The ongoing dispute between DirecTV and Newsmax sees no end in sight after the cable channel has enlisted the power of its reach with Congressional Republicans to threaten hearings on the matter.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told the cable outlet earlier this week that Republicans were serious about holding hearings after the channel was dropped from the DirecTV lineup.
“We obviously have an issue with a lot of media companies silencing conservative thought and conservative speech,” Donalds said, “and the one thing we’re committed to is doing everything we can to put an end to it.”
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy claims that the decision to remove the channel was intended so it could not reach liberal and independent voters and that the move was purposeful censorship.
DirecTV has contended the decision was strictly business related, and in what CNN’s Oliver Darcy described as a letter to “prominent Jewish Newsmax supporters” the satellite provider continued to defend itself.
“Put simply, this is a typical business dispute that has nothing to do with ideology, politics or censorship – despite unfounded accusations to the contrary by Newsmax, its CEO, its commentators, and others,” DirecTV said.
Ruddy previously said the cable channel asked DirecTV for a “tiny license fee” of “about a dollar per year” per subscriber. Estimates put that number at $13 million in licensing fees for the outlet.
The satellite provider says those facts get in the way of the argument presented by Newsmax.
“In our view, these efforts are obscuring facts in pursuit of Newsmax’s own commercial interests,” DirecTV said, “not elucidating the news.”
After it removed Newsmax from its channel offerings, DirecTV replaced it with The First, another conservative video outlet that featured the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Dana Loesch, and Jesse Kelly, among others.
