Fact-checking Donald Trump's fake news awards
The list of "fake news" winners released by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party on Thursday is mainly a tally of reported mistakes about the president and his administration.
Many of the offending journalists and organizations had already acknowledged and corrected their errors. In some cases, there were disciplinary actions.
It is fitting, however, that the final winner is for general reporting about "Russia collusion." The investigations remain under way, and Trump recently became the first two-time winner of PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for saying that the whole Russia story was a myth invented by frustrated Democrats.
The awards announcement by the Republican National Committee actually has two parts. The first focuses on what the media got wrong, and the second discusses Trump accomplishments that the GOP says got short shrift from the media.
At PolitiFact, we know a bit about fake news, which we define as intentionally manipulated information (and not, as Trump sees it, critical coverage he does not like or mainstream media reporting errors). We’ve debunked literally hundreds of dodgy ersatz news articles that get passed around on the web.
So here is a fact-checkers’ take on the Fake News Awards.
1. "The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover."
