Mediaite is repoting that at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, after the morning shows wrapped up, CNN Newsroom opened with President Donald Trump‘s latest tweets about Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom he allegedly had an affair.
Fox News, meanwhile, opened its 9 a.m. news hour with a report on North Korea, before focusing on the latest from Syria: chemical weapons inspectors onsite to investigate the alleged attack in Douma were delayed after a United Nations security team was fired upon. The April 7 attack, which the U.S. claims was carried out by Bashar al-Assad‘s Syrian forces, killed at least 40 people and wounded hundreds in a town near Damascus. Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors were dispatched to the region to investigate, but shootings and explosions hindered their access to the sight.
Meanwhile, Daniels — the porn star who claims to have had sex with Donald Trump in 2006 and is now suing the president to void a nondisclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election to keep quiet about the affair — also remains in the news. She and camera-friendly lawyer Michael Avenatti crashed Michael Cohen‘s Manhattan court hearing Monday, and the pair appeared on The View Tuesday.
There, they revealed a composite sketch of the man who allegedly threatened her in 2011 not to reveal details of the affair to a magazine.
Aidan McLaughklin at Mediaite notes as stunning as it is that the president is being sued by a porn star who claims he paid her $130,000 weeks before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence over their Tahoe romp — the story has been covered ad nauseam. Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, has revealed all she knows about her relationship with Trump. Pending any developments regarding the potential violation of campaign finance laws, what we now have is a simple civil lawsuit.
On the other hand, chemical weapons inspectors failing to reach Douma in Syria — and the implications of a delay in their assessments — is serious, consequential news.
In the last 48 hours, there were 124 mentions of “Syria” on Fox News, according to a transcript search on media monitoring website TVEyes. That’s compared to 63 mentions on CNN and 80 mentions on MSNBC.
In that same time, there were 56 mentions of “Stormy” on Fox News, compared to 116 on CNN and 125 on MSNBC.
Critics of Fox News are fond of arguing that its opinion coverage undermines its authority as a news outlet. But in the past 48 hours FNC has its news sights trained on a serious international crisis, while its competitors seem mired in the sensationalism of the Stormy Daniels saga.
The Stormy Daniels appearance boosted The View ratings Tuesday. The daytime talk show averaged 3.34 million total viewers, 554K women 25-54 and 351K women 18-49 on Tuesday in Live+Same Day stats. That’s the show’s most watched episode in three months and its most watched Tuesday in 15 months.
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