Newsmax has now been off the DirecTV channel lineup for more than a week, and its CEO — Chris Ruddy — continues to speak out on what he calls censorship from the satellite provider.
Ruddy was a guest on The Mark Simone Show on 710 WOR and told the New York host DirecTV claimed it would never pay the cable outlet a carriage fee.
“DirecTV had us on for five years and they removed us — censored us — making a very strange demand of Newsmax that they don’t demand of other cable news channels,” Ruddy said.
“There’s 22 liberal news channels on DirecTV and they said ‘Newsmax is the only cable news channel that’s never gonna get a cable fee’. And we’re like ‘Well, why?’, and they’re like ‘We need to save money’. We’re the fourth highest-rated cable news channel and there’s probably 100 channels less rated than we are that you’re paying more than this tiny license fee we were asking of about a dollar a year. And they were very obstinate in this because they knew that it was a way of cleverly trying to shut us down as a news channel.”
When asked by Simone what the reaction had been to being “de-platformed” by the satellite provider, Ruddy said there’s a chance the channel could return if public pushback continues.
“They are telling people they are thinking about bringing us back,” added Ruddy. “This is after President Trump and others have called for people to just cancel DirecTV. He said he was canceling DirecTV and AT&T, including his cell phones. And a lot of people have been calling…we’re also encouraging people to call Congress to have hearings on this because its also an example of woke censorship by AT&T to target us and One America (News).”
