Newsmax filed a lawsuit against Fox News in Florida on Wednesday for allegedly illegally cornering the market on conservatives.
Attorneys for Newsmax argued that Fox has "long engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition, and Newsmax," The Hill news outlet reported.
"Fox leverages this market power to coerce distributors into not carrying or into marginalizing other right-leaning news channels, including Newsmax," the lawsuit reads.
Newsmax also alleges that Fox, in the process, has "deliberately blocked Newsmax's growth in critical distribution platforms such as Hulu, Sling, Fubo, and other major platforms."
"Fox may have profited from exclusionary contracts and intimidation tactics for years, but those days are over," Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said.
Fox News said in response tha Newsmax "cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can't attract viewers."
I don't know if they can prevail, even if what they're saying is true. Companies are allowed to use their market power to fence out competition -- unless they have monopoly power. Does Fox have a "monopoly" or near-monopoly on conservative viewers? I don't know about that.
And I doubt any court will rule against a monopolist, anyway. A federal judge found that Google is a monopoly and uses its monopoly power to maintain and expand its monopoly position -- which the law specifically forbids -- and decided to let Google keep on using its monopoly power to fence out competitors anyway.
The rule of law is on tenuous grounds in America these days, with even easy stuff that might hinder the powerful running into serious obstacles. Today, the decade-long campaign to stop big tech from dominating our society took a significant step backwards, as the judge hearing the search case against Google, Amit Mehta, chose not to meaningfully constrain the firm's illegal behavior. And to engage in such deferential behavior, he openly ignored Supreme Court precedent.
You don't have to take it from me. It's Mehta who last year found Google to have violated the law. "Google is a monopolist," he wrote, "and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act." It's also Mehta who found the Supreme Court mandated what he called the "remedial objective" in monopolization cases, to "terminate the illegal monopoly." But, Mehta wrote, "remedies designed to eliminate the defendant's monopoly--i.e., structural remedies--are inappropriate in this case."
So there we go. Mehta understood the law mandates he terminate Google's monopoly, but he just decided against doing so. This kind of lawlessness, incoherence and deference to big business is now routine among elites in our society, so I guess it's not too surprising that it happened in this case. In fact it's not surprising to readers of BIG; back in June I wrote a very timely piece on precisely this dynamic, titled "Why Is Google Still in One Piece? The Terminating a Monopoly Problem." In it, I described why Mehta may turn his back on this requirement and flout the law. I had hoped he wouldn't, but he has.
BTW, Google is getting worse and worse regarding deliberately suppressing conservative media. Even when I search for a story I know appeared in conservative media under the exact keywords needed to bring the article up, it gives me nothing but CNN, ABC, "MS NOW," etc.
Apple is really showing its quasi-religious fantacism as it promotes a new show in which a "Karen content moderator" (in other words, censor) is the hero Gotham needs.
Of course it stars gonzo feminist left-wing midwit Jessica Chastain.
The Critical Drinker has thoughts -- specifically, that Hollywood, in attempting to give the Hero treatment to a Karen censor monitoring Reddit for forbidden thoughts, is absolutely incapable of reading the room.
Of course, this probably got greenlighted two years ago, but for years and years people have known that the public had had an absolute bellyfull of bitchy controlling left-wing Karen Monitors.