Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, said while print and digital news media have mostly done a good job of lifting their gaze, cable news has struggled to escape a constant daily focus on Mueller and the Trump scandal.

“The Mueller investigation really boils down the partisan approach of cable news,” he said, with MSNBC on the left and conservative Fox News on the right.

“My own reading is that both sides are losing credibility – you can only tell me so many times that this is the beginning of the end and it not happen for me to start turning it off. And you can only dismiss things as nonsense so many times without me realising, ‘well you’re not paying attention to anything’.”

He said: “I do think there is too much reactivity. The outrage meter is broken. The calibration of it is all messed up. Little things cause people to go crazy. Things I think are much bigger and more important seem to pass unnoticed.”