President Donald Trump releases his Fake News Awards.

President Trump. GOP.com.

President Donald Trump released his Fake News Awards today and crashed the GOP website. The link seems to be working now but there was so much interest in the awards, the GOP site was down for quite some time. The post lists eleven stories that the media got wrong this year. Since the website is having connectivity issues, I will list them here:

1. Paul Krugman being completely wrong about the economy crashing after Trump got elected.

2. ABC's Brian Ross's false report on Michael Flynn contacting Russia during the presidential campaign. 

3. CNN's false report that both Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr., had access to a Wikileaks release before the public. 

4. Time magazine claiming that a bust of Martin Luther King was removed (with a picture of Trump standing right next to it).

5. Washington Post reporter Dave Weigal posting a picture claiming that a rally was mostly empty without mentioning the picture was taken before the rally began. 

6. CNN editing a video of Trump and Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe feeding carp to make it look like, well, I am not sure WHAT they were trying to accomplish with that one. 

7. Three CNN reporters resigning over a false report about Anthony Scaramucci meeting with Russians. 

8. Newsweek saying Trump never shook hands with Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda (with photographic evidence of him doing so).

9. CNN saying that James Comey would dispute Trump's claim that he told him that he wasn't under investigation. 

10. The New York Times claiming that Trump had hidden a climate report. 

11. The Russia collusion story. 

What's my take on this? It's fairly damning. I am not sure what people were expecting but we got 10 solid examples of times where the news media either got a story wrong or lied on purpose. Those stories certainly qualified as fake news. The Russia collusion story does as well but since that is such a huge and complex topic it't not quite as impressive. 

A lot of people over-hyped these awards. There were rumors flying on social media and 4chan that this was going to be the big happening that would announce the final end of the Democratic Party. Why anyone would believe that is beyond me when it seemed obvious from the start that it was going to be exactly what it was advertised: a list of worst stories this year from the news media. 

My guess is that certain people were deliberately misleading people about what the Fake News Awards were going to be about. I think this was deliberate and enemy action. People wanted to raise expectations so much that no matter what Trump did, it would be a disappointment. 

That being said, I did think that we would be getting a bit more than a blog post. The content was great but I think a presentation would have been better. Having the President or one of his high ranking aides read out this list live on TV or via the internet would have been a lot more fun. More people might have watched as well. 

Still, it is important to get this message out there. When it comes to Donald Trump the media has lost any semblance of credibility. The list released by Trump and the GOP is not anywhere near a full accounting of the medias mistakes and lies. And that list isn't just limited to Trump alone. I still remember how they tried to sell the "hands up don't shoot" narrative during the last days of the Obama presidency. People still rely on the media for them to tell the truth. It's very clear that we can no longer trust them to do so.