant breakdown in process.” This seventh award on the list was followed with a Washington Post headline reading, “Three CNN employees resign over retracted story on Russia ties”
- “CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.” Directly below the award, ninth on the list, were two screen shots of CNN broadcasts, one showing CNN sources’ claims and another that refuted the sources’ claims and revealed what Comey actually said.
The New York Times came in with two awards, one specifically for Paul Krugman’s claim on the day of Trump’s 2016 election day victory that “the economy would never recover.” The Krugman award was the first on the list of eleven Fake News Awards. The Dow has hit multiple record highs since Trump’s election as President of the United States.
The Times’ second award, the tenth on the list, was presented for a false claim “on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.” Directly below the award was a graphic that showed a headline from the Washington Post which read, “New York Times guilty of large screw-up on climate change story.”
Second on the list of Fake News Awards was “ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.” Below the award was a graphic showing the greater than 350 point plunge in the stock market in the time directly after the report was aired and before it was corrected. Ross was suspended four weeks without pay for the false report.
Fourth on the list of Fake News Awards went to TIME for when the outlet “FALSELY reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office.” Directly below the award was a screenshot of a Fox News broadcast showing Trump with the MLK bust in the Oval Office.
The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel took home award number five for his tweet claiming that the arena for a recent Trump rally in Pensacola, Florida was relatively empty. It was later revealed that the photos were taken hours before the rally began. It wasn’t until after Trump tweeted out photos of the packed arena and Weigel’s false claim that Weigel apologized for his error.
Award number eight went to Newsweek for falsely reporting that “Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.” Immediately below the award was a photo of the two shaking hands.
Award eleven didn’t go to just one news outlet, but rather the entirety of the “Fake News Media (Mainstream)” for reporting on “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Referring to claims that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election, the award stated, “Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!” The award was followed with a January 5 tweet from Trump which turned the reporting on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the fake news mainstream media, and “this phony new book.”
The awards listing highlighted studies that showed 90 percent negative coverage of President Trump’s first year in office. On Tuesday the Media Research Center released analysis of evening newscasts from three mainstream media outlets: ABC, CBS and NBC. The analysis found that coverage of Trump in his first year has been 90 percent negative, calling the reporting, “incessantly hostile.”
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