Are Trump’s ‘Failing Media’ Claims Correct? Fact-Check With App Data

President Donald Trump is quite vocal about his disdain for many media houses, labeling them “fake news” and “failing” often, with the latter most frequently used for the New York Times (NY Times), and some other print media. But it’s not like Trump hates all media; he clearly likes Fox News, retweeting its positive stories about him regularly on his personal Twitter account.

Since March 1, the president has mentioned Fox News or its shows at least 18 times on his own Twitter account, usually either citing a story to support a claim he made or to promote a story critical of Democrats, and in some cases, to ask people to watch an interview with him. He has called the network’s work “amazing reporting” and its ratings “much higher” than rivals like CNN.

In contrast, he mentioned the NY Times six times in the same period, with the adjective “failing” used in each reference. He also called NBC, ABC and CNN “fake news,” a term he uses liberally for stories critical of him and for publications he doesn’t agree with.

Read: New York Times’ 2016 Fourth Quarter Results

But are the print media targeted by Trump actually failing? A good yardstick to measure their success, or the lack of it, would be to look at how many readers they have and how much money they make.

App intelligence company Apptopia compiled mobile app data for the country’s four largest print media outlets — the Wall Street Journal, the NY Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times (LA Times).

As the data shows, the number of monthly downloads and monthly active users (MAU) has been rising in most months since April 2016 for both NY Times and the Post, another publication that has often been critical of Trump. The NY Times registered a 43.4 percent increase in its MAU and a 55.5 percent rise in the number of monthly downloads in 12 months. The corresponding figures were 53.2 percent and 87.6 percent for the Post, which started with a much smaller base compared to the NY Times.

When looking at the data for revenue generated through the apps, the NY Times made over $12 million in the 13 months from January 2016 to February 2017, while the Post made about $2.2 million in the same period. The figures in the chart have been divided into advertising revenue and money from in-app purchases.

With an increasing reader base and millions in revenue, the president’s claims of these publications being “failing” can perhaps only be seen as an “alternative fact.”