OPINION

The Heckler Awards, Part 5 – The Continued Celebration of the Bottom of Journalism in 2025

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Dec 31, 2025
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

We conclude the handing out of our honors for the worst seen in the journalism industry in 2025 — The Heckler Awards!

In this installment, we continue delivering honors involving the categories we cover in our daily column “Riffed From the Headlines.” These are the recurring actions seen in the press as they deviate from journalism ethics on the regular. For each category, we compiled the final nominees and declared the winner. It has been a rough process of winnowing down the copious examples collected, but we have come up with the exemplary performances in each instance.

Heckler Awards Pt. 1      Heckler Awards Pt. 2      Heckler Awards Pt. 3      Heckler Awards Pt. 4

Honorees are vying for our illustrious pyrite-plated trophy featuring our trademarked back-row popcorn tosser, encrusted with nylon faux-marble, ensconced on a base of crafted domestic pressboard, and a high gloss coat of Onyx Krylon. The judges have turned in the batch of envelopes and are currently recuperating with prescribed pork shoulder doses and a bourbon IV drip. So, with ceremonial introductions aside, let us commence with the pageantry of awarding The Hecklers!

RACE TO THE BOTTOM  (Injecting Racial Issues in Ignorant Fashion)

  • Abby Phillip — CNN: On one of her roundtable octagon sessions, the hostess allowed ignorance to prosper as Ashley Allison, a former Biden administration advisor, suggested sending white South African farmers “back to Germany.” Given that the majority of them are native born and their lineage hailed from the Netherlands was a small overlooked detail, we have to guess. 

  • Gustavo Arellano — Los Angeles Times: After the Alex Padilla melodrama erupted, this commentator suggested the only reason he was “manhandled” at the event was for being Mexican. Given that Padilla is an American-born citizen makes this a curious claim.

  • Nick Viviani — WPEC Channel 12 West Palm Beach: Governor Ron DeSantis created a state department operating like DOGE, calling it the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, or FAFO. The local station dubbed this acronym racist. How? Because at some point the Proud Boys had used this as a tagline, so naturally…

  • Robert Scoop Jackson — Chicago Sun Times: Joining in the hysteria over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish being left out of the college football playoff seedings, Jackson offered up his theory why: The team has a black head coach. (Small matter that the same coach brought that same team to the same playoffs one year earlier.)

WINNER

Eddie Glaude — MSNBC

When the Los Angeles Riots were playing out, Professor Glaude saw a problem: This was a national issue that did not involve blacks. If that is the case, then there is nothing for the one-trick pony Glaude to comment on, after all. So he crafted a red-string conspiracy wall theory, one that suggested ICE agents enforcing border laws are on the exact same level as slave catchers from the 1800s. Then he says this current practice allows Trump supporters to be racist. There! Now he’s justified!

GLOSSARY OVER THINGS (Using Invented Terminology to Sell a Narrative)

  • Jordan King — Newsweek: The desperate need to spin illegal aliens into a more legal-sounding category, Newsweek tries to go with “Unauthorized citizens.”

  • John Allen — CBS News: When choosing a new Pope, the Cardinals went sequestered in the Conclave, and had to forego phones and other tech devices while commiserating. Or, as Allen says, they were “raw dogging it” in the Vatican.

  • Becky Worley — Good Morning America: They spotlighted the new segment of the family for Pride Month: “Guncles.”

  • Ashley Fike — Vice News: Women are said to be done with dating, because they are fed up with men having emotions, and stuff. What most adults refer to as “being in a relationship,” today’s women are apparently upset at tending to a partner, and have dubbed this oppressive condition as “Mankeeping.”

WINNER

Jason Abbruzzese and Rob Wile — NBC News

There is an emerging offensive term out there, an epithet that is seen as problematic. It is “Clankers,” a slur used against – robots. The term can be applied to any technology, such as self-driving cars, delivery drones, AI customer service, etc. It is said there is a growing number of people who “harass robots.” The next step will be automatons who will make use of the word as toxic, and claim that “that is our word, you cannot use it!”

DEMO-LITION PROJECT (Measuring the Drops in Media Popularity)

  • MSNBC: In May, after the network shuffled much of its broadcast schedule, The Weeknight at 7:00 pm managed to deliver lower numbers than the consistently bad ratings from Joy Reid. After Trump’s 100 days in office, Rachel Maddow backed down to one day a week, and Jen Psaki, replacing her, delivered a 40 percent drop in audience.

  • CNN: The network rolled out a new premium service in October (its third attempt to get into the streaming environment in the past few years). Somehow, they are expecting people to pay for a service that many are not watching on the free network, as their audience figures are double-digits lower than 2024 enemic ratings.

  • CBS News: When Norah O’Donnell left the CBS Evening News desk late last year, she was replaced by the duo of Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson. After just three weeks from its debut, the network wanted to revamp things to halt the sliding ratings.

  • Jake Tapper — CNN: Following the much-hyped book release “Original Sin,” Tapper seemed to suffer a loss in credibility. Despite appearing all across the news sphere promoting the book, his ratings in May plunged by 25 percent, hitting a decade low average.

WINNER

CNN

While CNN numbers have been gradually eroding from already low levels, Fox News has held steady and even grown in some parts of the schedule. The starkness was seen when, on select days, the audience for just one show — The Five — was greater than the combined audiences for all of CNN’s programming from the 4:00 pm hour through midnight. Just…Damn!

THEORY OVER ACTIVITY (Creating News Based on Things That Might Occur)

  • Jim Acosta — CNN: Fretting over the pardons President Trump made for January 6 convictions, he speculated whether the president should be on the hook if any of those released committed a crime.

  • Ali Bianco, Isa Dominguez — Politico: The guesswork is that when ICE was targeting Tren de Aragua members, it would lead to deporting all Venezuelan immigrants.

  • Joe Heim, Fritz Hahn, Hannah Sampson, Sophia Solano — Washington Post: For the summer Pride event in D.C., the quartet of reporters filled their article with nothing but speculative words, all to suggest President Trump “may” inspire negativity for “some” folks, as there is anxiety “for many” attendees.

  • Chaz Danner — The Intelligencer: The day the president was seen on the roof of the White House, it amused most. Mr. Danner decided to explore what it all means!

WINNER

Brian Stelter — CNN

Stelter was deeply invested in a lawsuit coming up with Newsmax, and what it could lead to as far as the reputation of the network in the aftermath. Curiously, we saw no such exploration regarding the fortunes of NBC News, which had actually just settled an identical lawsuit.

BODY CHECKING THE FACT-CHECKERS  (When the Truth Detectors Cannot Resort to Facts)

  • Miles Klee — Rolling Stone: After the State of the Union Address, many in the media jumped on the comments President Trump made regarding studies involving transgender mice. Mr. Klee implied that Trump buggered this by confusing “transgenic mice,” which are commonly used, and declared this to be misinformation rooted in idiocy. Small problem, however; no, wait — make that a HUGE problem for the journalist. He was the one who fumbled, because he stopped searching when he saw that term. It was quickly shown that several universities were conducting studies on transgender mice.

  • Maria Ramirez Uribe — PolitiFact: Call it a preemptive fact-check. The site ruled he was MOSTLY FALSE on his claims of negative net migration taking place, but in proving him wrong, they ruled he was “premature” and “too early to tell.”

  • Pamela Brown — CNN: During a speech by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Ms. Brown cut his feed to address the topic and give a fact-check in real time. Johnson had to take to social media to take her to the woodshed and show that she had been entirely incorrect.

  • Daniel Dale — CNN: When Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez conducted a town hall, they delivered several glaring inaccuracies. (Jeff Bezos owns Twitter?!) Curiously, the network’s resident fact-checker was nowhere to be found correcting the record.

Winner

Maria Ramirez Uribe — PolitiFact

Ms. Uribe declared that President Trump's statement that non-residents have a different set of standards for due process was completely FALSE. Then she turned to an immigration legal expert, who clarified that the standards for immigrants have alterations. Then, after declaring the president FALSE on the matter, Ms. Uribe had a sub-section entitled, “How Do Due Process Rights Differ for Noncitizens?”

Unreal…

FIRST AMENDMENT STRIKE FORCE (When the Press Is Actually in Favor of Limiting Free Speech)

  • Felix Salmon — Axios: Fretted that President Trump and Elon Musk were making it possible for CEOs to say whatever they want.

  • Brian Stelter — CNN: With fact-checkers removed from Facebook, Brian was fretting that the people who turn a profit off of silencing people would be out of work.

  • Governor Gavin Newsom: Our own Larry O’Connor was amazingly hit with a copyright infringement claim by the governor, because Larry was using clips from the governor’s address to the citizens. 

  • Google: The company admitted that it had spent years silencing and demonitizing accounts on YouTube, and put out the offer to reinstate those it had taken down.

WINNER

Sharyn Alfonsi — CBS News

In a perplexingly supportive news segment, Alfonsi covered how Germany was ramping up speech laws and even jailing people for posting what is deemed misinformation. This was not a critical presentation, but making it sound as if this was sound social management.

ARTISANALLY-CRAFTED NARRATIVES  (When the Press Weaves Particular Storylines Apart From the Straight Facts)

  • Stephanie Ruhle — MSNBC: After Governor Greg Abbott signed an anti-DEI law, the pundit commented about wheelchair-accessible buildings. We are not clear if she thinks DEI and the Americans with Disabilities Act are the same, or if she thinks the “D” in DEI stands for disabilities.

  • Yasmin Tayag — The Atlantic: President Trump was blamed for breaking breakfast. It has something or other to do with climate change, but seriously — why would you be curious beyond that headline?

  • Jessica Hill, Ricardo Torrez-Cortez — Las Vegas Review Journal: The paper was deeply concerned that some Honduran or Nicaraguan residents could lose their “temporary” immigration status…after 25 years in this country.

  • Ryan Nobles, Melanie Zanona — NBC News: The investigation duo felt that they unearthed a scandal when they said the lead investigator into the Autopen scandal, James Comer, was found to have used a digital signature software program on documents. (To help the journalists out: Only verified individuals can use the digital signature, while the Autopen issue is not being able to tell who used the device.)

WINNER

Dana Bash — CNN

With the Signal scandal being all the rage, CNN used an AI program to vocalize the text conversations.

BOTH KINDS OF STANDARDS (The Fluid Application of Rules Based on the Political Party)

  • Jack Revell — The Daily Beast: In January, Elon Musk was accused of giving a Nazi “Heil” salute when he grabbed his heart and then gestured to the crowd. The press repeated this canard wildly. But when Cory Booker made the exact same gesture, there was The Beast claiming that “MAGA Melts Down” over Booker’s move.

  • Orlando Mayorquín, Livia Albeck-Ripka,  Mimi Dwyer — The New York Times: Just a quick reminder that it was The New York Times that made Samuel Alito flying the Appeal To Heaven flag outside his home a controversial act. But while the L.A. riots were in full swing, it declared waving the Mexican flag in this country was a passionate act.

  • Jake Tapper — CNN: Unsurprisingly, Jake dictated that Democrat-run states that gerrymander are not as bad as the GOP-run states doing it.

  • Late Night Hosts: While all the wailing was taking place, accusing Trump of silencing comedians, there was a reminder that every single late-night host had cheered when Trump had been removed from social media.

WINNER

Lisa Rubin — MS NOW

In an amazing display of sheer obliviousness, MS NOW’s legal expert had stated firmly that seeing Trump pictured with females whose faces were blacked out meant he was posing with minors, or victims of Jeffrey Epstein. (The photo was taken with adult women at a public event.) Then, just one week later, when seeing photos of Bill Clinton in a hot tub with women whose faces were obscured, she defended it. Rubin stated we had no idea who the women were, what the location was, and that the photo lacked proper context.

CONGRATULATIONS GO OUT TO ALL OF OUR "WINNERS"!