DirecTV Drops Ultra-Right Newsmax Network and Triggers Trump Temper Tantrum Attacking AT&T

The latest pseudo-scandal to upset the fragile feelings of the conservative mediasphere is the report that DirecTV and Newsmax have failed to reach an agreement on renewing the Trump-fluffing network’s contract. As a result, DirecTV has pulled Newsmax from their service pending a resolution.

Click here to Tweet this article

Donald Trump, Boycott

Predictably overreacting to this news, Republicans in congress, and the ultra-rightist press that props them up, are howling about perceived, albeit imaginary, liberal bias, and are threatening to hold hearings (oh no, not that) to get to the bottom of this atrocity. They did the same thing when DirecTV dropped One America News Network (OAN) last year because nobody was watching it.

RELATED: Trump’s Favorite Propaganda Peddler, One America News (OAN), Gets Dumped By DirecTV (AT&T)

CBS News reports that “DirecTV said it ‘made it clear’ to Newsmax that it wants to continue airing the network,” but that its “demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs” for DirecTV’s customers. This development naturally provoked Donald Trump, America’s “most fabulous whiner” (in his own words), to lash out at DirecTV and its corporate parent, AT&T, saying that

“WOW. AT&T DIRECTV REMOVES NEWSMAX FROM ITS CHANNEL LINEUP. This disgusting move comes after ‘deplatforming’ OAN last year. The Radical Left seems to have taken over the mind and soul of AT&T. This is a big blow to the Republican Party, and to America itself. For DIRECTV to drop very popular NEWSMAX, without explanation, will not be accepted. I, for one, will be dropping all association with AT&T and DIRECTV, and I have plenty. This is just one of many reasons why we must WIN IN 2024!!!”

What Trump is describing as a “disgusting move” is actually the exercise of a private business’s rights in free market capitalism. Republicans used to be in favor that. Now they are openly hostile to both free markets and the free press. They seem to prefer allowing government to force program providers to carry networks that they don’t want. And Trump’s kneejerk assertion that “the mind and soul” of AT&T, a major financial backer of conservative Republicans, has been taken over by the “Radical Left,” is patently absurd.

What’s more, Trump’s complaint that Newsmax was dropped “without explanation” is a flagrant lie. The negotiations between DirecTV and Newsmax broke down due to Newsmax’s insistence on being paid carriage fees for the first time. DirecTV is understandably reluctant to do so because Newsmax is available on other platforms (Roku, Amazon Fire, etc.) for free. It would make no sense for DirecTV to make their customers pay more for a service that, contrary to Trump’s claim, is not particularly popular, and is available elsewhere for nothing.

Unsurprisingly, Trump doesn’t understand that. And he couldn’t care less about whether this is “a big blow to the Republican Party, and to America itself.” He is wholly focused on his own selfish interests because Newsmax is a network that is unflinchingly worshipful of Trump and is home to many of his media mouthpieces.

Therefore, DirecTV’s decision to drop Newsmax “will not be accepted” by Trump. As if that has any meaning. He claims to have “plenty” of associations with DirecTV and AT&T, but the truth is that Trump is an impotent loser who can’t even influence the behavior of his most devoted and glassy-eyed fans. He has called for a boycott of AT&T in the past, without any discernible impact.

In fact, Trump has called for boycotts of numerous companies that failed to be sufficiently adoring of him. They include Fox News, Harley-Davidson, CNN, Apple, Macy’s, Univision, Mexico, HBO, Rolling Stone, Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck, to name few. Advocating boycotts of so many American companies, and the Americans who work for them, is a bad look for someone who is seeking the presidency again.

SEE THIS: Crybaby Trump Hypocritically Calls Boycotts ‘Vicious’ and ‘Crazed’: Here are 10 of His Own

Finally, the charge that DirecTV is caving in to liberals was quickly disproven. The day after the decision to drop Newsmax. DirecTV announced that they were adding “The First,” another right-wing network with low viewership, to its roster. The First features disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, and is run by Christopher Balfe, the former CEO of Glenn Beck’s Mercury Radio Arts. That’s not exactly capitulating to the radical left, is it? And besides that, Newsmax has other things to worry about…

RELATED: Newsmax and OAN Added to Smartmatic’s Billion Dollar Lawsuit for Pushing Trump’s ‘Big Lie’

UPDATE: Trump extended on his rant about DirecTV in a subsequent post saying that it “should CANCEL CNN & MSDNC,” because “their Ratings are so pathetically bad.” And he insists that Newsmax and OAN (whose ratings are a fraction of CNN and MSNBC’s) should be put back on because “THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DEMANDS IT!!!” Really? So the media should be forced to do whatever wannabe dictator Trump and the totalitarian Republican demand? Yep, that’s what he believes.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

King of Cancel Culture: Trump Urges Boycott of DirecTV (AT&T) in Retaliation for Dropping OAN

Just in case anyone needed a reminder of the flaming hypocrisy of Donald Trump and his Republican flunkies, Trump himself provided an excellent one. In a tweet posted by his Twitter ban defying spokes-shill, Trump lashed out DirecTV and AT&T for dropping the ultra-rightist propaganda promoters, One America News Network (OAN).

Donald Trump, Boycott

OAN’s future is in doubt because DirecTV was the source of most of their revenue and audience. But even though AT&T (who spun off DirecTV last year, but remains the majority stockholder) bankrolled OAN’s birth, that relationship has become financially precarious. OAN is currently being sued by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic software for propagating Trump’s lies about election fraud. Separately, they are being sued by two former Georgia election workers who are victims of Trump’s election deceptions that were prominently pushed by OAN.

However, none of this is news right now. It was all reported two weeks ago on News Corpse. But Trump was likely triggered anew because he held another of his cult rallies in Texas on Saturday. That event was properly ignored by credible news outlets (and also Fox News) because it was just more of his paranoid and wrathful ranting. It was, however carried by OAN and Newsmax, two very low rated channels. Consequently, Trump is perturbed that his pitiful pontificating was passed over by the press. So he sobbed that…

“AT&T is closing the very popular One America News Network (OAN) because too many people are watching. They couldn’t put up with that any longer. Conservatives/Republicans should boycott Direct TV, and while you’re at it, “Concast’s” Xfinity as well. These are Radical Left Lunatics who are destroying our Nation!”

There is so much wrong embedded in that whine. First of all, AT&T is not “closing” OAN. The network just lost a distributor, albeit an important one. And since AT&T spun off DirecTV, they have nothing to do with with programming decisions anyway. Secondly, OAN is not “very popular.” Their audience is so small that Nielsen doesn’t even track it. Thirdly, it is profoundly deranged to assert that mega-corporations like AT&T and Comcast are “Radical Left Lunatics who are destroying our Nation.”

Finally, Trump’s call for a boycott is just the sort of “cancel culture” crapola that he and the rabid right routinely rail against. Never mind that Trump himself is the undisputed King of Cancel Culture. But despite that title, he is also notoriously ineffectual. He has called for a boycott of AT&T in the past, without any discernible impact. The same goes for his unheeded decree to quit Twitter.

Apparently, no one appears to be paying any attention to Trump’s bitchy boycott bulletins. And none of his targets have suffered in the slightest. It’s almost as if a Trump boycott serves as compelling advertising for sane consumers. So keep it up, Donnie. Pretty soon all the big corporations will want the success guaranteed by a Trump boycott.

UPDATE 2/8/2022: Trump dropped another demand to boycott AT&T/DirecTV saying falsely that OAN “is a very popular channel, far more popular than most would understand,” and that “If you feel infringed by what this Communist movement is doing, cancel DirecTV.” He’s too funny 😉

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Poor Baby: Trump Throws Tantrum at Rally Over DirecTV Dropping OAN, His Favorite Propaganda Channel

This week Donald Trump’s ultra-rightist media echo chamber suffered a crushing blow. One America News Network was informed by DirecTV that its contract would not be renewed when it expires in April. That is a devastating development because DirecTV is OAN’s biggest source of both audience and revenue.

Donald Trump, Snowflakes

There is considerable cause to believe that OAN cannot survive without DirecTV’s patronage. The channel would not have even existed but for DirecTV’s former parent corporation AT&T bankrolling the shameless Trump-fluffers at OAN.

However, as time went on, maintaining a relationship with the struggling network has become more of a financial risk than benefit. OAN is currently being sued by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic software for propagating Trump’s lies about election fraud. Separately, they are being sued by two former Georgia election workers who are victims of Trump’s election deceptions that were prominently pushed by OAN.

It was inevitable that Trump would feel compelled to wax hysterical about the OAN debacle. After all, it is the TV home of his official spokes-shill, Liz Harrington, who makes nearly daily appearances, like this one. So the day after the DirecTV announcement, Trump took the opportunity to lash out at his cult rally in Arizona, praising OAN and confessing that “I watch it all the time,” and laughably that “You really get the truth.” Plus, it’s cute that this slobbering endorsement of OAN is being aired by Newsmax, as can be seen in the video below:

“All I can tell you is that the people that are telling the truth in America, like One America News (OAN), are being threatened. Does everybody like One America? I love One America. By the way, these cameras, you know they’re back there, they’re covering this, they don’t like hearing this stuff. Do you see the red lights? They go off one after another as soon as I’s gonna mention CNN and how bad their ratings are. You see the CNN camera go off.”

Trump’s fairy tale about camera lights going off is one of his standard lines at these rallies. And of course, it is utterly fictional. But his gushing affinity for OAN is the real thing. There is nothing that Trump likes better than moon-eyed TV hacks drenching him with adoration. But he was just getting started. He continued:

“But you know what? One America News has done a great job. And here’s the story, what just happened. The woke executives, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They have so much debt. AT&T is a company that is in serious trouble. And they need AT&T, and AT&T is saying that they may no longer agree to carry this network that’s doing very well. You know why? Because people told them not to do it. So maybe what we should do is not use AT&T.”

Trump’s goto insult against any enterprise that he dislikes is that they are failing, no matter how successful they are. Conversely, he builds up those he favors, such as his saying here that OAN is “doing very well.” They aren’t, and never have been. However, Trump is, once again, demonstrating his ignorance by attacking AT&T, which no longer owns DirecTV. Consequently, AT&T had nothing to do with DirecTV’s decision to cut ties with OAN.

Nevertheless, Trump is urging his cult disciples to boycott AT&T. Although he goes about it in a typically bizarre, Trumpian manner wherein he rants that “I’m not gonna use the word ‘boycott.’ I will not say ‘Boycott AT&T,'” in his passively aggressive voice that clearly indicates his desire to provoke a boycott.

The good news is that Trump is an increasingly impotent character who can’t even influence the behavior of his most devoted and glassy-eyed fans. He has called for a boycott of AT&T in the past, without any discernible impact. The same goes for his unheeded decree to quit Twitter. He is, in fact, the undisputed King of Cancel Culture, attempting to incite boycotts against numerous other companies that he has deemed enemies. The only problem for him is that no one appears to be listening, and none of his targets have suffered in the slightest. So sad!

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Trump’s Favorite Propaganda Peddler, One America News (OAN), Gets Dumped By DirecTV (AT&T)

The right-wing media landscape has long been dominated by Fox News. But in the Era of the Trump Cult a couple of wannabe “news” manglers have popped up to challenge the King of the Shill. And one of those challengers just got chit-canned by their founder and biggest financial supporter.

Donald Trump, OAN

DirecTV has announced that they will cease to carry One American News Network (OAN) in their channel offerings. That’s a profoundly significant development considering how OAN came to be. DirecTV’s majority owner, AT&T, was recently exposed as having bankrolled the ultra-rightist outlet. As reported last October…

“A Reuters review of court records shows the role AT&T played in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

“AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV.”

With the loss of AT&T’s backing it is questionable as to whether OAN has the resources to continue as a viable operation. They are attempting to transition to streaming platforms, but persuading people to pay for their shameless, Trump-fluffing programming may prove to be an unattainable goal.

The futility of that effort isn’t mitigated by the support OAN gets from Donald Trump, where his official spokes-shill, Liz Harrington, is a regular guest. It will be fun to see how Trump reacts to this news. Expect to see some fireworks from the perpetually pissed off ex-prez. Not that it will do any good. [UPDATE: Right on cue, Trump threw a tantrum the next day at his rally in Arizona]

Despite months of Trump hyping OAN – and simultaneously bashing Fox News – OAN has not budged from their position at the bottom of the heap. Their audience is too low for Nielsen to measure. And losing millions of potential DirecTV viewers isn’t going to help.

The cancelation by DirecTV isn’t the only problem that OAN is facing. They are currently being sued by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic software for disseminating Trump’s lies about election fraud. Separately, they are being sued by two former Georgia election workers who are victims of Trump’s election deceptions that were prominently pushed by OAN.

It is long past time that OAN pay a price for their plague of poisonous propaganda. How can any television service distribute a channel that has actually advocated mass executions for “tens of thousands” of people who the network delusionally claimed were trying “to carry out a coup against the [Trump] presidency” because they didn’t buy into Trump’s election fraud lies?

And that goes for Verizon FIOS, that still carries OAN, and any streaming service that is considering doing so. It is simply irresponsible to propagate such transparently false and dangerous programming. Hopefully the pending litigation will cause some of these companies to reconsider their relationship with OAN. And Newsmax and Fox News while they’re at it.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Trump-Fluffing One America News Network (OAN) Was Created and Funded By AT&T

The right-wing media world has been dominated by Fox News for nearly twenty-five years. That remains true today despite the emergence of a couple upstart, and even more extreme, networks, Newsmax and One America News (OAN). However, the newcomers are still too small to present any real threat of competition.

Donald Trump, OAN

Reuters is now reporting that OAN had some help from a prominent media megacorporation. As revealed in court records that were made public, AT&T was an early supporter of OAN, providing the network carriage on its platform when few other cable operators were doing so. According to Reuters

“A Reuters review of court records shows the role AT&T played in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.

“’They told us they wanted a conservative network,’ Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. ‘They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.’

“Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.”

For AT&T to throw its support behind a pseudo-news network that was already dealing in dangerous conspiracy theories and blatantly dishonest propaganda, is a breach of their obligation to the public that comprises its customer universe. If they wanted a “conservative” network to compete with Fox News there were other organizations that had track records that more closely resembled the practice of journalism. OAN didn’t even exist when AT&T floated the notion that they would carry its programming.

That sort of irresponsible collaboration with a deceitful entity devoted to propaganda is particularly appalling for the the corporate parent of WarnerMedia, the owner of CNN (although CNN will soon be spun off in a deal with Discovery Networks). And the story became even more sordid when OAN disclosed that it had promised to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during its newscasts. That’s a fatal breach journalistic ethics on the parts of both AT&T and OAN.

It’s also notable that CNN has been a frequent target of Donald Trump. He regularly referred to them as “fake” news and even launched a boycott of AT&T in an attempt to get them to interfere with CNN’s reporting. Trump once tweeted…

“After watching [CNN] for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something? I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN”

Of course it would have been totally improper for AT&T to try to force editorial changes at CNN. But Trump, being who he is, wouldn’t know that. However, executives at AT&T should have known and repudiated Trump’s suggestion.

The question now is whether Trump will forgive AT&T because of their support for his favorite wingnut mouthpiece, OAN. Although it might just confuse him because they still own CNN for now. This is a recipe for a mental meltdown of some sort. Not that Trump needs any new reasons to freak out.

UPDATE 1/14/2022: DirectV, which is majority owned by AT&T, has announced that it will be dropping OAN:

“The move will deal a significant blow to the fringe outlet. Not only will OAN be removed from the millions of households that use DirecTV as a television provider, it will also suffer a major hit to its revenue.”

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

America First? Trump’s Attacks on the Media are Both Ignorant and Anti-American

Another day, another malicious assault on the Constitution and its First Amendment protections for a free press. Donald Trump is continuing to march toward a totalitarian state where he controls the media. And in his latest manic outburst on the subject he goes further than ever to lie about and threaten both journalists and American workers employed by the media that he so desperately hates.

Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Shepard Smith, Anderson Cooper

Trump’s noxious tweetstorm began with a gleeful nod to the news that an “activist investor” has acquired a bundle of AT&T stock:

“Great news that an activist investor is now involved with AT&T. As the owner of VERY LOW RATINGS @CNN, perhaps they will now put a stop to all of the Fake News emanating from its non-credible “anchors.” Also, I hear that, because of its bad ratings, it is losing a fortune…..”

Trump’s celebration of this investment is a typically shallow analysis considering the investor purchased a share of AT&T that is only a little more than one percent of its outstanding shares. That isn’t gong give him any real leverage, and he’ll have no role in board or management decisions. What’s more, shareholders have absolutely zero influence over the editorial content of a news network, nor should they. So Trump is wandering around in a fantasy world that he clearly knows nothing about.

Trump also knows nothing about the state of the cable news business. His hatred for CNN notwithstanding, the network is enjoying the highest ratings and revenue in its history. This is an example of Trump expressing the delusions in his diseased brain as if they had some correlation to reality. But what’s worse about this Twitter tantrum is that Trump is maligning an American company before the whole world. That is recklessly inappropriate for the President of the United States, and a betrayal of the thousands of American workers at CNN and AT&T.

In addition, Trump repeated the flagrant lie that foreign leaders have asked him “Why does the Media hate the U.S. sooo much?” Perhaps Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un might have asked him that, but they probably also ask why he doesn’t arrest and/or assassinate them. After all, he has openly yearned for those powers himself. For the record, the media doesn’t hate America, and they don’t even hate Trump. They hate lies, corruption, treason, and ignorance. It isn’t their fault that Trump exemplifies all of those abhorrent traits. But Trump wasn’t through ranting:

Once again, MSNBC’s ratings and revenue are growing rapidly. Trump may wish that news networks that tell the truth about him were failing, but the opposite is true. Meanwhile, at Fox News their ratings are still impressive, but their revenue is in a steep decline because advertisers don’t want to be associated with the Trump-fluffing, white supremacist dogma that is the hallmark of Fox. And if Trump is tiring of negative stories about him, he might try doing something positive for once. Or at least stop doing so many things that are objectively stupid, destructive, racist, and/or corrupt.

Trump went on to bash the media in general as “an arm of the Democrat Party.” without providing any proof whatsoever. But that’s been his modus operandi for years. And coming from someone who leans so heavily on his State TV network (aka Fox News), it’s starkly hypocritical. His intent is to drag down the reputation of the press to prevent people from taking it seriously when they report what he’s actually doing and saying. He actually admitted that to Leslie Stahl when she asked why he attacks the press. “You know why I do it?” he replied. “I do it to discredit you all, and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

Everyone needs to remember that whenever they hear him criticize the media. By his own admission he isn’t doing it to correct the record or to stand up for the practice of journalism. He’s doing it to brainwash anyone dimwitted enough to fall for his deliberately deceitful disparagement of honest reporting. Sadly, there are way too many Deplorables who are happy to wallow in the filth that Trump spews, even after they’ve been told – by him – exactly what he’s doing.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Calls For Boycott of AT&T to ‘Do Something’ About CNN

The last time Trump left the country he breached diplomatic protocol in Japan with an infantile political attack on Joe Biden. At the same time, he took sides with Kim Jong Un, the murderous tyrant with whom he fell in love.” And now Trump is travelling abroad again, but this time, as he prepared to depart for the U.K., he managed to embarrass America before he even left by insulting the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Having arrived in England, Trump sought to escalate his diplomatic incompetence with another attack on the U.S. media. That in itself is to be expected from the president who hates the freedoms protected by the First Amendment and regards the press as “the enemy of the people.” However, this time he is attacking American institutions from foreign soil and attempting to bully them into obedience to his will.

These comments are despicable on many levels. First of all, he is admitting that the only news source he is comfortable watching is the Trump-fluffing sycophants of Fox News. And when away from home, he desperately needs Fox to stroke his fragile ego. Furthermore, he fails to document he what describes as “all negative” with any examples. Suffice to say that any criticism of him was enough to get him to change the channel to less objectionable programming like cooking or golf.

Trump is also displaying his utter ignorance of the television business. CNN is not only enjoying their highest ratings in years, they are more profitable than ever. But no one will be surprised that Trump is either stupid or lying. That’s the new normal for the Era of Trump.

The worst part of this Twitter tirade, though, is Trump’s gleeful assault on an American business. He doesn’t care who he hurts so long as he can get vengeance for whatever slight he thinks he’s the victim of. That’s typical of his inherent weakness and narcissism. But make no mistake, his petulant whining is aimed at more than 250,000 employees of an American company. It is totally unprecedented for an U.S. president to call for a boycott of an U.S. company with tens of thousands of American workers. And his malicious smear is even worse coming from overseas.

And as if all of that weren’t bad enough, Trump’s attack is based on his displeasure with how the free press is doing their job. What he thinks is negative reporting is really just a factual representation of what he actually does and says. The media can’t help it if his words and actions are glaringly dumb and harmful. And what exactly does Trump think that AT&T should do? He insists that they should be “forced to make big changes at CNN.” But forcing the press to behave in a manner that is acceptable to political leaders is what we would expect from the fascist regimes that control their media. Which is what Trump is advocating and yearning for.

What’s more, while he whines that the world “gets a false picture of USA” from CNN, the world has actually made a deliberate choice. Fox News used to be carried in the U.K. but they discontinued their service two years ago because nobody was watching it A company spokeswoman said that…

“Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

So Trump wants to boycott AT&T, hurt American workers, and dishonor the Constitution, all in an effort to bully the media into slobbering over him the way Fox News does. Never mind that the Brits have already rejected the lies and propaganda that is the hallmark of Fox’s deceitful brand of “journalism.” Like his pals Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, Trump wants to coerce the press into acting like his own personal PR agency. And the sentiments in these tweets are direct attacks on the free press, as well as free markets. They are are antithetical to long held and cherished American principles. But then, so is almost everything Trump does and says.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Threatens Freedom Of The Press With Chilling Statement On The Media

To say that Donald Trump is no friend of a free press is an understatement of Olympian proportions. His open hostility toward the media generally, and journalists individually, virtually drips with white hot hatred. And his animosity is focused solely on his own self-interest and his paranoid perception that everyone is against him.

Donald Trump

As a result, Trump has treated the press like cattle, forcing them into cramped pens at his rallies. Then he points them out to his followers as “disgusting scum” and jokes about killing them. And those are the lucky ones who didn’t have their credentials revoked.

As the campaign progresses and Trump’s prospects for victory dwindle, he is getting even more maniacal in his rage against the media. Now he has issued a statement spurred by the recent bid by AT&T to acquire TimeWarner. The content and tone of the statement should worry every American who values the First Amendment of the Constitution. It was written by his Senior Economic Advisor, Peter Navarro, and addresses a very real problem: Monopoly Power of New Media Conglomerates. The problem is that he twists the whole subject into an ego-driven tirade against his perceived enemies. It’s opening paragraph states that:

“Over a hundred years ago, a pro-business Teddy Roosevelt busted up more than 40 oil, railroad, steel and other ‘trusts’ that were wielding their rapacious monopoly power to gouge consumers and interfere with the efficient functioning of the American economy. Donald Trump will break up the new media conglomerate oligopolies that have gained enormous control over our information, intrude into our personal lives, and in this election, are attempting to unduly influence America’s political process.”

Not bad, so far. But rather than making a reasoned argument against the concentration of corporate interests, he turns it into a political diatribe. He complains that these media monopolies are “the very same media conglomerates now pushing Hillary Clinton’s agenda.” Then he singles out “NBC, and its Clinton megaphone MSNBC,” for “engag[ing] in their Never Trump tactics.” With regard to the AT&T/TimeWarner deal he ignores the anti-trust issues and instead whines about “the wildly anti-Trump CNN.”

Moving on to the newspaper sector, Trump seems to be obsessed with the ownership of the New York Times. That’s likely because one of the its biggest shareholders is the Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim. Just like with the judge in his Trump University fraud case, Trump is offended that anyone with Mexican heritage is permitted to do business in America. For the record, Slim owns 17 percent of the publicly traded Class A shares of the Times. The vast majority of the company is owned by the Sulzberger family, including the privately held Class B shares. Additionally, Slim has no representation on the company’s board of directors. So Trump’s inference of influence by Slim is entirely a product of his warped imagination.

Notice anything missing from this unhinged harangue? Trump never mentions Fox News, one of the biggest media conglomerate in the world. It’s reach extends to news, entertainment, television, films, publishing and digital media, on an international scale. It’s clear that Trump only has a problem with media monopolies that he doesn’t like. Conservative oligopolies are A-OK in his book. And if it weren’t obvious enough, Navarro went on Fox News where he was asked by Neil Cavuto if Trump aimed to break up existing media companies. Navarros’s answer: “Not this one, Neil.”

So, as long as you don’t piss off President Trump you’re free to be an abusive monopoly. Otherwise, watch out. But that isn’t how a free press works. To the contrary, that’s how a fascist dictatorship works. And Trump reiterated this position Sunday in an interview with the local CBS affiliate in Miami (video). He was asked “Do you think there is too much protection allowed in the first amendment?” He responded by advocating for the system in England where he thinks it’s easier to sue the media. Continuing, he said that “Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it.”

Let that sink in. Trump favors a foreign system where there is no First Amendment, which he believes allows for “too much protection.” And he is troubled that the press in the United States is “allowed to say whatever they want.” OMG! Somebody needs to put a stop that sort of freedom right away. And who better than Trump, who in the same interview declares that “I’m a big believer – tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me.” Uh huh.

That must be why prominent advocates for freedom of the press have made scathing denunciations of Trump. The Committee to Protect Journalists blasted him as “an unprecedented threat to the rights of journalists.” The National Press Club condemned his anti-press tactics as “unacceptable and dangerous to our democracy.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This new statement by Trump on media monopolies is just another self-serving scam intended to advance his personal interests and punish his foes. The blatant partisanship baked into it disqualifies it from serious consideration. Concentration of power in a shrinking corporate media landscape is a truly disturbing development that needs to be addressed. But it isn’t addressed by a policy of clamping down on political adversaries as revenge for honest criticism. Trump can do that on his TrumpTV, if he’s foolish enough to actually launch it. Fortunately for America, it won’t take very long for that to devolve into a HUGE and humiliating catastrophe.

The One Trick To Keep Your Phone Company From Spying On You

Last week an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times was published that exposed the collaboration between the National Security Agency and America’s providers of cell phone and Internet services. The report was based in part on documents released by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. What it revealed was a tight-knit relationship between a government spy operation and the corporate telecommunications industry.

AT&T NSA Spying

The report identified AT&T as the company most closely aligned with the NSA’s operations. While Verizon and other companies were also involved, AT&T was shown to have devoted far more energy and resources to the relationship. The report says that…

“While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as ‘highly collaborative,’ while another lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.”

There is much more detail about the NSA/telecom complex in the report, including the hundreds of millions of dollars spent and the over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day handed over to the government. It is an astonishing and frightening series of disclosures about just how intrusive the company you’re paying every month to provide phone and/or Internet service is.

And therein lies an important way for you to fight back. There isn’t much you you can do to prevent these corporate behemoths from screwing you. Sure, you can participate in protests and write letters to your congressional representatives, and you should. But that will take time and furious organizing. The one trick you can use now to keep your phone company from spying on you is to ditch the companies that are doing it and get one that doesn’t.

Those of you who use AT&T or Verizon (and that’s most of you) have another option. CREDO Mobile is a progressive company that is committed to privacy and doesn’t favor wealthy conglomerates who can afford to pay for special treatment and to suppress competition. As an added bonus they also fight for the environment, social justice, net neutrality, and a political landscape free of Tea Party idiocy.

It’s so easy to make the switch you’ll wonder why you never did it before. You’ll get great service and a selection of the best phones. You can keep your current phone number. And they will pay up to $350.00 for any early termination fees your current provider charges. You can even try it for thirty days with no obligation. You really need to check this out because there is no reason for your hard-earned dollars to be working against you by violating your constitutional liberties and literally funding the Tea Party, the KeystoneXL pipeline, the Koch brothers, and the Greedy One Percent (aka GOP). And if you use this link, you’ll even be helping News Corpse, who will receive a modest commission for the referral.

So please take this simple step to change the world and free yourself from the shackles of corporations who are working against you and your principles. You’ll feel great for having done so. And send this link along to your friends and family as well. We can have a huge effect if we join together for something positive, rather than submitting to the corporate masters.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

And just for fun, here is John Oliver taking on “Cable Company F*ckery” in case you needed another reason to switch.

Pearl Jam Censored At Lollapalooza By AT&T

If we really needed proof that the Big Telcos are lying through their teeth when they celebrate themselves as defenders of free speech and open access, we couldn’t do better than this. AT&T, the sole provider for the webcast of Pearl Jam’s performance at Lollapalooza, and noted opponent of Network Neutrality, cut out politically charged portions of the band’s performance. I’ll let them tell it via their website:

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

  • “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and
  • “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue. [Ed: Save the Internet has clips of both versions of the song here]

Most telecommunications companies oppose “net neutrality” and argue that the public can trust them not to censor.

And if you can’t trust a giant, multinational, consolidated, communications conglomerate like Ma Bell, who can you trust? AT&T has shown that they cannot be relied upon to manage vital national resources like the Internet. They want to own it and constrain its use to the sole purpose of enriching themselves and shaping public opinion to their liking.


 
 
Don’t let them do it because, as Pearl Jam says…

This Is Not For You!
“And you dare say it belongs to you…to you…
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, never was for you…fuck you…”