Right wing propaganda fans in Congress are sounding the alarm that far right bullshit channel Newsmax could follow OAN in being dropped from the DirecTV satellite service, sending a letter to executives at owners AT&T and TPG Capital warning that if “Newsmax is removed from DIRECTV, in less than a year House Republicans will have lost two of the three cable news channels that reach conservative voters on a platform that primarily serves conservative-leaning areas of the country.”
Yeah. They really fucking wrote that it would be their loss. House Republicans. Not their voters, let alone the people at Newsmax whose jobs depend on revenue from advertising and the carrier fees, but House Republicans. That part sticks out as somehow even more deranged than the thinly-veiled accusation that DirecTV is “colluding” with Democrats to “limit, restrict, and circumvent First Amendment rights,” as if the First Amendment is applicable to private enterprise.
Then there’s that, according to the Daily Beast, the potential end of Newsmax on DirecTV is a simple business matter. Newsmax wants to raise carrying fees and DirecTV doesn’t feel like paying up for the low-production value “news” network. The House Republicans claim “liberal” media outlets like Vice News “receive higher fees than NEWSMAX is requesting despite having a fraction of the audience,” in attempt to address that “unfairness.” We’ll just end it here instead of pointing out how the GOP is supposed to love the free market and all that shit that was already old years ago.