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.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Exposes Fox News’ Tucker Carlson for the Slimy Little Coward that He Is

The commitment that Fox News has shown for advancing the spread of the coronavirus has been evident from the outset of the pandemic. When they weren’t outright dismissing the threat as a flu or a hoax (in conjunction with Donald Trump), they were disparaging efforts to mitigate the harm, such as wearing face masks and getting vaccinated. The result is that the nation is now suffering from what can accurately be called the Fox News Pandemic.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Bullshit Factory

The most offensive objector to the science-based solutions to COVID has been Fox’s Tucker Carlson. He has relentlessly promoted the use of quack cures, espoused paranoid conspiracy theories that the vaccines don’t work, supported the unlawful use of fake vaccination cards, and even exhorted his viewers to make false police reports of child abuse against parents whose children wear face masks.

On Tuesday Carlson was called out on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. Clearly Hayes was fed up with the blatant hypocrisy Carlson exuded every time he broached the subject of the pandemic. That was especially true when Carlson sought to malign President Biden’s efforts to actually save lives and return the country to some semblance of normalcy.

Most recently, Biden announced an initiative to get more Americans vaccinated. It included having federal agencies and large companies encouraging their employees to either get the shot or be tested weekly. and it was received with overwhelming support, even in a survey by Fox News.

Undeterred, Carlson persisted with his tunnel-vision, knee-jerk, pro-COVID positions. And he did so despite the fact that his employer had already implemented its own policy that is even stricter than Biden’s, requiring daily testing for the unvaccinated. Which led to Hayes unloading on Carlson and his hypocrisy:

“Tucker Carlson has even launched a personal campaign against the horrible, tyrannical employers out there who require their employees to get vaccinated. He has been giving sympathetic interviews to people who have taken the – in my mind – rather extreme step of quitting their job rather than getting vaccinated.”

“Tucker, buddy, I’ve got news for you: The call is coming from inside the house. Your own bosses are doing this. And I’ve got to ask, Why don’t you have the courage of your convictions? The very lowest level of that courage, which of course he’s failed to show, would be to simply use your platform to actually criticize your own bosses who are making this requirement. You could go on air and say ‘Hey, my bosses are doing this and I don’t agree with it.’

“But that would require the tiniest little sliver of moral integrity. You’d have to take some little, slight risk to your bottom line, and your paycheck, and your stature. You’re probably not going to do that. You certainly wouldn’t do the thing that you’ve celebrated in in others, which is to just quit and walk away rather than be subject to this tyranny.”

There are a couple of points in those remarks that Hayes might need to rethink. First of all, to ask Carlson why he doesn’t have the “courage of his convictions” you would have to assume that he has any convictions. And the same thing goes for any questions regarding Carlson’s alleged “moral integrity.”

Not only would Carlson never give up his Fox News gourmet meal ticket over something as principled as integrity, he will never even admit to his audience that Fox News has adopted the very policies that he is so petulantly whining about. Because to Carlson, none of this is about honor or honesty. It is simply about profit, power, and propaganda.

That goes for all of his confederates at Fox News as well. They are happy in the safety of their vaccinated corporate cocoon, while they simultaneously and deliberately frighten their dimwitted, vulnerable viewers away from the proven things that will protect them, their families, and their nation from illness and death. And somehow they still manage to sleep at night.

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.