Technically it’s not meant to be a positive thing - just a neutral acknowledgement of a topic’s media dominance for that year, but yeah, The phrase “X of the year” is so universally understood to be positive that even with the reminder that it’s not an award, it still feels like an award.
After Hitler, Stalin, Nixon and Trump: let’s take the meaninglessness of this reward to its logical conclusion.
Technically it’s not meant to be a positive thing - just a neutral acknowledgement of a topic’s media dominance for that year, but yeah, The phrase “X of the year” is so universally understood to be positive that even with the reminder that it’s not an award, it still feels like an award.