A brawl has erupted in the rightwing media ecosystem.
Conservative news broadcaster Newsmax is suing Fox News, accusing its fellow right-wing network of having engaged in anti-competitive practices.
In an antitrust lawsuit filed in Florida this week, Newsmax accuses Fox of abusing its position at the top of the rightwing media food chain to keep out smaller competitors—namely, itself.
“Fox Corporation has long engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition, and Newsmax Broadcasting,” the broadcaster’s complaint states.
Fox obviously disagrees. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Fox News spokesperson provided the following comment: “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”
The lawsuit claims that, were it not for “Fox’s anticompetitive behavior,” Newsmax would have “achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property.
