Right-wingers love to claim that troubles in the print-media world can be chalked up to news consumers rejecting “liberal media bias.” As Media Matters' Terry Krepel noted a few weeks ago, the decision by Washington Post Co. to sell Newsweek was no different:

At NewsBusters, the Media Research Center's Brent Baker claimed that Newsweek “repeatedly showcased their favorite candidate, Barack Obama, on the cover” and asked, “Might such obvious blatant liberal advocacy, which anyone could see in the grocery store checkout line, help explain its decline in fortunes -- in credibility followed by finances?”

He was joined by fellow MRC employee Clay Waters, who complained that a New York Times article on the sale failed to mention “Newsweek's purposeful shift toward liberal opinion over news-gathering.”

At Fox News on May 8, contributor Liz Trotta highlighted John Podhoretz's claim that Newsweek is “a liberal journal of opinion masquerading as a news publication,” added that “even The Washington Post” called it left-leaning, and posited that Newsweek's strategy of “shoving liberal opinion down [people's] throats” failed because it “colossally ... misjudged what the American public and the American readership is. It's not a bunch of lefties from New York.”

Of course, this is the same right-wing media establishment that ignored the also-up-for-sale conservative Washington Times' lack of profits.

Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy is interested in purchasing the faltering news weekly (emphasis added):

OpenGate Capital, the investment firm that owns TV Guide, plans to formally declare its interest in acquiring Newsweek before Wednesday's deadline for nonbinding bids, according to managing partner Andrew Nikou. Christopher Ruddy, publisher of the conservative monthly magazine Newsmax, said he also plans to bid.

A right-wing “news” outlet is now interested in picking up a magazine that media conservatives claim failed because of “liberal bias.” It would be funny if it weren't so delusional.

So, who exactly is Christopher Ruddy? For starters, Ruddy was a bit too nutty even for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. As the New York Times reported in 1997:

...Chris Ruddy, a ferociously dogged reporter who says he lost a job at The New York Post partly because he would not let go of the Vince Foster story. Ruddy now works for The Tribune-Review, a right-wing Pittsburgh paper, and his stories are reprinted in newspaper advertisements around the country, paid for by the Western Journalism Center in Sacramento, Calif. Richard M. Scaife, an angel of the far right, owns The Tribune-Review and contributes money to the center.

The “Vince Foster story” to which the Times refers would be the crazy right-wing conspiracy theory that Foster didn't commit suicide and was instead killed.

As for Newsmax, it's a rabidly conservative “news” outlet that traffics in just the sort of right-wing Obama conspiracy theories and misinformation that Ruddy cut his teeth on during the Clinton years.

Related:

• Right-wing media analysts vs. real media analysts on Newsweek's woes
• Murdoch not interested in buying Newsweek
• The right-wing mocks “liberal” Newsweek's lack of profits, ignores WashTimes' monumental losses
• Newsweek Sale Not A Surprise, Just Business
• Washington Post Company To Sell Newsweek