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January 25, 2023

DirecTV drops Newsmax from its satellite feed

By Rajan Laad

See also: DirecTV deplatforms Newsmax, cutting off its 13 million subscribers from the fourth-rated cable news channel

Just yesterday, Fox Business host Charlie Gasparino reported, citing anonymous sources, that there’s a "90% chance" that Newsmax will be "de-platformed" by AT&T’s DirecTV by Tuesday.

Usually, the media use anonymous sources to peddle propaganda.

But here the claim turned was factual.  DirecTV stopped carrying Newsmax when an extension of its carriage agreement expired yesterday at 11:59 P.M. E.T.

DirecTV, claims that the reason was that Newsmax was seeking a carriage fee after being available free previously.

Newsmax's CEO Christopher Ruddy however has a different story.

He wrote to Congressional Republicans claiming that DirecTV's actions were discriminatory against conservative viewpoints..

The following is an excerpt from the letter:

The most important fact about this dispute is this: in response to pressure from Congressional Democrats, AT&T and DirecTV have twice demonetized a conservative news channel in just one year. Yet they continue to carry and pay many liberal channels with a fraction of Newsmax's audience share. This is prima facie evidence of viewpoint discrimination.

The marketplace has confirmed that Newsmax is a valuable channel deserving a fair and equitable rate, as our renewals with Dish, Verizon, and NCTC demonstrate. It is AT&T and DirecTV that are acting in a discriminatory manner.

Ruddy urged the GOP-majority House to demand that DirecTV and all pay TV systems be fair to conservative media and suggested that Congress should hold hearings into how Democrat pressure resulted in Newsmax and One America News being targeted by AT&T and DirecTV.

In response, Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas and 41 other congressional Republicans wrote to DirecTV expressing concern that it is stifling conservative voices.

The following are excerpts from that letter:

It has recently been revealed that Congressional Democrats and the White House coordinated closely with private companies to de-platform, de-monetize, or otherwise limit the reach of viewpoints they oppose and classify them as 'misinformation.'

On February 22, 2021, Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to AT&T and DIRECTV encouraging the censorship of conservative television networks One America News Network (OANN), Fox News, and Newsmax.

Given the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee over your companies' business interests, it is reasonable to assume you took this letter seriously and complied with these demands.

The letter noted that DirecTV carried a number of left-leaning networks, including VICE media, and that VICE received higher fees than Newsmax, and warned of oversight hearings should AT&T drop Newsmax.

Taken together, these two actions lead us to believe that DIRECTV, one of the nation's largest Multichannel Video Programming Distributors, is actively working to limit conservative viewpoints on its system.

Republicans voiced support for Newsmax:

This isn't the first time DirecTV has dropped a conservative channel.

DirecTV dropped One America News Network (OAN) last April after capitulating to pressure from far-left extremists.

Targeting right-leaning media isn't a recent phenomenon; it has been happening since the days of the Obama presidency.

Back in November 2010, Obama reportedly told then-incoming House speaker John Boehner, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Obama frequently attacked Fox News from his White House podium and continues to do so now.

Obama staffer Tommy Vietor published an op-ed titled "Why Joe Biden Must Sideline Fox."

If you study the myriad of violative actions from the modern left today, you will discover they have their roots in the Obama presidency.  Obama laid the foundation, and the activists on the ground and on social media are taking it to the next level.

In this particular case, they are silencing opposing voices by calling the organization bigoted conspiracy theorists.

This happened all through the Trump presidency. 

The crescendo reached its peak when most of the mainstream media buried and discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story that affected the 2020 presidential election.

Following the Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol in 2021, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to several cable TV providers — including DirecTV's majority owner, AT&T — asking whether and why the providers would continue giving a platform to outlets that they claimed spread disinformation which caused the Jan. 6 "insurrection."

The request certainly was complied with.

First, OAN was de-platformed, and now Newsmax.

Making a case for censorship on MSNBC was columnist Ja'han Jones.

He claimed that "Republicans are trying to establish a new definition of censorship, one that apparently means 'not giving us the freedom to spread dangerous lies on independently owned platforms.'"

As always, the sanctimonious have a total lack of self-awareness.  MSNBC, which is the vilest among Democrat mouthpieces on TV and the foremost peddler of propaganda and dangerous falsehoods, calls Newsmax names without realizing the hypocrisy or the irony.

The reason behind this lack of awareness is that they have convinced themselves that they are on a higher moral pedestal.  Hence, they think everything they do, including peddling baseless lies about Trump colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, is for the greater good.  They did not care about the instability it caused and the long-term consequences of eroding trust in the electoral process.

However, when Trump and his supporters asked questions based on genuine concerns, they were called conspiracy theorists, and it was used to censor them.

What about those who claim that a service provider has a right to de-platform any channel it deems unworthy, and D.C. should not interfere in the marketplace by supporting any one player?

To compete in the marketplace, there has to be fairness — i.e., each player is given an equal opportunity to prove his worth before he is dismissed as unviable.  When any particular business is discriminated against, it ceases to be a free market. 

The situation is identical to Big Tech manipulating the narrative.  A search on Google news will seldom yield content from any conservative news platforms.

The intervention is required to take on an ecosystem where liberals are trying to establish a monopoly.

Anyone confident about the ideas he is proposing would welcome the presence of opposing perspectives, so viewers will consume them and prove them to be inferior. 

But the left know that their abominable and unsustainable ideas will be rejected by the public.  The only way to win over or retain voters is to censor every other idea.

Why is it so important that the House GOP advocate for Newsmax?  Because information affects elections.

One of the reasons that the Democrats didn't receive the emphatic routing they deserved in the 2022 midterms, apart from the irregularities, is that the media manage to drive the narrative that anachronistic election-denying domestic terrorists were about to take over the country if the public voted for the GOP.  It is quite likely that casual consumers probably believed this narrative and voted for Democrats out of caution.

Newsmax is essential to combat the Democrats' falsehoods.

So how must the GOP react?

There must be real action in addition to televised congressional hearings that often are political theatre.

But in addition to holding DirecTV and others accountable, they must make an effort to bring prominence to Newsmax.

Perhaps the superstars of the GOP such as President Trump should do exclusive interviews with Newsmax to give it more prominence.

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