It will be for a court to decide whether Fox has crossed the hardball line into a breach of antitrust law.
Any legal judgment that impedes Fox’s modus operandi is risky given its immense success and profitability makes it the jewel in Murdoch’s crown.
Newsmax claims Rupert Murdoch’s Fox has a long history of exploiting its market power.Credit: Bloomberg
For its part, Fox is calling sour grapes. Its rebuttal statement said: “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”
Newsmax claims in its legal filing that “Fox leverages this market power to coerce distributors into not carrying or into marginalising other right-leaning news channels, including Newsmax”.
It goes on to say Fox pressured guests not to appear on the rival network and hired private detectives to investigate Newsmax executives. It was a dirty tactic for which Newsmax says Fox had form, citing a legal action in 2016 by Andrea Tantaros, a Fox News host, who alleged sexual harassment and surveillance by the network. In her suit, she claimed that Fox directly or indirectly hired a social media agency called Disruptor to defame and discredit her.
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According to Tantaros’ complaint against Fox News, she was the target of vicious social media campaigns organised by Fox’s infamous “Black Room”, alleged to be run by Fox’s public relations chief, Irena Briganti, and used for illicit operations against those who dare criticise, or compete with, Fox.
According to the complaint, Fox used Disruptor to create thousands of fake social media accounts, or “sock puppets”, which, at Briganti’s behest, spread smears and posted negative comments about Tantaros.
Newsmax claims Fox has a long history of exploiting its market power over must-have television content to extract favourable terms from distributors in carriage negotiations for Fox News.
It provides the 2019 example of Fox pulling its channels from DISH just before the start of a new season of Thursday Night Football. It then cites a 2020 dispute with Roku that occurred days before Fox Sports was scheduled to stream the Super Bowl. In 2022, during negotiations with DirecTV, Fox threatened to black out much of its sports programming one day before broadcasting the US-Netherlands World Cup match. Fox has threatened to pull access to Fox Sports from Optimum viewers just as the Yankees entered the 2022 playoffs.
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The legal filing alleges that in each of these instances, Fox was engaged in negotiations with these entities, and each time it used the same deliberate strategy: by timing threats and blackouts around highly anticipated games, Fox mobilised its loyal and passionate sports audience as a pressure campaign against distributors.
The case will be a viewing must – to determine which right is right.
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