When Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Newsmax for promoting the false narrative that the election-tech company manipulated election results to harm Donald Trump was abruptly settled just before the trial was to begin, we noted that Newsmax was weirdly quiet about it, making no statement beyond the (unsurprisingly confidential) settlement announcement, despite promising “more details to follow.”
Well, two months later, Newsmax finally provided a few details. A Nov. 30 article — dumped on the Saturday of a holiday weekend for minimal exposure, suggesting that this something it forgot to do at the time of the settlement — carried the bland headline “Newsmax Statement on Smartmatic Case”:
Newsmax Media, Inc. has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement. Newsmax acknowledges that the Court found that “allegations regarding whether the [2020 U.S. presidential election] and its results were somehow altered or manipulated by Smartmatic are factually false/untrue.”
Newsmax reiterates its statement of December 2020 that made clear that there is no evidence that Smartmatic machines or software altered the votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and that Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government, or any foreign official or entity.
Note the passive tone, focused on restating its own earlier statement and a grudging acknowledgment that a court found claims of manipulation were untrue. It’s as if Newsmax was ordered to publish this article by the court. Newsmax also made no effort to promote this article and placed it at the bottom of its front page. It also offered no explanation of why it took two months to make this not-particularly-enlightening statement, which reads more like a legal obligation.
Interestingly, this article has remained at the bottom of Newsmax’s front page ever since — which, again, is bit reminiscent of last year’s battle between Newsmax and DirecTV after the latter dropped Newsmax’s TV channel in a dispute over fees, something that Newsmax loudly (and falsely) framed as political bias and “censorship.” When the two reached a new agreement, Newsmax had to walk back all those partisan attacks on DirecTV accusing it of “censorship” in notices that appeared for several days on Newsmax’s front page.