Christopher Ruddy

Ruddy also served as a representative on the U.S. delegation headed by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham to the NATO 44th Munich Security Conference.

Christopher Ruddy (born January 28, 1965) is an American journalist who is the CEO and majority owner of Newsmax Media.

Ruddy grew up on Long Island in Williston Park, New York, where his father was a police officer in Nassau County.

He graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York before graduating summa cum laude with a degree in history from St. John's University, New York in 1987.

He earned a master's degree in public policy from the London School of Economics and also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an undergrad.

He worked briefly as a bilingual high school social studies teacher in the Bronx, New York.

Ruddy holds an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from St. John's University.

Early in his career, Ruddy was editor in chief of a conservative monthly periodical known as the New York Guardian.

While with the NY Guardian, Ruddy debunked a story in the PBS documentary Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II that an all-black army unit had liberated the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.

Ruddy called the documentary an example of "how the media can manipulate facts and narratives to create a revised history both believable and untrue similar to the events of 9/11."

Ruddy then moved to the New York Post, which he joined as an investigative reporter late in the summer of 1993.

After initially writing about abuse of Social Security disability benefits, he focused on the Whitewater scandal involving then-president Bill Clinton.

In November 1994, Ruddy was hired to investigate the story full-time by the Tribune-Review.

In between Ruddy's departure from the Post and joining the Tribune-Review, he put out a report through the Western Journalism Center criticizing the Fiske investigation as inadequate.

With the help of Scaife, the Center took out full-page ads in major newspapers to promote the report (Scaife gave $330,000 to the Center in 1994–95 before ending his support).

Ruddy's discussion of questions regarding the death of White House counsel Vince Foster drew mixed reactions.

Ruddy claimed that Park Police had staged the scene of Foster's death as described in their reports.

One of the officers named by Ruddy sued him along with the Western Journalism Center, seeking $2 million in damages for libel.

The suit was dismissed because Ruddy had said nothing libelous "of and concerning the officer."

Ruddy later built on his work on the Foster case for his book The Strange Death of Vincent Foster.

In reviewing the book, Richard Brookhiser of the National Review called it "the St. Mark version of the gospel of the Foster cover-up: a plain narrative of the perceived failings of the official investigation, with minimal speculation."

Shortly after the book came out, Fiske's successor as independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, released his report from the third investigation into Foster's death.

Starr also concluded that Foster had committed suicide.

Ruddy ended his investigative reporting after founding Newsmax, but continues to write an occasional blog while he shapes overall editorial policy.

He told Jeremy Peters of The New York Times that his outlets provide "news that Americans in the heartland would like to see."

Ruddy describes himself as a libertarian conservative and "Reaganite", though he is not registered as a Republican.

In 1995 he joined the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review as a national correspondent covering the Clinton White House and other topics.

Ruddy has studied as a Media Fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Ruddy serves on the board of directors of the Financial Publishers Association (FIPA), an industry trade group whose goal is "to share knowledge of best business practices to help our members' publications grow and prosper, while empowering readers with unbiased, independent information".

He is a member of the International Council, chaired by Henry Kissinger, at the CSIS, a bipartisan Washington, D.C., think tank focused on national security and foreign affairs.

Following Ruddy's work at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, he started Newsmax with the owner of the Tribune-Review, Richard Mellon Scaife, and a $25,000 investment in 1998.

They raised $15 million from 200 private investors, whom they subsequently bought out (in 2000).

Ruddy then owned a 60 percent stake, with the rest owned by Scaife as a silent partner.

From 2009 to 2013, Ruddy served on the board of directors of the American Swiss Foundation, a nonprofit organization that fosters relations between the two countries.

In January 2010, Britain's Daily Telegraph ranked Ruddy as one of the "100 Most Influential Conservatives" in the U.S. The paper said: "Chris Ruddy is an increasingly powerful and influential player in the conservative media and beyond."

Ruddy has been both a "Patron" and a "Sustaining Donor" to the Wikimedia Foundation.

He is an alumnus of the American Swiss Foundation.

Richard Scaife died in 2014 at the age of 82.

New York Post editor Eric Breindel recommended Ruddy for a job at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review owned by Richard Mellon Scaife.

In 2015 he was elected to the board of directors of the Zweig Fund and the Zweig Total Return Funds, two New York Stock Exchange-traded closed-end funds managed by Virtus.