Donald Trump finally held his Fake News Awards but not everyone was impressed
There were delays, website crashes – and not a trophy in sight.
Donald Trump has been promising to stage his very own fake news awards for a little while now.
The US president has been enthusiastic on Twitter about “the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year”, which were downgraded to a “potential event” by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and then rescheduled.
But when the time finally came, there was no presenter, no ceremony and no trophies for the winners – just a static web page that immediately crashed after the president tweeted a link to it.
Some people couldn’t help but see the irony.
Maybe Trump could’ve done with some technical help from the most dishonest and corrupt media themselves.
It reminded others of another infamous competition mistake.
Once the Republican party-hosted page was back online, we saw the winners.
CNN came away with four “awards”, an unsurprising result considering that last year Trump tweeted a GIF of himself beating up a man with the broadcaster’s logo superimposed over his face.
The New York Times got two, and ABC, Time, the Washington Post and Newsweek all got mentions.
Some people were disappointed with the non-existent ceremony’s compere.
Others were upset it wasn’t televised.
Model Chrissy Teigen even mocked up a fake ceremony.
Some pointed out that the factual inaccuracies some of the “awards” referenced had been quickly clarified by the news organisations.
Some were annoyed that Trump and the Republicans were giving so much time to a publicity stunt, rather than the imminent government shutdown.
If the two major parties in Washington can’t agree on a funding bill before the weekend, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will not be allowed to go to work.
But it’s not all bad news for the press – the president did say there were some journalists he respects.
The Republicans just seemed to be chuffed that their site got so much attention.
Well, it wouldn’t be awards season without a little bit of chaos.
