Rachel Maddow

Once must-see TV for the left on all things Russia “collusion,” MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” has taken a ratings dive since the release of the special counsel report finding there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to influence the 2016 election.

To make matters worse, after finishing May with its worst ratings since Donald Trump took office, Maddow is faced with a Vanity Fair report that the New York Times has blocked its reporters from appearing on the show.

For the Times, it’s not about ratings, according to Vanity Fair, but because even the left-leaning paper thinks Maddow is too far to the left.

An insider from the Times’ newsroom told Fox News that Maddow’s extreme partisanship “rubs off” on any journalist who is too closely aligned to the far left.

“I do think Maddow, and others on MSNBC, have very strong opinions that affect their ability to tell stories in an accurate way sometimes,” the source said.

“You don’t get tainted just by appearing [on the show], but it’s better to err on the side of trying to maintain objectivity and caution.”

Maddow’s ratings have suffered since Attorney General Bill Barr’s letter summarizing Robert Mueller’s special counsel report was released on March 24, contradicting her nightly narrative.

She lost nearly 500,000 viewers for her first episode after the release of Barr’s letter. In April, she lost 13 percent of viewers. In May, she averaged 2.6 million, her worst month since Trump took office.

In contrast, during the first quarter of 2019, she averaged 3.1 million viewers.

Asked to react to the Vanity Fair story, a spokesman for MSNBC told Fox News that for more than a decade, the show “has welcomed the best journalists from across the country and celebrated the hard work they do, day-in and day-out.”

“This includes countless New York Times reporters and editors,” the spokesman said. “That commitment to journalism is part of the DNA of the show.”

CNN plunge

Meanwhile, noted Joseph Curl, writing for the Gateway Pundit, CNN’s prime-time ratings dropped 16 percent last month.

The network averaged just 761,000 prime-time viewers while its total viewers daily dropped to only 559,000 viewers.

Fox News, by comparison, averaged 2.3 million prime-time viewers and more than 1.3 million total day viewers.

Curl pointed out that CNN lately has fired several conservative contributors.

Last week, it dismissed former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli after he was reported to be in the running for a Department of Homeland Security post in the Trump administration. Economic analyst Stephen Moore was let go after Trump said he would nominate him to serve on the Federal Reserve Board.

After the release of the Mueller report, CNN’s prime-time ratings plummeted 26 percent from the same period in 2018.

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URL to article: http://www.wnd.com/2019/06/rachel-maddow-hit-with-1-2-punch-since-mueller-report/