Is the Murdoch empire using dirty tricks to crush competition?

1 week ago 4

Opinion

September 4, 2025 — 3.16pm

Over the past 18 months, Rupert Murdoch or his media empire have been threatened or under legal attack by two voting machine companies, US president Donald Trump, and even three of his own children.

The 94-year-old, who has recently married for the fifth time, is as much a serial litigant as he is a serial groom.

Fox News dominates the conservative media.

News overnight that his Fox channel’s competitor, Newsmax, has slapped Fox with a lawsuit claiming that it used dirty tactics and its powerful muscle to limit the smaller rival from getting access to distribution over cable and streaming services, has opened up another line of attack on the media’s largest empire.

In a David and Goliath battle, Murdoch will probably be happy to assume the role of giant.

But the legal filing that details claims of a litany of skulduggery to undermine its competitors is truly eyebrow-raising, even for seasoned Murdoch critics.

The nub of Newsmax’s legal complaint is that Fox engaged in what it called an “exclusionary scheme” to limit cable or digital distributors from putting the Newsmax service on their platform line-up.

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.

The reasoning goes that Newsmax is a competitive threat because it operates a politically conservative product.

So it has become a contest of “right” versus “righter”.

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.

For its part, Fox is calling out 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.

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.

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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