Chris Cuomo Alleges ‘Suspicious’ Attempt to Take NewsNation Off the Air: ‘Reeks’ of Political ‘Bias’
NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo blasted what he called a “really suspicious” attempt to take his employer off the air on Wednesday night.
According to Alexandra Rivera of Rockland/Westchester Journal News, NewsNation’s parent company, Nexstar Media Group, claims that while it “has tried to facilitate negotiations” with Altice USA, which owns cable system Optimum, “Altice has demanded ‘special terms’ that Nexstar says are ‘wildly out of step’ with the established relationship between the two companies since the late 1990s.”
Cuomo addressed the controversy on his show Wednesday.
“I am very worried about censorship. Okay, I see it more and more. I don’t believe these guys running the platforms when they say they’re getting out of the fact-checking business, because I think that all they do is measure content in terms of what its wattage is, so they know where to put ads. And I think they’re manipulating it all the time. And I think that we’re getting selective about speech,” began Cuomo. “And I’ll tell you two reasons why I think it, okay? And that the marketplace of ideas is being compromised. Again, I don’t see what TikTok does that is a function of the CCP that I don’t see on other social media sites. Okay, so that’s you got to prove that to me, and they haven’t done it yet.”
He continued:
Second, there’s a situation right now, okay, that is really suspicious to me. Alright, we, right now, NewsNation is in a battle to stay on a cable system that is French-owned, okay? And I have no idea what good reason they would have for coming after NewsNation, which they did on their own accord, unprovoked, except one. There’s something about what NewsNation does — maybe they have a political disposition that they feel we’re balancing out here, or that we’re testing things that they don’t want tested — but for whatever reason, right now, they’re saying that NewsNation, nobody cares about it, we’re not going to run it. And it reeks of having some type of bias. And this type of ability to control what the American people can have access to is really worrying to me. I don’t speak for NewsNation. I don’t speak for the bosses. I’m speaking for Chris Cuomo, and I’m saying, professor, it is very suspicious to me, why NewsNation — all the other outlets — why don’t you want us? I think it’s happening more and more.
Watch above via NewsNation.
Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously stated that Altice USA was French-owned.
