Newsmax sues Fox News for monopolistic behavior — Hired detectives to dig up dirt on network execs.

  • Newsmax filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing conservative media giant Fox News of abusing its monopoly power to suppress its right-leaning competitors.
  • Fox replied that Newsmax “cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace.”
  • Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy is a former reporter for the New York Post, the tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, the media magnate who created Fox News.

Newsmax
filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing conservative media giant Fox News
of acting as a monopoly and suppressing its right-leaning competitors.

“Fox has sought to protect and expand its monopoly power in the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market by engaging in a suite of anticompetitive behaviors,” attorneys for the outlet wrote in the suit in federal court in southern Florida.

The lawyers allege that Fox News coerces distributors into “exclusionary and restrictive agreements,” and that it has used “intimidation tactics” to hurt Newsmax — including hiring “private detective firms to investigate Newsmax executives.”

“But 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,” they wrote in the suit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/03/fox-news-newsmax-antitrust-lawsuit.html

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