President Trump's Fake News Awards Leave Non-Winners Feeling 'Robbed'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his long-promised “Fake News Awards,” with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman topping the list of “the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media.”

However, the president’s intentions to attack the media clearly backfired, with the awards seemingly being coveted by news organizations as a badge of honor. Along these lines, those who were not on the list of winners claimed on social media they were robbed.

Trump took to Twitter to announce winners of his self-proclaimed awards and shared a link to the list put up on the GOP website. CNN took home four awards for their stories including one that said Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. received an email that gave them access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.

Other winners included ABC’s Brian Ross, TIME magazine, Washington Post, New York Times — that won two awards — and Newsweek (Newsweek is a part of Newsweek Media Group, which also owns International Business Times). Several names from the media industry took to Twitter to congratulate the winners, mocking the awards and Trump himself indirectly.

Meanwhile, many news organizations like Buzzfeed and Daily Beast expressed their unhappiness at not having won an award.

WikiLeaks also issued a comment saying:

In the end, the awards announcement noted "Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!"

They also cited what seemed to be a recent study by the conservative Media Research Center, that said "the media spent 90 percent of the time focused on negative coverage or fake news, the President has been getting results," according to the page. A list of accomplishments Trump frequently bragged about, in terms of job creation, economic growth etc., were also mentioned.

The declaration of the winners seemed quite anti-climactic in several ways. First, as soon as Trump shared the link to the GOP website, the site crashed immediately due to the incoming traffic. Social media users grabbed this opportunity to mock Trump.

Secondly, many were disappointed it was not a red carpet event. In fact, according to a report in the New York Times, news media joked about the speeches they would prepare in case of an event was taking place and decided on what they would be wearing to the red carpet. Similar sentiments were echoed by some on Twitter after the president’s announcement on the site.

Of course, there was also the usual brigade of Trump supporters who agreed with the president that the list of winners did indeed report fake news and congratulated him for calling them out.

The president did not stop with the announcing the winners. In the following couple of tweets, he said: “Despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, there are many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the American people to be proud of!”