U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced his own “Fake News Awards” for 2017 on Wednesday via the Republican National Committee’s website, gop.com, and received the expected lukewarm reception from mainstream media outlets.
Trump announced the award “winners” by tweeting a link to a top eleven list hosted on a gop.com web page that initially experienced errors – web page access was restored shortly after the brief outage.
And the FAKE NEWS winners are…https://t.co/59G6x2f7fD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018
“2017 was a year of unrelenting bias, unfair news coverage, and even downright fake news. Studies have shown that over 90% of the media’s coverage of President Trump is negative.”
CNN led the way with four awards, while the New York Times notched two spots on Trump’s list:
- The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.
- ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.
- CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.
- TIME FALSELY reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office.
- Washington Post FALSELY reported the President’s massive sold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida was empty. Dishonest reporter showed picture of empty arena HOURS before crowd started pouring in.
- 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.
- CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a “significant breakdown in process.”
- Newsweek FALSELY reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.
- CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.
- The New York Times FALSELY claimed on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.
- And last, but not least: “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!
Both the New York Times and Washington Post published news stories after they received their awards; however, neither ‘paper of record’ disputed any of the examples given by Trump citing their ‘false’ reporting. CNN has been mum on their chart toppers.
In 2017, 21st Century Wire reported on several of the stories Trump cites in his fake news awards list, and even dedicated an entire series of reports, “Fake News Week”, featuring media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events – exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of ‘fake news’ throughout modern history. The popular series culminated with our readers selecting winners of both the Fake News Final Four competition, and Horace Greeley Award for Best Fake News Journalist.
Number one and number eleven on Trump’s list, respectively, were an op-ed written by Paul Krugman for the New York Times in 2016, and a general statement about “Russia Collusion” – the latter being a well-known fantasy canard created by the Democratic Party and the mainstream media after the 2016 Presidential Election.
There’s still no evidence to substantiate this mainstream conspiracy theory – making Russiagate easily the biggest fake news story of the past year. What’s most telling about this ‘official’ conspiracy theory is that its proponents have to resort to publishing repeated lies and wild exaggerations in order to maintain the pillars supporting their narrative. So desperate were the New York Times to tie Trump to Russia that it even claimed that ‘the Russians’ where creating Facebook pages about puppies in order to ‘confuse and mislead’ vulnerable American voters. New York Times also had to retract their central lie which claimed that 17 US Intelligence agencies had all agreed that the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election – but still we hear legions of mindless ‘journalists’ and shaky politicians like Adam Schiff (who, not surprisingly is also promoting the White Helmets) repeating that same old canard.
As part of Washington’s new McCarthyite red scare reboot, the US government labeled Russian international media network RT, and RT America as “foreign agents” – forcing the channel and its journalists to register with the US government under old outdated pre-WWII espionage legislation.
Other fake claims by US media include ‘Kremlin bots‘ deployed on Facebook to mess with the fragile minds of potential voters on social media, and CNN’s all-time classic: an “Exclusive!” no less – claiming that the Russians somehow infiltrated the computer game Pokemon Go in order to ‘sow confusion among Americans.’
Trump’s latest stunt calling out mainstream news organizations for their ‘fake news’ should not be a surprise to anybody.
SEE ALSO: Fake News: The Collapse of the MSM’s ‘Facebook Russian Bot’ Story
READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate Files
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