About

The CIA Award for Excellence in Journalism is a tongue-in-cheek name and slang expression for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly killing off journalists who uncover too much public-sensitive information. Referencing the suspicious suicide of investigative journalist Gary Webb and the murder of activist Fred Hampton, the joke and catchphrase achieved prominence online following a viral 2020 tweet.

Origin

On July 23rd, 2020, X^[1] / Twitter user @postXamerica wrote, "The highest honor in journalism is being murdered by the CIA," with the post collecting over 9,000 reposts and 81,500 likes prior to being removed. The post likely referenced Gary Webb,^[2] an American investigative journalist known for his investigation of CIA's involvement in the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles in the 1990s, and whose death from two gunshot wounds in 2004 was ruled as suicide.

Spread

In the following months, the post saw further spread, including a July 27th repost on iFunny^[3] that gained over 69,000 smiles in three years, which led to popularization of the joke online. On August 30th, 2020, X^[4] user @EJFoody posted the earliest found meme building up on the joke, which received over 3,300 reposts and 9,700 likes in three years.

The catchphrase went viral online in November 2020 after on November 13th, 2020, Redditor catras_new_haircut posted an I Would Like to Award You the Highest Honor I Can Bestow meme based on it that received over 36,900 upvotes in /r/HistoryMemes in six months (shown below, left). On December 6th, 2020, X user @roun_sa_ville posted an image macro in which a picture of two bullets was captioned, "The CIA Award for Excellence in Journalism." The post (shown below, right) received over 6,200 reposts and 63,000 likes in three years.

The meme maintained its online presence in the following years, appearing as a caption in formats such as Slow Motion Gun Animations.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References