Newsmax Still Sniping At Fox News While Tooting Its Own Horn

Posted on December 13, 2023

One thing Newsmax loves to do is tweak its Fox News competition by portraying it as dying while Newsmax is on the asendency, as well as hyping any controversy that could be tied to it. When Fox News faced a tiny tempest because it allowed non-right-wing charities (and also the Satanic Temple) to take part in its employee donation portal, Newsmax got a couple of articles out of it:

Numerous Newsmax shows attacked Fox News over the donation policy. It even had Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves for a TV appearance to defend Fox News (and, thus, boost Newsmax as the non-Satanic right-wing channel), as documented in a July 24 article by MIchael Katz:

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, which is at the center of a controversy involving Fox News matching employee donations to the nonprofit organization, told Newsmax on Monday conservatives are holding the cable news network to an “unreasonable” standard.

[…]

“I think Fox was just using a third-party app that was allowing contributions to any charitable organization that qualified as such,” Greaves told ldquo;Eric Bolling The Balance.” “On our side, nobody was shocked by this news. People within The Satanic Temple weren’t worried that we had some kind of formal background affiliation with Fox, which they would also reject.

“I honestly think what we have going on here is kind of a conservative purity spiral. I think they’re holding Fox to a standard that is somewhat unreasonable.”

Greaves said there is an expansive list of charities to which employees could contribute and that Fox wasn’t forcing anyone to contribute to a specific charity.

Newsmax also loved it when Donald Trump bashed Fox News (and occasionally promoted Newsmax as an alternative):

Speaking of Murdoch, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy had some nice things to say about him upon his retirement — while, of course, burying that with fluffing his own channel:

Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said Wednesday night the news network experienced an unheard-of ratings jump during the third quarter of 2023 — up 73% across its prime-time programming compared to the same time period last year.

Appearing Wednesday on “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Ruddy noted, while Newsmax’s ratings boom has come at the expense of Fox News, he praised its controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch as a “great conservative.”

[…]

Ruddy attributed the meteoric rise of his network to viewers “voting” with their remote control for independent media over corporate giants.

It is a trend he says will continue for quite some time.

“When Tucker Carlson was fired, we saw a big surge back early this year in April,” Ruddy told Schmitt.

[…]

“Five months later, we’re now going to the six months, those ratings are sticking.”

“They’re not disappearing, and we’re getting a huge share of the Fox audience,” he added.

Asked about former President Donald Trump’s statement Wednesday calling Rupert Murdoch a “globalist,” Ruddy said he a “high opinion” of Fox’s founder.

“Full disclosure: I once worked for Rupert Murdoch in my earlier days in journalism,” Ruddy said. “The man has made an enormous contribution to the cause of freedom not only in the U.S. but around the world.”

[…]

“I don’t believe Donald Trump would have been elected had there not been a Fox News,” he said.

But he noted Fox is changing direction which has put the network at odds with Trump as he runs for the Republican nomination.

That’s not really true, of course; at the same time Ruddy was saying this, Fox News had given more airtime to Trump than any other Republican candidate.

Of course, there were plenty of stories about Newsmax’s ratings (good) and those of Fox News (bad):

Newsmax even nitpicked Fox News’ reporting on one of its own polls. A Sept. 23 article by Eric Mack complained that the reporting didn’t show Trump leading enough:

Fox Business misled viewers on a poll that had former President Donald Trump beating President Joe Biden, posting the graphic’s numbers in a way to suggest Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was performing better than Trump against the incumbent.

Trump led Biden by 2 points 48%-46% in the Fox News poll, but the on-screen graphic shown by Fox Business listed Biden’s lower support first next to Trump’s name, suggesting Trump was trailing the incumbent when he was actually leading.

Also, Fox, which is continually ridiculed by Trump for being pro-DeSantis, listed DeSantis versus Biden right below, showing Biden’s 47% support next to DeSantis’ name — ostensibly suggesting DeSantis was drawing a 3-point lead despite having mere 44% support and trailing Biden and doing worse than Trump.

The misleading graphic presentation was reported by conservative media, including The National Pulse.

[…]

Trump has not yet posted it on his Truth Social account, but the media is noting the ultimate broadcast of the results were spun to be confusing, if not misleading, to viewers.

Mack slipped yet another Fox-bashing tweak: “This all comes as Fox Corp. and News Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch, long ridiculed by the former president as being anti-Trump, has stepped down.”