Trump's 'Fake News Awards' don't move needle on media stocks

Wednesday night, President Donald Trump released his "Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards," listing the eleven "winners" of the awards. On January 7, Trump tweeted about the awards, stating, "The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!" MEDIA MENTIONED: A number of news outlets were mentioned in the awards, including the New York Times (NYT), which was mentioned twice and won the top award for Paul Krugman's claim that the economy would never recover from a Trump presidency; Time Warner's (TWX) CNN, which was mentioned four times; Disney's (DIS) ABC News, which was mentioned for Brian Ross's "false report" on Russia; and Time (TIME), which reported that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office. Note that Time is being acquired by Meredith Corporation (MDP), but the deal has not yet closed. Also mentioned were privately held Newsweek, which is owned by IBT Media, and the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. REBUTTAL: In an article on Thursday morning, the New York Times noted that Krugman's article was an opinion piece, and not a news article, and that three days later Krugman retracted the prediction as an overreaction. The Times added, speaking of the awards, "The content of the 11-point list was perhaps less notable than its premise: a sitting president using his bully pulpit for a semi-formalized attack on the free press." LACK OF IMPACT: In late morning trading, New York Times and Disney were down fractionally, Time Warner was flat, and Time was fractionally higher. Other publicly traded companies in the media space include McClatchy (MNI), News Corp (NWS, NWSA), Tegna (TGNA) and tronc (TRNC). Reference Link