Signage for the Newsmax conservative television broadcasting network is displayed at a broadcast TV booth at the National Rifle Association annual meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on May 28, 2022.
Newsmax had been looking for outside investors to better compete with its much larger rival, Fox News, according to people who spoke at the time with its founder and CEO, Christopher Ruddy. Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said. A representative for Newsmax strongly disputed that the network “slanted coverage to be favorable to Qatar,” and that Ruddy had told staff not to criticize the country.
Sultan and Mohammed are both members of Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family, which numbers in the thousands. “We operate independently of any government and make investment decisions based exclusively on our goal of creating value,” said a Heritage representative. “Where we invest in media, we have no editorial or management control. Any suggestion that our investments are driven by ulterior motives is simply false.”
Representatives for Heritage Advisors and Newsmax stated that Sultan’s 2019 investment was a separate transaction from the earlier talks with the Qatari government. Ruddy, a longtime media executive with deep ties to Republican politics, has long been a fixture at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club and spent much of Trump’s presidency positioning himself in proximity to the former president, according to club members and former Trump aides. In the months following Trump’s 2020 defeat, Newsmax amplified Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen from him.
Ruddy “categorically denies he told any host to not criticize Qatar,” Daddi added. “While he is involved in coverage from a general perspective, Mr. Ruddy never tells hosts or correspondents what to say on air.”In early 2018, a lawyer working on behalf of Newsmax to raise money, Christopher Nixon Cox, described a potential Qatari investment as a way to improve the emirate’s standing in Washington.
“That was the deal Chris wanted to make: By not criticizing, we’ll be positive,” Allaham said. “That was the whole plan.”
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