Citing his disdain for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, far-left Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal on Monday doubled down on his call to pull Newsmax from the city's taxis, claiming the network is "downplaying the horrors" of ICE activities in Minnesota in New York.
"Newsmax is a right-wing news organization, and it doesn't fairly report the news," Hoylman-Sigal claimed to Newsmax host John Tabacco during a brief, tense exchange following a press conference in Lower Manhattan.
Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who backed democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, continued, "If I'm in a New York City taxicab, I don't want to see right-wing news. I want to see local news ... that provides me local information — not right-wing information in an echo chamber that is downplaying the horrors that is happening to New Yorkers and Minnesotans and Americans when it comes to ICE."
The 60-year-old former New York State assemblyman claimed Newsmax "downplayed the death of Renee Good ... It's appalling. Newsmax should be ashamed of itself. It has no business in New York City."
Newsmax slammed Hoylman-Sigal's claims, blasting his efforts as censorship.
"This is a pure act of censorship targeting a news organization reaching over 50 million Americans regularly," the network said in a statement. "Newsmax plays it straight and that drives the far left crazy."
In a Jan. 21 letter to Mamdani and Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Midori Valdivia, Hoylman-Sigal wrote the cabs should not carry Newsmax because of its "politically charged content."
"I urge you to summarily suspend the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission's partnership with Curb ... and demand that Curb cease its collaboration with Newsmax as a condition of licensure given the platform's history of misinformation and disingenuous reporting," Hoylman-Sigal wrote.
Newsmax partnered last year with taxicab content provider Curb for news updates in about 15,000 cabs nationwide, including roughly 9,000 vehicles in New York City.
Curb also rejected Hoylman-Sigal's claim of bias in Newsmax's content in cabs.
"Since the launch of our Newsmax partnership, no opinion or editorial material has aired on TaxiTV," Curb said in a statement. "All programming has consisted solely of standard news segments reviewed to ensure compliance with our content standards."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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