Christopher Ruddy And The Fake News

An astute reader emailed me a notice about this.

The astute reader astutely wrote:

Point Park is making a big deal out of a speech by Christopher Ruddy. They’re supposed to be a school of journalism and they’re giving a platform to a man who authored fringe theories about the deaths of Vincent Foster and Ron Brown. What could they be thinking?

Here's how Point Park is describing the event:

The Point Park University Talk Back Series and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy look back on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s election. A longtime friend of the president, Ruddy founded Newsmax Media in 1998, a multimedia company covering news, politics, health, lifestyle and finance. Newsmax TV is emerging as the fastest growing cable news channel as its digital properties reach 50 million Americans monthly. Newsweek named Ruddy one of America’s top 20 new media personalities. He has served as a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. Following a short presentation, attendees take part in an extended Q&A session with Ruddy. Andrew Conte, director of Point Park’s Center for Media Innovation, moderates the event. Previously, Conte worked as an investigative journalist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Oh, the stuff they leave out. First, we'll go with this:

The Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University will celebrate its one-year anniversary Tuesday with two student-moderated panel discussions and the dedication of a plaque honoring Dick Scaife, late owner of Trib Total Media and chairman of the Allegheny Foundation, which provided a grant to build the center.

Then there's this:

Christopher Ruddy founded the West Palm Beach, Florida-based Newsmax in 1998 with a $25,000 investment along with Richard Mellon Scaife, who owned the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, where Ruddy worked as a national correspondent. According to a report in Forbes, the duo quickly raised $15 million from 200 private investors and then bought them out in 2000. Ruddy now owns a 60 percent stake with the rest owned by Scaife.

Funny that they don't point out the Scaife/Trib/Ruddy connections. I guess it's a small small world, after all.

But what of my astute reader's charges?

Well, Ruddy did write "The Strange Death Of Vince Foster" in the late 90s. On the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death, Ruddy wrote:

A circular hole in the skull of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown could have been a gunshot wound and certainly should have prompted an autopsy, according to an Air Force lieutenant colonel and forensic pathologist who investigated the jet crash in which Brown died.

Why even bother asking if (as Ruddy states three paragraphs later) it's the case that "On April 3, 1996, an Air Force jet carrying Brown and 34 others, including 14 business executives on a trade mission to Croatia, crashed into a mountainside." How did the shooter not also die in the crash?

Oh, and did you know that Newsmax is also a source for your Obama Birth Certificate conspiracies?

For example there's this about Ruddy's friend, Donald Trump:

Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump says he recently was told that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is missing. While declining to reveal Monday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper how he received the information, Trump said Obama’s lack of a birth certificate would be a shame, since he would like to take the president on “one-on-one.”

“Well, I've been told very recently, Anderson, that the birth certificate is missing,” Trump said in an interview for “Anderson Cooper 360,” to be aired Monday night. “I’ve been told that it’s not there and it doesn’t exist — and if that’s the case it’s a big problem. I’ve just heard that two days ago from someone — I don’t want to say who.

And this about Ruddy's friend Donald Trump:

Potential 2012 GOP presidential contender Donald Trump is doubling down on his call for President Barack Obama to produce a birth certificate, saying “facts are emerging” that have raised a “real question” as to whether Obama is constitutionally eligible to serve as president.

By the way, I snagged a ticket to the event. If the Q&A is as extensive as they say and if I get the chance, I'm going to ask Christopher Ruddy about his own past as a "fake-newser."