Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has grown concerned that Fox News seems to not be as interested in being full-time right-wing shills. A Sept. 24 article by Eric Mack complained:
Rudy Giuliani has been banned from appearing on Fox News for several months, and only learned of the "from the top" order on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Son Andrew Giuliani, a New York gubernatorial candidate, has also been banned.
And former NYPD Commsissioner Bernie Kerik, a close adviser to Giuliani, is rarely booked on Fox News, Politico Playbook reports.
Rudy Giuliani and Kerik were prominent New York City leaders on 9/11 as mayor and NYPD commissioner.
Mack didn't mention that Kerik is a close friend of Newsmax -- its Humanix division even published a novel by him -- and that the reason he's no longer a "prominent New York City leader" is because he got busted for corruption, which earned him a prison sentence. Mack then tried to make his employer look good by comparison:
Fox began distancing itself from Giuliani shortly after Trump left office and in the wake of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the network. The suit cited Giuliani’s appearances and statements made on Fox in its $1.6 billion defamation case.
Newsmax was also sued by Dominion over its election coverage, but the network continues to have Giuliani, his son, and Kerik on as guests.
Actually, that's not a good look -- but that's the crowd Newsmax is playing to.
Mack also claimed that "A source close to Giuliani tells Newsmax that the former mayor and his circle view their banishment from Fox as part of the network’s strategy to reduce and restrict Trump’s influence in the Republican party." One has to wonder if that's Kerik as well.
Mack tried to generate outrage over another Fox News move in an Oct. 8 article:
The orchestrator of Fox News' early call of Arizona in the last presidential election is coming back to run the network’s decision desk for the 2022 midterms and 2024 elections.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott told The Hollywood Reporter that Decision Desk Director Arnon Mishkin will be rehired to be in charge of upcoming election coverage.
Fox stirred outrage from its viewers when it called Arizona just minutes after polls closed on election night 2020, while still failing to call Florida for then-President Donald Trump, even though voting had closed almost two hours earlier.
Mishkin, a longtime Democrat operative who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, quickly drew the ire of the Trump campaign for his Arizona decision.
What Mack doesn't do, however, is admit that Fox News' election night call on Arizona was correct and has been repeatedly proven so. Instead, he whined that the channel was trying to distance itself from Trump and conservatives, even citing the notoriously wrong Dick Morris as proof:
Political experts such as Dick Morris said Fox’s early call for Arizona was an attempt to squelch the view Trump could still win if recounts in states like Wisconsin and Georgia were successful.
Trump has long pointed to Fox News' Arizona call for Biden as a watershed moment on election night.Mishkin’s re-hiring appears to fit Fox’s new approach to distance itself from its more conservative base.
[...]
While Fox has kept its conservative, highly-rated show hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, pro-Trump hosts like Lou Dobbs and Trish Regan were given the boot after the election, while news coverage remains led by moderates like anchor Chris Wallace.
Fox News has also sought to keep in the good graces of the Biden administration, with the network’s chief Washington lobbyist, Danny O’Brien, having served previously as Biden’s Senate chief of staff.
Biden publicly acknowledged that his controversial mandatory employee vaccination program is modeled on one Fox News implemented for its staff.
This is all performative, of course. Newsmax is a direct competitor of Fox News, and it stands to gain views if it can portray Fox News as not right-wing enough -- a space that Newsmax has been staking out. Needless to say, Mack didn't disclose that ulterior motive to his readers.
