Fox News may rarely live up to its motto "Fair and balanced", but it can now describe itself as America's "most trusted news channel". A poll of more than 1,000 registered voters found that 49 per cent trust Fox, compared to 39 per cent for CNN and just 31 per cent for ABC.

The poll will relieve some of the pressure on the president of Fox, Roger Ailes, whose position was called into question after Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law Matthew Freud launched an extraordinary broadside against the channel. Freud told the New York Times:"I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation . . . aspires to."

Freud views Fox as a grotesque rebuke to the British tradition of impartial broadcasting, but in the US the station is seen as a dynamic alternative to its more staid rivals.

That Fox should be the most trusted news channel is perhaps not surprising in a country where the right-wing Tea Party Nation is the most popular political grouping. Fox has vast appeal in a nation that is now far more ideologically polarised than Europe.

And so long as this remains the case, it's likely that Barack Obama will continue to haemorrhage support.

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