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President Donald Trump coined the term “fake news” years ago while duking it out in the political arena, and the term has stuck.
Now, many of America’s once-highly rated news organizations have sunk to surprisingly low viewership as U.S. citizens have generally begun to question what is true and what is not.
According to a new cable news ratings roundup from TVNewser, Fox News remains the “most watched basic cable network” on television, but it dropped to the second spot behind ESPN. The 1.69 million primetime viewer average represents a 17 percent drop from August, the outlet reported. They have also experienced a drop in total day viewers from this summer, as well.
Other cable news giants who took a hit with declining viewership since August were MSNBC (-31 percent primetime drop) and CNN (-24 percent primetime drop). According to the cable news ratings from Nielson, the total viewers for primetime viewership for CNN was 548,000 people.
CNN has seemingly taken harder hits in viewership than most networks lately, especially since the broadcasting giant announced that it would be closing down their CNN Headquarters in Georgia.
Per The Gateway Pundit, the CNN Center was based in Atlanta, but a significant portion of its operations had already moved to New York and Washington, D.C. It signals, perhaps, the shifting sands of news and media amid independent platforms like Elon Musk’s X, which have allowed former cable anchors like Tucker Carlson to host shows without being tied to a mainstream network.
Tucker Carlson, who was axed from Fox News earlier this year, has hit the ground running with his new show on X, which has hosted guests like President Donald Trump, Victor Davis Hanson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Bill O’Reilly, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), and Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei.
His interview with Milei, for example, has accrued 422.4 million views on X since posting it on Sept. 14, illustrating the rapid and shocking power of mass dissemination online in comparison to traditional cable news.
President Donald Trump has routinely attacked the legacy media for their coverage of himself, his past administration, and his current reelection bid. In 2022, he launched an independent social media network platform, Truth Social, aimed at giving conservative voices a chance to disseminate their own information.
He told RSBN’s Brian Glenn in February, “The media is fake. It’s corrupt. It’s bad – not all of it, but a lot of it; most of it.”
He added, “Truth Social’s been amazing…Truth Social’s been real media, it’s been real. And I get my word out very well through Truth.”
