An astute reader sent me this link yestiddy:
Newsmax Media Inc. announced Wednesday that 21-time Emmy Award-winner Wendy Bell on Saturday will premiere her new show, "Wendy Bell Common Sense," which will examine the news of the day with a lively approach to national issues.
Yay.
Longtime readers of this blog will recognize the name "Newsmax" but in case one needs a reminder, let's take a look at Newsmax and it's founder, Christopher Ruddy.
Let's start here:
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.
This was 12 years ago, so there's no reason to think the ownership is the same. But it's good to know Ruddy's pedigree, isn't it?
And what did Ruddy do at the Trib when he "worked as a national correspondent" you might ask?
This:
The day after Vincent Foster, the deputy White House counsel, was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, an old Civil War fort on the Potomac, Christopher Ruddy says, a Government official investigating the matter told a colleague to ''handle this as a normal case.'' ''It's not a normal case,'' the colleague replied.
No kidding. The Park Police, the F.B.I., Special Counsel Robert Fiske and Foster's family all concluded that he had killed himself where he was found. But for four years a floating crap game, including Clinton bashers, radio hosts, Net crawlers, kooks, Jerry Falwell and a few journalists, has questioned the verdict, suggesting or insisting that he died elsewhere or by some other hand.
Christopher Ruddy first wrote about the Foster story for The New York Post and for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a daily newspaper owned by the conservative millionaire Richard Scaife.
Yea, that's right. Chris Ruddy was the "Vince Foster Was Murrderred" guy.
Something not even The Starr Report agreed with:
An exhaustive three-year investigation by the office of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has reaffirmed previous findings that White House deputy counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. commited suicide.So tell me again why Christopher Ruddy has any sort of journalistic credibility?
Oh yea, that's right. He started Newsmax with a steaming pile of Scaife money.
But let's get back to Wendy's upward fail, which BTW fits in with this reporting from The Washington Post. It's from more August of 2020 and the headline reads:
Anyway, here's how Newsmax characterizes Wendy's recent job history. There are certainly some gaps in the coverage. I've inserted some necessary corrections to make them obvious (Note: everything in bold is my addition/correction):
Host of the "Wendy Bell Radio Program," heard nationally weekdays 9 a.m. to noon ET, Bell worked in television for the nationally syndicated show "American Journal," NBC affiliate KSDK in St. Louis, and ABC’s Pittsburgh affiliate WTAE, where she became the station’s main anchor and most decorated reporter. [And she then she was fired for a racist Facebook posting.]
She moved into radio in 2018 as the lone conservative female voice on southwestern Pennsylvania airwaves, hosting an afternoon-drive program on KDKA 1020 AM. In less than one year, Bell’s talk show climbed from 17th to second place in the market, handily beating Sean Hannity. [And then she was fire from KDKA Radio for pushing the idea that those protesting statues honoring Confederate generals should be shot "on sight."]
There. Fixed it.
Needless to say, Newsmax continues:
"Wendy Bell has had a remarkable career as a television journalist and radio host, and throughout it all has been an advocate of common sense and American values," Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy said. "We are glad to have her on the Newsmax team."This is what they're thinking after omitting Wendy's racism and fascism.
Evidently, they're OK with Wendy's racism and fascism. They just don't want their readers to know.
So far, no local coverage of The Angel of Death's upward failure.
I'll keep you posted.
