(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) ABC News anchor David Muir is not having a good week as the viewership of his daily show has declined following his anti-Donald Trump performance as host of the Sept. 10 presidential debate.
Muir’s World News Tonight had an average viewership of 6.7 million in the three days following the debate, a staggering 12% drop from 7.6 million the previous week, Fox News reported on Tuesday.
The notable drop followed Muir and his colleague Linsey Davis facing widespread criticism for their relentless, and at times inaccurate, fact-checking of President Donald Trump during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris made at least 25 false claims throughout the debate, according to a report by The Federalist. Her false claims included misleading statements about her upbringing and revising her stance on a fracking ban.
But Muir and Davis couldn’t have cared less for Harris’s demonstrably false claims, exclusively targeting Trump with at least five fact-checks.
Fox noted that it was not clear if the decline in viewership was directly tied to the backlash from the debate. However, Trump made it clear that he disavowed the network, even calling for its license to be revoked.
During a September 13 interview on Fox News @ Night, Trump commented on Harris’s lies: “Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I’ve lost a lot of respect for. Everyone’s lost respect for him. It was so … one-sided. It was one against three.”
The biased fact-checking wasn’t surprising, as a Media Research Center (MRC) study found that Muir’s coverage of Harris was 100% positive, while his coverage of Trump remained 93% negative.
“Our analysts found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none. That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President,” the MRC found.
“As for Trump, our analysts found just five clearly positive comments, vs. 66 negative statements, for a dismal 7 percent positive (93% negative) spin score,” the conservative media watchdog added.
CNN's debate moderator continuously gave Kamala positive coverage https://t.co/I0KqKck5fc
— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) September 15, 2024
Muir did not return Headline USA’s request for an interview before the publication of this piece. Pons Rongavilla, a Disney spokesperson for viewership and ratings, did not immediately respond to Headline USA’s request for comment on the viewership decline.
