David Muir’s ‘World News Tonight’ viewership drops 12% following ABC presidential debate bias scandal

According to Fox News, the show averaged 6.7 million viewers on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which were the three episodes immediately following the debate. Before the debate, his show was averaging 7.6 million viewers.

While Muir’s show remains the number one broadcast evening newscast, the 12 percent drop in viewers is more than the slight declines seen for CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News when comparing the three episodes that aired after the debate.

Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis were criticized for fact-checking Trump on stage numerous times while not issuing any for Harris. The 2024 GOP presidential candidate said the debate "was one against three," adding that "every one" of Harris’ claims "should have been questioned by David Muir, who I've lost a lot of respect for. Everyone's lost respect for him."

Since the debate, Davis said in an interview that she had decided in advance to fact-check Trump due to the debate staged between him and President Joe Biden in June, which resulted in Biden dropping out of the race. "People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators," she said.

A post-debate poll from YouGov found that 35 percent of Americans believed that the moderators treated Trump unfairly, including 41 percent of independents, a key voting group to win over before November. Only two percent of independents thought that the moderators were unfair to Harris.