CNN misleadingly touted its Monday night town hall with Sen. Kamala Harris, who recently announced a 2020 bid, as the “most watched cable news single candidate election town hall ever.”
In a statement put out on Tuesday, CNN claimed it had shattered a cable news network record in the headline and again in the first sentence. The town hall, CNN said, averaged 1.957 million viewers according to Nielsen data.
However, just over two years ago, Fox News held a town hall with then-candidate Donald Trump getting 2.7 million viewers.
That town hall, hosted on in August 2016 by Sean Hannity, boosted his ratings by 32 percent at the time, according to Deadline Hollywood.
A number of outlets, including Mediaite, Politico, and also the Washington Examiner, have in the past 24 hours updated their initial stories on the CNN announcement to reflect accurately that CNN’s record was only a record for that network and not all of cable news.
CNN did not respond to a request for comment.
CNN’s press release did also note that the Harris town hall “averaged 712k among adults 25-54 from 10-11pm, easily topping all cable news competition.”
Harris announced last week that she was entering the 2020 race for president, and she launched her campaign with a rally in Oakland Sunday.
During the town hall, Harris said she wanted to eliminate private health insurance and switch it out for a single payer healthcare system where the government controls health insurance.
