WASHINGTON -- ABC's John Parkinson, chair of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association, Wednesday called on presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to restore immediately the press credentials his campaign pulled from The Washington Post over a headline and story the candidate took issue with.

Parkinson was speaking at RTCA's annual congressional correspondents dinner here, or as keynote speaker Ohio Governor John Kasich called it after three of the night's four awards went to ABC newsers: "The ABC Awards show."

"Talk about fair and balanced," Kasich quipped.

Taking home the Joan Barone Award for D.C.-based national affairs, public policy coverage was ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. ABC News’s senior operations producer Peter Doherty was given the Jerry Thompson Memorial award for efforts "above and beyond" in service of the public's right to know, and ABC's retiring Dennis Dunlavey, who has directed D.C. coverage, received the Career Achievement Award.

Rounding out the awards, and the only non-ABC winner, was BBC International correspondent Ian Pannell, who got the David Bloom Award for excellence in enterprise reporting.

Kasich joked about the credential issue.

"I've picked up the angst here about press credentials," he said. "You mention that word, and everybody gets upset. In my campaign, we paid people to take press credentials so somebody would show up every once in a while."

The presidential campaign was a constant subtext of the RTCA event -- the group has officially asked the Trump campaign to restore the Post's credentials -- from the applause for Parkinson's call for immediate action, to Kasich's reference, to Dunlavey's acceptance speech.

Pointing out that he was already "mostly" retired, Dunlavey said he would have to rely on the journalists in the audience, as Americans are doing, to "make sense of this peculiar election campaign, and to make sense of it all."

"It is going to be a long campaign, and we are counting on you not to grow weary of separating facts from fiction, not to become immune to outrage," Dunlavey said. "It is going to be a long five-and-half months. Don't get tired of holding people accountable who feel they don't need to be held accountable... When does objectivity require a little less equivalence and a little more truth?"

Citing the musical Hamilton, he ended his remarks with "History has its eyes on you."

WASHINGTON — Fox News Channel has confirmed that its March 21 Republican Presidential Candidate Debate from Salt Lake City, Utah, has been canceled due to the pullout of two of the three remaining candidates.

"On Feb. 20, the Republican National Committee announced that a GOP presidential primary debate would be held on March 21 in Salt Lake City," 
said Michael Clemente, EVP, news, for FNC, in a statement. "They offered that debate to Fox News Channel to host, provided there were enough candidates actively campaigning.

[SEE RELATED STORY: Donald Trump makes the morning talk-show rounds, says "there could be riots" in Cleveland at GOP convention.]

"This morning, Donald Trump announced he would not be participating in the debate," said Clemente, which set the dominos in motion. "Shortly afterward, John Kasich's campaign announced that without Trump at the debate, Kasich would not participate. Ted Cruz has expressed a willingness to debate Trump or Kasich — or both. But obviously, there needs to be more than one participant. So the Salt Lake City debate is cancelled."

The debate was to have aired on the eve of the Utah and Arizona primaries and hosted by Fox News's same trio of moderators, Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who had hosted the three previous FNC GOP debates.

Those three debates have been the three highest-rated programs of any type in Fox News’s history, topped by the first debate on Aug. 6 with 24 million viewers.

The debate was still on the RNC's list at press time, but with sponsors "TBD." Now make that "not TBD."

WASHINGTON — Free Press Action Fund released a 2016 Internet Voter Guide Monday (March 14) providing its take on the candidates views on the issues the net neutrality fan says are most important to Internet voters.

Nobody got particularly high marks on the issue of encryption, with free press saying no candidate has backed "strong, pro-consumer" measures.

"Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio have all challenged Apple’s right to protect the security of its users, and both Democratic candidates vaguely advocated for both parties to work together for a solution," Free Press said. For its part, the group has backed protests of the FBI's legal effort to get Apple to help it access info on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

The guide also out, for example, that Hillary Clinton in 2015 wrote a piece in support of the FCC's preemption of state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts, while Ted Cruz wrote the FCC claiming it was a threat to states rights

Other takeaways:

• "While more than 34 million Americans lack truly high-speed Internet at home, Donald Trump and Cruz have been silent on the issue and Gov. John Kasich has suggested that consumers are to blame for high broadband prices. In the Republican field, only Rubio has backed legislation to expand affordable Wi-Fi deployment and further use of unlicensed spectrum for Internet access.

• "Though three-quarters of Americans have either no broadband or no choice of Internet service providers, Cruz and Rubio oppose community broadband networks, which give local businesses and residents alternative options for high-speed Internet access. Neither Trump nor Kasich have articulated positions on the issue.

• "Cruz was one of only four Republicans to sponsor the USA Freedom Act, which curbs some of the government’s mass surveillance powers, and Kasich agreed that it was a “step forward.” When Secretary Hillary Clinton was in the Senate, she cast votes that enabled NSA mass surveillance but has since called on the NSA to be more transparent. Sen. Bernie Sanders has opposed the Patriot Act and stated that he would 'absolutely' end sweeping NSA surveillance. Trump and Rubio are both in favor of government spying on Americans.

• "Cruz, Rubio and Trump all oppose the Net Neutrality protections that millions of Americans fought for: All three Republican contenders have come out against the FCC’s open Internet rules. Both Democratic candidates have advocated for enforcing strong Net Neutrality rules."