Trump faces 'Fake News Awards' flak!

• The winners of the spoof awards also included ABC News, TIME and Newsweek.

US President Donald Trump has unveiled the winners of his so-called 'Fake News Awards' in a gimmick to escalate his attacks on major media outlets, with CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post leading the list.Trump sent out a tweet on Wednesday night with a link to the awards on the Republican Party website. The winners of the spoof awards also included ABC News, TIME and Newsweek.

The awards listed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as the top winner. "Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump's historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover," according to the GOP-hosted website.

Krugman's listing was contrasted with a headline that showed the Dow hitting a record high.

"2017 was a year of unrelenting bias, unfair news coverage, and even downright fake news. Studies have shown that over 90 per cent of the media's coverage of President Trump is negative," according to the GOP-hosted website.

The awards were unavailable immediately following Trump's tweet announcing them, from a traffic overload. "The site is temporarily offline," it read for nearly an hour after Trump sent out a tweet. CNN was blasted for "falsely" reporting that candidate Trump and his son Trump Jr had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks. CNN corrected that report in December.

Other entries included TIME's mistaken report about Martin Luther King Jr.'s bust being removed from the Oval Office, CNN's incorrect reporting on Trump "defiantly overfeeding fish during a visit with the Japanese Prime Minister" and about former White House communications director "Anthony Scaramucci's meeting with a Russian." Trump gave CNN 4 of his 11 "accolades" - more than any other outlet.

The list also mentioned the Washington Post for reporting that "the President's massive sold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida, was empty".