It was a novel idea for the New Year, if not a good one. But there were problems from the start.
Finally, on Wednesday night, the envelopes with all the lucky winners’ names had been (metaphorically) sealed and were ready to be tweeted out in to the world by President Trump.
D’oh!
Apparently, the hype was bigger than even Republicans had expected. Americans, tired of being weighed down by participation trophies, were hungry to see who won these real alpha awards.
And the winner is… New York Times columnist Paul Krugman?
1. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.
Hmm… Interesting start. Krugman is not actually a newsman, you see. He’s a columnist. That’s just, like, his opinion, man.
Maybe they get better. What’s number 2?
2. ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.
Wait. First, is Brian Ross OK?
Second, what false news report? I mean, yes, there was one, Brian Ross made a big reporting error in December, but I have to look it up myself? Not even a link? Someone clearly started putting these together at 4:45 p.m. this afternoon. The veteran ABC News journalist misreported that Mike Flynn was prepared to testify that Donald Trump instructed Flynn to establish communications with the Russians during the 2016 campaign; Trump told Flynn to get in touch with Russia after the 2016 election, it turns out. Kind of a big one. ABC News issued a correction and put Ross on leave. I’m not sure about the market causation, but maybe Brian Ross is a must read on Wall Street.
Anyway, oh, you get the idea. It’s a list of Trump media complaints. Not sure we needed awards for that. We have Twitter and TVs already. For journalists, and journalism in general, some of the instances of reporting mistakes aren’t great, to be honest. Many of the mistakes revolve around Martin Luther King busts and crowd size pictures, but some are larger failures. They are, of course, a drop in the bucket compared to the good work that’s been done reporting on the Trump presidency, but a reminder nonetheless of the importance of not reporting wrong things—particularly wrong things that are also asinine.
You can read more of The Highly Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards (real headline) here, if you really want to.
Before we go, I’m going to give an award of my own. Number 6 on the GOP list is the first recipient of the The Highly Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards Spirit Award.
I’m not exactly sure who did what here. But it’s better that way.
