And the award for the number one fake news story of the year goes to … The New York Times’ Paul Krugman for his claim that the economy would never recover from President Donald Trump’s election victory. Wednesday evening, Trump released his much anticipated “Fake News Awards” on the GOP website, which quickly crashed due to high traffic volume. Clearly, a lot of Americans were eager to learn who had earned the dubious trophies. In announcing his awards, Trump also tweeted, “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!”

Trump highlighted 11 fake news stories that ranged from Twitter posts by reporters and misleading video edits to news stories from leading television and print media. After the release, The Washington Post sought to refute Trump’s claims via a “fact check” article in which they made the laughable argument that since the news stories were later corrected, they weren’t fake news. Front page news stories that are later corrected on page 12 has long been the practice of these major media outlets. If it’s front-page news and the paper gets it wrong, does not the retraction and/or correction deserve the same front-page coverage? That is, if news outlets are indeed concerned about reporting the truth rather than pushing a biased narrative. Bezos WaPo tabloid, is obviously more invested in the narrative.

Trump also noted that over 90% of MSM coverage of his presidency last year was negative. This statistic is supported by a new Media Research Center report, which found that not only was the vast majority of news coverage of Trump negative, he was also the most-covered story, with the major networks devoting approximately 34% of all their evening news airtime to him. In other words, he had a lot of source material for fake news.

Finally, there’s what the MSM essentially missed or, rather, simply ignored — the significant accomplishments of Trump’s first year. Very little coverage time, much less credit or recognition, was given to real progress, be it in the growing economy, the passage of massive tax cuts, success in war on terror with the Islamic State nearly decimated, the significant decrease in illegal immigration, or Trump’s impressive foreign policy achievements. In fact, only three months ever saw positive news coverage of Trump rise above 10%, and during those three months the negative coverage never dipped below 82%. Can anyone really blame Trump for calling out the Leftmedia’s bias and fake news?

The degeneration of these mainstream media outlets into Dem propaganda outlets poses a significant danger to Liberty, not just because of the fact the policies they advocate are an affront to Liberty, but because a credible media, and citizen confidence in that media, is an important check on the constitutional role of government.