Key Points
- Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Signal urged city officials to pressure Curb to stop distributing Newsmax clips in NYC taxis.
- He argued Newsmax has a history of misinformation and said continued carriage should jeopardize Curb’s TLC partnership.
- Newsmax called the request censorship, while Curb defended its taxi-screen platform as a high-performing ad product.
The borough president of Manhattan has urged New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the regulator of the city’s taxi and limousine services to find ways to boot right-of-center political news outlet Newsmax from thousands of cabs in the city.
In a letter sent on January 21, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Signal said New York City should sever its ties with Curb, a provider of advertising and television programming to taxi fleets across the country, unless the company agreed to terminate its agreement to distribute clips from Newsmax on seat-back screens.
Curb began offering clips from Newsmax late last year, with the videos streamed on seat-back screens in several cities across the country, including major metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles. The channel uses an advertising solution called Curb Journey Connect to distribute news clips that are emblazoned with a QR code, which allows riders to download the Newsmax app.
Curb serves as an authorized technology and advertising partner of New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), and generates advertising revenue for cab operators and owners.
Taxi cabs are considered private, for-profit entities in New York City, but they are regulated by TLC through the issuance of medallions, which serve as licenses for individual cabs to operate.
In his letter, Hoylman-Signal — who serves in a role similar to that of a city council member or county supervisor in other parts of the country — said the TLC should suspend its 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.”
In a statement, Newsmax said the letter was “an act of censorship.”
“Newsmax plays it straight and that drives the far left crazy,” a spokesperson for the channel said on Monday, adding that Newsmax reaches more than 50 million Americans daily through its distribution on cable, satellite and premium streaming services.
Newsmax also offers a limited amount of programming through free streaming apps like Pluto TV and Samsung TV Plus through its Newsmax 2 channel, which is available on low-power broadcast TV in a handful of cities, though the company doesn’t release regular information about that part of the business.
Curb said its Journey Connect product delivers more than 2.3 billion impressions with an average click-through rate of just under 2.5 percent by allowing taxi riders and other consumers to engage with premium brands through direct out-of-home experiences, including seat-back video screens and interactive ads on taxi and limousine smartphone apps.
