To recognize the breadth of this journalism implosion that we cover daily in the “Riffed From the Headlines” column we are awarding an honorarium dubbed "The Heckler Awards." The flood of media malpractice was so extensive we can deliver the (dis)honors seen in the press in four stages: Industry-wide issues, independent examples of notoriety, and then the final two parts covering the categories seen in the column.
In this, the third installment we start digging into the categories involving the outlets or named journalists. In each category we have the nominees, with the winner highlighted. Let’s get to handing out the trophies to the degraded news sources or news makers from the past last year.
Heckler Awards Pt. 1 - Media Trends
Heckler Awards Pt. 2 -- Individual Special (dis)Honors
Heckler Awards Pt. 3 -- The Individual Categories
HOAX & CHANGE - Instances of the press entertaining wild claims
A story brewing in Canada for three years was the claim that government-backed Catholic churches had buried large amounts of indigenous children in a mass grave. The facts now emerge that all that had been found was a community burial plot.
Joe Biden repeats the long-debunked “suckers and losers” canard, and Mary Bruce repeats Joe repeating it.
After the SCOTUS ruling regarding immunity for a sitting president, Jake Tapper interpreted this to mean a president can now commit murder without punishment.
At The Daily Beast the claim was made that Trump is listening to orders from Russia. They arrived at this conclusion by…listening to Russian television broadcasts.
WINNER - VARIOUS OUTLETS
In the weeks following the election disgruntled media members have grown increasingly angry at Elon Musk. First it had been to blame him for Trump’s reelection, but now it has morphed to saying his involvement in the transition and budget battles means he is now the acting president. This defies the past claims these same fevered brains have made, that Trump is an autonomous tyrant, and also that he is controlled by Putin.
GLOSSARY OVER THINGS - Using creative language to push a narrative
When yet another illegal immigrant was picked up for murder, local station WPRI channel-12 referred to him as someone “unlawfully present” in this country.
In a gushing piece after covering a rally for Harris, Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times shamelessly referred to support for the candidate is a “Kamala-nomenon.”
A columnist for Newsweek detailed her exploits of foregoing clinical methods to conceive a child and instead taking the unregulated freelance route. Her method of getting pregnant by sleeping around with men is dubbed “Off-The-Grid Insemination”.
The court case brought against Donald Trump in New York was nothing less than a circus, with previously discredited witnesses Stormy Daniels and the prior perjurer Michael Cohen taking the stand. Cohen further discredited himself when he accidentally revealed that he had embezzled from Trump. In covering this development, the sympathetic Lawrence O’Donnell explained that Cohen merely was “Trying to rebalance” a bonus he felt he had coming to him.
WINNER - COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
This authority on the media gave the members of the press permission to either avoid reporting objectively on Donald Trump, or to criticize any outlets doing so, by accusing this responsible act of journalism as “sane washing” Trump’s assumed crazed condition.
By @Jon_Allsop: "Is the press ‘sanewashing’ @realDonaldTrump?" https://t.co/irKW1WvJA6 via @cjr
— Fred Sternburg (@TooFred) September 9, 2024
GILDED REFRAME - The unsubtle changing of a prior position
It took the Washington Post 2½ years to get around to admitting its past defense of Dr. Anthony Fauci involved with experiments on beagle puppies had been proven incorrect, as he has now been proven to have backed those studies.
On the PBS NewsHour coverage of the Democratic National Convention, Judy Woodruff had to go live to recant her past comments that Donald Trump had brokered a deal with Netanyahu to delay a ceasefire with Hamas in order to hurt the image of Joe Biden.
At Axios, media reporter Sarah Fischer had a big story about how the Harris Campaign was running campaign ads with fraudulent headlines from major news outlets. This was significant, especially as the press was flush with reports about misinformation and how it affects elections. Then quickly Fischer came out to almost discredit her piece, saying there was nothing wrong with this act, and Google did not consider it a violation.
When the problematic stories of Pete Hegseth drinking while at Fox News had been circulating, Brian Stelter moaned that for his first book on that network he had an anonymous source telling him similar details. He regrets now not having included that nugget he had previously considered unreputable.
Recommended
WINNER - Caroline Kitchener, WASHINGTON POST
As staffers at The Washington Post railed against their own publication over the lack of making a presidential endorsement, they failed to look ahead at the reactions from readers. The outbursts had provoked many people to go ahead and cancel subscriptions, with the bleating staff now recognizing they inspired a dire result, with one reporter noting that her own mother cancelled her subscription to her daughter’s paper.
My mom just told me she cancelled her subscription to The Washington Post. She reads every one of my stories. It was a heartbreaking call.
— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) October 26, 2024
I understand why she did it, but I asked her to reconsider. To anyone who has cancelled or is thinking about cancelling, here’s what I said:
1st AMENDMENT STRIKE FORCE - When members of the industry based on free expression look to trample free expression
After a former editor at NPR exposed the network’s heavily left-leaning bias, some past comments made by the new network CEO, Katherine Maher began to surface. In one interview she is heard declaring that in the fight against misinformation her biggest obstacle is the 1st Amendment.
The Globe And Mail put forth the theory that excessive free speech will only lead to more Donald Trumps to emerge.
Cleve Wootson at the Washington Post actually asked Karine Jean-Pierre if Joe Biden had any intention of working to stop misinformation from spreading on social media.
Tucker Carlson exposed an effort by the New York Times, working with Media Matters, to pressure Google to limit accounts on YouTube it declares was putting out misinformation. After listing off well over 200 examples the platform responded that none of those constituted a violation of policy.
WINNER - THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
Amid all the mewling in the media about the press about how Trump is promised to target journalists and possibly jail those he disagrees with, no one at the same time seemed at all bothered by the fact that Biden’s DOJ arrested journalist Steve Baker, from The Blaze, for recording events during the January 6 riots.
Blaze Media Investigative Journalist @TPC4USA has now been taken into FBI custody for his J6 reporting
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 1, 2024
Watch: pic.twitter.com/OF9WVh26ER
DNC PR FIRM – Sycophantic coverage of the preferred party of the press
On the NPR program “Left, Right, Center” host David Greene declared that if you did not place a vote for Joe Biden, you were casting a vote against democracy.
When Donald Trump was holding a campaign rally in New York City in the spring, the Democratic Party was lobbying local journalists – not to cover the rally in equal fashion, but to compel people to come out and protest against Trump.
At CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang slipped up and admitted that they have been following the lead of the Harris campaign by describing Trump and Vance as “weird” to take away from Trump’s impact.
Before stepping down, Joe Biden conducted two interviews with black radio stations, and later it was revealed that the DJs he spoke with had been fed specific questions to ask. In the aftermath one of the reporters lost her job as a result.
WINNER – Kelly O’Donnell, NBC NEWS
In a gushing report about Joe Biden reprising his visit to the Seth Myers late-night talk show, Ms. O’Donnell - who was at the time the president of the White House Correspondents Association - delivered the White House fluff spin, declaring that Biden’s visit on the show was a complete surprise to the audience. She said this, despite the fact that Biden showing up had already been announced, news of him spending the afternoon with Meyers ordering ice cream had come out, and that actress Amy Pohler was on the show, reprising the previous visit Biden made ahead of the previous election.
President Biden made an unannounced stop to surprise the audience at Late Night with Seth Meyers to celebrate the show's 10th anniversary.
— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) February 26, 2024
https://t.co/gDayxinZhA
DEMO-LITION PROJECT – When outlets drive away their audience
When Joe Biden sat for an interview with Jonathan Capehart, MSNBC saw miserable ratings numbers as it landed in third place for that airing.
Following the controversy that was the presidential debate, nightly news host David Muir saw his ratings tumble by -12%.
After the staff at the Washington Post turned belligerent over the lack of an election endorsement the outlet experienced hundreds of thousands of subscriber cancellations.
In the days after the election, the networks of MSNBC and CNN experienced around a drop in audience of -50%. This could not be chalked up to normal post-election lulls, as Fox News over that same period saw double-digit growth.
WINNERS – CNN / MSNBC
The slide for the two networks only continued, as numbers not seen in decades were experienced. By Thanksgiving both MSNBC and CNN were drawing audiences smaller than the Hallmark Christmas movies.
MSNBC and CNN Get More Coal in Their Stockings As Both Lose In the Ratings... to Christmas Movieshttps://t.co/RpIAHUrjbf
— RedState (@RedState) November 25, 2024
DEMOCRATIC CUSTODIAL SERVICES – When the press rides in to clean up messes for their preferred party.
As it was becoming clear that Tim Walz was suffering bad PR over his tampons-in-boys-restrooms school policies, Monica Hesse of the Washington Post tried to say that any boys providing tampons to female students in need of one would be considered studs in the school.
Following a hurricane hitting the state of Georgia, Scott MacFarlane tried to say that Trump visiting the area was not a welcomed presence. Scott had no residents on camera making such a statement, so just take his word on that. Mainly what was happening was Mac deflecting from the fact that Kamala was too busy at a fundraiser to visit the area, and Joe Biden was busy on yet another vacation at his Delaware beach.
In light of the story of Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes in Colorado, Martha Raddatz tried to counter J.D. Vance bringing up this detail by saying it was happening in only a handful of locations.
After the big dustup made from Joe Biden calling half the country “garbage” in response to a comedian making a joke about Puerto Rico, the press went into overdrive in order to sell the tepid spin from the White House. The claim made was that there was an apostrophe in Biden’s spoken comment, altering his intention to mean he was speaking about either one person, OR Trump supporters who repeated that joke. This was a completely desperate and partisan move in the press.
WINNER - Chuck Todd, NBC NEWS
On his personal podcast, when speaking with Politico’s Jonathan Martin after the Biden meltdown at the debate, Todd gave a revealing admission he may not have thought all the way through. He stated how he had been in talks with agency officials years ago about Biden’s sliding mental condition, something he never managed to report on in his line of work all that time.
Breaking down what Dems are really thinking behind the scenes with my longtime pal and Hotline alum @jmart https://t.co/K9f9aDx2QL
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) July 10, 2024
CRIMINAL FAMILY ALBUM – When the press tries creating a sympathetic character
Following the Daniel Penny not-guilty ruling, Rolling Stone saw fit to describe Jordan Neely, a man with a year- long criminal record with dozens of arrests, as a homeless man who was a Michael Jackson impersonator.
Following the deaths of teens in a rollover wreck that occurred during a police chase, the Daily Mail needed to paint the police in a bad light, for being responsible for the deaths of star athletes at the local school. Less focus was placed on the collection of convictions shared by the occupants, that some were wearing home-arrest ankle cuffs, and that the car rolled going 110 mph because they were eluding the police after stealing the SUV.
WINNER – THE WASHINGTON POST
The clear intent was to paint the police as overzealous in the shooting death of a black driver. The Post gives a highschool graduation photo of the victim, Dexter Reed, but gives less emphasis on how he attempted to hit police with his vehicle before opening fire on the cops. Also deemphasized was that Reed was not in highschool but was 26 years old at the time of the incident.
Newly released body-cam videos show plainclothes Chicago police officers shooting at Dexter Reed, 26. Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed a “transparent” investigation. https://t.co/zJlkDgpm4F
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 10, 2024
BOTH KINDS OF STANDARDS – When the press covers stories based on which party is involved
While the press was doing backflips to defend Harvard President Clauding Gay for plagiarizing her thesis papers, the Washington Post tried to make a scandal of former Rep. Mayra Flores allegedly stealing pictures of food from other websites.
Politico reported on the Harris campaign tweaking its biography of Tim Walz because of his false war record, but rather than accuse them of deception or stolen valor the problem was said to be a result of Republicans escalating attacks on the campaign – with…facts.
On MSNBC, William Cohan came on to complain that millionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman can use their influence to get on major platforms. Cohan is a millionaire. He has his own platform as a founder of Puck News.
When Donald Trump dared push back to Judge Merchan in his New York Case, the press loudly declared his criticisms, as well as those from any conservative media, constituted a threat to the norms of the judicial system and threatened our democracy. Of course, the press held no such concern when THEY leveled criticisms at the other judge in Florida with the other court case involving Trump.
WINNER – Jonathan Capehart, MSNBC
It was rather cute when the Democrats at their convention attempted to appropriate national pride from the Republicans. This was sheer desperation, after lengthy periods of the Dems and the press demonizing the wanton patriotism seen from conservatives. Capehart took it to even more ridiculous levels, saying when the GOP chants “USA-USA” it was exclusionary, but when the Dems did it that was beautiful and had an inclusive ring to it.
"For far too long, [the GOP] treated the flag, the word patriotism, and chants of USA as their own property...or so they would have everyone believe" @CapehartJ shares his thoughts after this week's DNC and how Democrats are ready to reclaim patriotism as their own #SaturdayShow pic.twitter.com/I2cpTrsv6y
— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) August 24, 2024
Ducking The Hard Truth – When fact checkers focus on the trivial instead of the Democrats
PolitiFact saw the need to correct the Babylon Bee joke saying Pete Buttigieg saw the collapse of a bridge in Baltimore as a blow against racism.
When J.D. Vance made a joke about the Democratic convention in Chicago meant that Tim Walz will finally visit a war zone, CNN’s Alayna Treene felt the need to correct by showing the site was selected before Walz was picked as Kamala’s running mate.
After Trump was attending an NFL game in Pittsburgh, Newsweek saw fit to inform us that despite Trump posting an image of himself in a Steelers uniform, he never did play in the NFL.
The New York Times attempted to correct a comment from RFK Jr. on food ingredients, but managed to show he was in fact correct, because the Times got the details about Froot Loops incorrect.
WINNER – Flynn Nicholls, NEWSWEEK
The manner that Trump causes distemper in the press never disappoints. When a social media post made a clearly gag AI image of the photo from the private jet with Trump and his famous entourage - declaring it to be eerily reflective of a painting from the 1700s - most laughed at the effort. But Mr. Nicholls sprang into action to say the supposed 400-year-old painting does NOT show the men on a plane, and that the artist Dietz Nuutzen does not seem to exist.
A post on social media claimed a work of art painted in 1721 foresaw the President-elect would have dinner on his plane with Elon Musk and RFK 303 years later https://t.co/lqjqsb8gbI
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 19, 2024
BODY CHECKING THE FACT CHECKERS – When facts elude the viscounts of verité’
When Joe Biden sat for an interview with CNN, and told a number of falsehoods, the network fact–checker Daniel Dale leaped into action – to deliver fact-checks on Donald Trump.
When Joe Biden was mocked after visiting some blue collar workers and wore one of their hard hats backwards, Snopes did hard work to dispel this claim. It led to the site having to go back and revise things to say he actually was shown wearing the hat wrong.
Glenn Kessler tries to dispel the notion that illegals bring in more crime, going so far as to say they have a lower crime rate. He ignores that 100% of them are in fact criminals for being in the country illegally.
Daniel Dale came on after Mike Waltz gave a speech at the GOP convention to say the Representative from Florida lied about Biden and electric tanks, and other details. Waltz came on their broadcast later to completely undress Dale - with hard facts.
WINNER - Todd Bensman, ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the attempt to disprove Donald Trump’s claim that Biden has secretly flown hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country, the AP seems to forget what debunking entails. While it stated that his comment was called false, the AP showed these flights were happening, confirmed that over 300,000 had been brought in last year. as for the claim the government was hiding these details, Bensman said he “doesn’t consider the program secretive, but finds it ‘enigmatic’ and lacking in transparency.”
Fact Focus: Claims Biden administration is secretly flying migrants into the country are unfounded https://t.co/9zTpMregoi
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 7, 2024
BLUE-ANON – Press conspiracies, from the press that claims to hate them
Rachel Maddow states that J.D. Vance naming his business after a Tolkein character proves that he is a White Supremacist.
Alex Wagner spun the odd claim that J.D. Vance having a family plot cemetery on their land somehow is a sign of racism and sexism.
Rachel Maddow declares that if he won the election Trump could be installed as president for life.
Maddow strained to make a connection to the United Healthcare CEO killer, and Donald Trump. Her effort: Trump appointed Blake Masters to head the ATF. Masters once made comments about Ted Kaczinski. Luigi Mangione once wrote a positive review of a book on the site Goodreads. That book was written by Kaczinski. BOOM - Trump is tied to the killer via the Unabomber!
WINNER – Joy Reid, MSNBC
In a truly unhinged rant regarding Invitro Fertilization the always logical Reid declares that a ruling in Alabama making fertilized embryos declared human is proof of…we are not sure what. Joy states that this ruling means the GOP says there are too many people here for immigration, but at the same they want more kids, and the reason is to use them as slave labor - despite slavery and child labor being illegal - and this is done to replace the migrant laborers. Which…means that Joy is arguing in favor of slavery, just not if it is child slavery. We guess…
"The U.S. has a population of 327 million people… why do we need more kids??"
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 26, 2024
Watch the entire clip. MSNBC's Joy Reid is clinically insane. This might be the most deranged rant I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/mjd7bU2VCW
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA – Press aggression seen on the social platforms
Taylor Lorenz was shown in a post in a pic from a White House event with Biden in the background and labeling the president a war criminal. After a number of conflicting excuses from the reporter it is believed this led to Lorenz leaving the paper a short while later.
After the rollout of Google’s AI generator Gemini was found to lean heavily on portraying historical figures as DEI individuals, Gizmodo described those pointing out the inaccuracies as anti-woke babies.
The Disney company was shamed when in a wrongful death lawsuit filed about one of its theme-parks their lawyers stated the company was exonerated because the victim was a subscriber to Disney Plus, and the terms of agreement state the company is cleared of wrongdoing in any of its divisions once you sign up.
After the Tom Brady Roast, ESPN producer Sam Bock turned into a male Karen and condemned anyone who might have laughed at any of the jokes.
WINNER – CNN
In a panel discussion on how Xitter allegedly has become the intolerant hotbed of conservatism, Scott Jennings stated that of the major social platforms, Xitter is the most diverse. When that comment received blowback, he had to inform the members of the CNN panel that the platform was shown to have a near equal balance of liberals and conservatives – as reported on CNN.
This is amazing obliviousness.
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) November 26, 2024
Once again Scott Jennings unravels @CNN leftists when he states that Xitter is a balanced forum of ideas. As they try to label him a crackpot he delivers a simple truth - CNN has reported Xitter users are almost perfectly balanced ideologically. pic.twitter.com/ixqZuCauCL
ARTISANALLY-CRAFTED NARRATIVES
NBC News says a prehistoric King Kong giant ape was killed off by climate change, at a time that predates the arrival of man. Whoops…
Since documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has covered American history, he feels this entitles him to speak on behalf of Abraham Lincoln and declare the 16th president would not approve of the Republican party today.
Jen Psaki tried to ridicule Trump for naming the Space Force after the Steve Carrell movie “Space Force”, which was a satirical film based on Trump’s space agency.
A Los Angeles Times columnist tries to sell the concept that all of the state’s problems are due to Democrat policies, and the fault for this lies with the Republicans because they are not good enough to defeat the Dems in elections.
WINNER – Shefali Luthra, TIME MAGAZINE
Look, we get that the temptation to demonize Ron DeSantis is strong, and the need to criticize abortion laws is pretty significant for the press. Combine those two realities, and you have a compulsory need to level full blast opposition. But to tell us that the oppressive DeSantis is so mean he is preventing MEN from getting abortions…well, you tend to lose the high ground you thought you had taken over on the issue.
If Jasper wanted an abortion, he had three weeks to make up his mind, raise the money, and schedule two appointments. He wished he’d had more time https://t.co/C8DLlghwMR
— TIME (@TIME) May 15, 2024
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