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Outlet profile

Newsmax

U.S. right

Owned byNewsmax Media, Inc., publicly traded (NYSE: NMAX) since March 2025; founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy holds all Class A super-voting shares, giving him roughly 81% of voting control despite owning about 30% of total shares. Investor Thomas Peterffy holds a large minority stake (about 18%).
FundingAdvertising revenue, cable/satellite carriage fees, and public equity markets following its 2025 IPO; it also sells health and financial products through its media platforms.
On the administrationbroadly supportive

Background

Newsmax was founded in 1998 by Christopher Ruddy, originally as a conservative news website before expanding into magazines, radio, and eventually a cable news channel launched in 2014. It positioned itself as an alternative to Fox News, drawing viewers further to the right, especially after the 2020 election when it gave a prominent platform to false claims of widespread voting fraud. Those claims led to major defamation lawsuits: Newsmax paid $40 million to settle with Smartmatic and $67 million to settle with Dominion Voting Systems in 2025, both over airing baseless 2020 election-fraud allegations. The network went public on the NYSE in March 2025, with shares briefly surging over 700%, making Ruddy a billionaire; he retains near-total voting control through Class A shares. Newsmax has cultivated close ties to Trump and his allies, frequently hosting administration officials and conservative commentators, and its coverage is widely regarded by media analysts as strongly pro-Trump and pro-Republican. It has also clashed with regulators, including threatening legal action over FCC broadcast-ownership rule changes in 2026. Despite Newsmax's own description of its coverage as "fair and balanced," independent media assessments consistently rate it as a partisan, right-leaning outlet.

Sources

  1. Who Owns Newsmax? Christopher Ruddy, IPO Ownership 2026
  2. Newsmax Founder Chris Ruddy Is A Billionaire Thanks To Stock Surge
  3. Newsmax to Pay $67 Million to Dominion Voting Systems to Settle Defamation Lawsuit
  4. Newsmax Paid Smartmatic $40 Million In 2020 Election Defamation Settlement, Filing Shows
  5. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy threatens lawsuit if FCC lifts TV ownership cap
  6. Newsmax TV — Wikipedia

Profile compiled 2026-09-24; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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