President Donald Trump, who has had a running battle with the liberal American mainstream media all through his first year in office, went ahead with his announcement of the “2017 Fake News Awards” late on Wednesday.
“And the FAKE NEWS winners are…,” Trump tweeted about his “highly-anticipated” awards to the “most corrupt and biased of the mainstream media”. The New York Times led the pack of “winners” followed by ABC News, CNN, Time, Washington Post and Newsweek.
A release posted on the Republican National Committee website said 2017 was “a year of unrelenting bias, unfair news coverage, and even downright fake news” with studies showing that “over 90 per cent of the media’s coverage of President Trump is negative”.
The Washington Post covered the “event” in its own way, saying: “There was no red carpet, no envelopes, and no happy winners. But the first fake-news awards did have one celebrity, who picked all the recipients and announced them himself on Wednesday. Or at least he tried to.”
Trump’s top honours went to The New York Times for featuring an article by one of its regular columnists, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, saying on the day of Trump’s election victory that the US economy will never recover. In contrast, Dow hit record high, Trump said who went on to list other “recipients” and their “fake news” contributions.
The RNC release said that “while the media spent 90% of the time focused on negative coverage or fake news, the President has been getting results”.
It spoke of the US economy having created nearly 2 million jobs and gained over $8 trillion in wealth since Trump’s inauguration. And that African Americans and Hispanics are enjoying the lowest unemployment rate in recorded history. It also highlighted Trump’s “historic tax cuts”.