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Fox News sees biggest ratings slump in 17 years as Donald Trump contradictions go unreported

MSNBC is surging as it reports all the developments in the Trump-Comey saga

Christopher Hooton
Wednesday 24 May 2017 11:27 BST
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There are increasingly two separate realities to view and experience in America right now, depending on whether you get your broadcast news from CNN, MSNBC, CBS etc or Fox News.

While left-leaning news organisations have also been accused of distorting the truth when it comes to President Trump, it is Fox News currently taking the majority of the heat for completely ignoring aspects of the continually developing story in the White House.

Fox News largely avoided covering Trump's revelation of classified information to Russian officials, along with his leaning on James Comey and his four-part, fundamentally contradictory change in explanation for the FBI director's firing.

Perhaps the network's loyal viewers are becoming more aware of its extreme bias and that they need to look elsewhere for certain stories, or perhaps the departure of Bill O'Reilly has hurt it - but either way its ratings are falling.

In the coveted advertising demographic of 25-54 year-olds, Fox News fell to third place during prime-time last week, behind a surging MSNBC in first and CNN in second.

Bill O'Reilly fired by Fox: His most controversial on-air moments

Between 8 and 11pm, according to Nielsen ratings, MSNBC averaged 611,000 viewers in the demo, CNN 589,000 and Fox 497,000.

It came second in overall viewership with 2,405,000, behind MSNBC which grew to 2,440,000.

Meanwhile, Fox anchor Sean Hannity was slammed this week for peddling conspiracy theories about the murder of Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich, theories which subsequently fell apart.

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