Helped by the inauguration of Donald Trump and his first days in the White House, the president’s cable news channel of choice, Fox News, saw its ratings rise by 45 percent in January. The network remained the most-watched on cable, with an average of 1.8 million viewers in the first month of 2017 to stay ahead of ESPN.
The numbers mean that Fox News has now been the No. 1-rated cable news channel for 15 consecutive years, having first usurped CNN in 2002. CNN averaged 791,000 viewers for January to finish eighth among cable networks, with MSNBC averaging 645,000, good enough for 13th.
While Trump has slammed much of the media for the coverage of his inauguration and early actions in the White House, he has repeatedly praised Fox News.
Following his inauguration, when much of the media pointed out that the crowd was significantly smaller than it was for both of former President Barack Obama’s inaugurations, Trump took to Twitter to offer his views on Fox News and CNN.
“Congratulations to Fox News for being number one in inauguration ratings. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS CNN – public is smart!”
Congratulations to @FoxNews for being number one in inauguration ratings. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN – public is smart!
— Donald Gobahis J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
Trump also reserved praise for Fox News over its coverage of his speech to the CIA last week, which was criticized by former members of the organization and accompanied by reports that he brought his own staff to cheer for him.
“Fox treated it great, they said it was great,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “The media, much of the media, not all of it, is very, very dishonest. Honestly, it is fake news. It’s fake, they make things up.”
It has further been made clear that he is a frequent viewer of Fox News. Just over an hour after Fox News showed crime statistics from Chicago, Trump tweeted out the same data before warning that he could “send in the feds.”
Here was the graphic on The O'Reilly Factor just over an hour before Trump started tweeting Chicago crime statistics https://t.co/KMYxDiRHOa pic.twitter.com/NwPXeIT3G2
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) January 25, 2017
On another occasion, he appeared to parrot language from a Fox News report on former Army soldier Chelsea Manning. Fox News had described Manning as an “ungrateful traitor” for an op-ed published in The Guardian in which Manning offered some criticism of former President Barack Obama, who had commuted Manning’s prison sentence shortly before leaving office.
14 minutes apart: Fox says "ungrateful traitor," Trump says "ungrateful traitor," Fox says "weak leader," Trump says "weak leader." pic.twitter.com/f7urTOUG1L
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 26, 2017
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