OAN Throws A Hissy Fit After Being Axed By AT&T, DirecTV

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Last week, we noted how AT&T-owned DirecTV had decided to axe OAN, the conspiracy and fantasy channel, from its cable lineup. The decision came just three months or so after a blockbuster report showed that AT&T not only helped fund and set up the conspiracy theory spewing "news" outlet, but it came up with the idea. OAN has been notorious for spreading false claims ranging from non-existent election fraud to the false claim that COVID was developed in a North Carolina lab as part of a government plot.

Of course things have shifted dramatically for AT&T since OAN's creation several years ago. The company's $200 billion acquisitions of DirecTV and Time Warner flamed out spectacularly, forcing it to sell much of the assets to recoup its massive debt load as it backed away from its TV and video advertising ambitions and refocused on telecom. That included selling off DirecTV into a new joint venture with private equity firm TPG Capital, which now has a 30 percent stake.

So the recent decision to axe the channel from the DirecTV lineup likely had more to do with TPG Capital not wanting to be associated with the venture than AT&T (whose Dallas-based executives remain largely cozy with insurrectionists and right-wing conspiracy theorists). But the channel apparently thought attacking AT&T board members would be their best path forward, with channel hosts now asking viewers to "find dirt" on AT&T board member William Kennard:

"Besides begging OAN viewers to “blow up” AT&T’s phone lines with demands that they keep his channel, Ball also called on them to send them any salacious information about the conglomerate’s chairman.

“If you have any dirt on Mr. Kennard, I’d love to see it and put it on this program,” the Real America host exclaimed.

“You bring me concrete evidence of whatever it may be: cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife, saying racial slurs against white people,” Ball added, unsubtly referencing the fact that Kennard is Black. “Whatever it may be. Find it for me. Bring it, and we will air it."

Granted there are plenty of executives and board members at AT&T that OAN could have singled out. But Kennard is not only Black (some race-baiting motivation for the target audience), he's a Democrat who was Federal Communications Commission chairman during the Clinton administration (letting them pretend they're the victim of partisan politics). That's a far more compelling narrative than the truth, which was that AT&T's new partner TPG Capital likely didn't want the brand association or legal liability OAN creates, especially for a company like DirecTV that has lots of other things to worry about (like surviving the streaming revolution).

OAN is obviously panicked because while the channel is still carried on a few providers (like Verizon's FiOS TV), DirecTV made up the vast, vast majority of its outreach footprint, giving it perceived legitimacy as a "news" organization. Without a sugar daddy like AT&T propping up the organization with favorable carriage deals, the "news channel" is forced to heavily rely on the Internet for distribution, leaving it mired in a highly competitive scrum of conspiratorial influencers and other gibberish spewing Trump orbit hopefuls.

Companies: at&t, directv, oan

DirecTV Finally Dumps OAN, Limiting The Conspiracy And Propaganda Channel's Reach

from the good-luck-out-there dept

Back in October, reports emerged indicating that AT&T had not only funded much of the creation of the popular conspiracy and fantasy channel OAN, AT&T executives had actually come up with the original idea. The channel, which routinely traffics in false election fraud, COVID, and other right-wing conspiracy theories, had seen most of its reach come courtesy of a partnership with DirecTV. As of last week, DirecTV executives informed OAN it wouldn't be having its contract renewed:

"The satellite-TV provider has notified OAN’s owner, Herring Networks Inc., that it plans to stop carrying the company’s two channels when their contract expires. Herring Networks also owns AWE, a lifestyle channel that stands for “A Wealth of Entertainment."

What changed? After its disastrous $200 billion Time Warner and DirecTV megamerger spree resulted in layoffs, lost customers, and general carnage, AT&T had to not only backtrack from its ambitions to be an online video and ad giant, it had to sell anything that wasn't nailed down to recoup the massive debt created from the deals. That included spinning off DirecTV into its own, new entity in a partnership with private equity firm TPG Capital. While AT&T still has a 70% stake in the venture, it now has other executives with a vested interest in calling the shots.

I'd wager that while Dallas-based right wing AT&T executives had no problem being associated with the conspiracy theory channel, AT&T's new partners at TPG likely weren't keen on the bad press. Especially in the wake of last October's reporting so closely linking AT&T to a channel that routinely traffics in dangerous gibberish like claims that COVID was created in a North Carolina lab.

As of last year, estimates pegged OAN's total subscriber count (people who have the channel in their cable lineup) at somewhere around 23 million, far lower than Fox News (78.6 million) or even Newsmax (58.2 million). But estimates of how many people actually watch the channel consistently is notably lower than that:

Without DirecTV's help, the channel's reach is curtailed even further. Now the channel is only carried by a small handful of cable TV providers, the biggest being Verizon's FiOS TV. Granted the channel's gibberish still gets traction online as part of the far right propaganda ecosystem (which includes both sharing by people who believe what the channel has to say, and outrage retweets from those who don't) but in terms of traditional distribution the move significantly restricts the propaganda bullhorn's impact all the same.

Filed Under: cable tv, carriage, conspiracy theories, oan, pay tv, propaganda
Companies: at&t, directv, herring networks, oan

GOP Claim That Biden FCC Nom Gigi Sohn Wants To 'Censor Conservatives' Is AT&T & Rupert Murdoch Backed Gibberish

from the fluff-and-nonsense dept

We'd already noted how telecom and media giants are hard at work trying to scuttle the nomination of consumer advocate Gigi Sohn to the FCC. Sohn is not only a genuine reformer, she's broadly popular on both sides of the aisle in telecom and media circles. So companies like AT&T and News Corporation, which enjoyed no limit of ass kissing during the Trump era, are working overtime to come up with some feeble talking points loyal politicians can use to oppose her nomination. It's not going well.

About the best they could come up with was the entirely false claim that Sohn wants to "censor Conservatives." Anybody who actually knows Sohn knows the claim isn't true, and she's historically gone well out of her way to embrace policies that encourage diversity in media and speech, even when she doesn't agree with the speaker. Despite being a nonsense claim, it has been broadly peppered across the right wing echo chamber, including the usual columns at Breitbart, editorials by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Tucker Carlson, and elsewhere.

The claim popped up again at last week's nomination hearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee courtesy of Senators Ted Cruz and Dan Sullivan:

"Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn faced off against Republican senators at a nomination hearing yesterday, disputing the senators' shaky claims that she would use a post at the FCC to censor conservatives. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) repeated arguments previously made by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which mostly boil down to complaints about Sohn's tweets criticizing Fox News and her criticism of Sinclair Broadcast Group."

As we've long noted, the claims that Conservatives are being "censored" in general (either on the internet or on traditional television) aren't remotely true. In fact Conservatives have not only built a massive right wing infotainment universe with a violent disdain for factual reality (OAN, NewsMax, Fox News, Breitbart, Facebook, YouTube, Blaze), they've mastered the art of trolling for outrage engagement, which generally involves saying inflammatory gibberish, then enjoying the added exposure from left-wing outrage retweets and ad-engagement obsessed clickbait coverage. Pretty much the exact opposite of "censorship."

What's usually deemed "censorship" is usually just fairly flimsy and short-lived accountability for spewing false or bigoted nonsense. And while the Trump GOP pretends to be mad at "big tech" for "censorship," what they're actually mad about is the fact that social media belatedly and inconsistently started reining in GOP race-baiting propaganda, a cornerstone of party power in the face of an unfavorable shift in demographics and a sagging electorate. The GOP has zero interest in genuine antitrust reform (see: forty straight years of U.S. history), but the pretense that they do provides handy cover for an agenda that's exclusively self-serving.

The new Trump GOP is currently a party of performative gibberish, entirely untethered from reality, propped up largely thanks to propaganda shoveled into the brains of low-information voters, tricked into rooting against their best self interests via a massive, well-funded coalition of traditional cable and online companies (again, quite the opposite of "censorship"). And outside of perhaps reining in media consolidation and encouraging more competition, there's not a whole lot the FCC can do about it from a policy perspective, given inevitable 1A challenges and a rightward-lurching Supreme Court. Even if Sohn wanted to "censor Conservatives" (which again, she doesn't) she'd find it an impossible task within the confines of the FCC and legal reality.

The great irony in the GOP/News Corp/AT&T alliance's effort to smear Sohn as somebody looking to "censor Conservatives?" Right wing news outlets like Newsmax and AT&T-funded OAN actually support her nomination because she's historically worked to encourage diversity in media viewpoints and healthy competition in media markets. Sohn highlighted as much at the hearing:

"I would say, look at my record. Look at the conservative cable channels that I worked with for years to get them carriage on cable systems when those systems would not carry them. I have long worked with organizations and companies with whom I vigorously disagree on their point of view—fervent Republicans, fervent supporters of the previous president—and I worked with them to get their views online. I believe that I have been characterized very unfairly as being anti-conservative speech. I think my record says otherwise."

It's kind of hard to smear somebody as a fan of "conservative censorship" when outlets like OAN and Newsmax, which routinely traffic in truly repugnant garbage, say she's always been even-handed when dealing with them. Check out this statement supporting Sohn by OAN President Charles Herring:

"She believes in the First Amendment and the advantages of a strong and open media for the benefit of our democracy. She is one of the most knowledgeable persons I know on FCC issues and has the common sense and desire to work with people on both sides of the aisle."

As usual with the broader Trump GOP, this isn't about policy, it's about money and power. AT&T and News Corporation don't want Sohn appointed because she'd not only break a 2-2 partisan gridlock in voting at the FCC, she actively supports holding telecom and media giants accountable for bad behavior. That's in pretty stark contrast to the last four years of the Trump FCC, which basically involved coddling entrenched telecom and media giants at every conceivable opportunity, even if that required a whole lot of lying and legally dubious behavior.

If you're a Trump-allied GOP lawmaker you can't just come out and say you're opposing Sohn's nomination because you're lodged up AT&T and Rupert Murdoch's ass and the only thing you care about is protecting their revenues so campaign contributions keep flowing. So instead you glom on to the Trump GOP's perpetual victimization complex to not only change the subject (away from the fact you're an enabler of anti-competitive monopolists and have been for decades), but distract and agitate the base with false outrage and victimization porn. Sohn can be approved to the post without GOP support, so in the end most of this is little more than a delay tactic and empty calorie performative gibberish, much like the lion's share of the modern Trump GOP policy platform.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-conservative bias, fcc, gigi sohn, grandstanding, politics, ted cruz
Companies: newsmax, oan

AT&T Set Up And Paid For OAN Propaganda Network; Yet Everyone Wants To Scream About Facebook

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted for a while there's a weird myopia occurring in internet policy. As in, "big tech" (namely Facebook, Google, and Amazon) get a relentless amount of Congressional and policy wonk attention for their various, and sometimes painfully idiotic behaviors. At the same time, just an adorable smattering of serious policy attention is being given to a wide array of equally problematic but clearly monopolized industries (banking, airlines, insurance, energy), or internet-connected sectors that engage in many of the same (or sometimes worse) behaviors, be they adtech or U.S. telecom.

Case in point: while the entirety of U.S. policy experts, lawmakers, journalists, and academics (justifiably) fixated on the Facebook whistleblower train wreck, a story popped up about AT&T. Basically, it showcased how AT&T not only provided the lion's share of funding for the propaganda-laden OAN cable TV "news" network, the entire thing was AT&T's idea in the first place, and simply wouldn't exist without AT&T's consistent support:

"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."

It was previously known that AT&T was one of the few major cable TV distributors to carry OAN, therefore providing 90% of the channel's revenue (even Comcast long refused to carry the network). That's not surprising, given how well inflammatory bullshit sells. But it wasn't previously known how closely linked the two companies were, with OAN claiming AT&T even utilized the network to help put a positive shine on the company's disastrous, $200 billion, job-killing megamerger spree:

"[AT&T told OAN's owner AT&T] needed help to allay FCC and other officials’ concern that the DirecTV deal – a consolidation of providers – might make it harder for independent networks to get on the air, Charles Herring said.

So, he said in the affidavit, Slator proposed a new deal: If the Herrings lobbied on AT&T’s behalf, AT&T would air OAN and WealthTV on both U-verse and DirecTV. The Herrings would be paid one-third less per subscriber, but because DirecTV had so many more subscribers, the deal could be worth $100 million over five years...The court filings also cite a promise by OAN to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during newscasts."

Given the sheer scope of the propaganda being funneled through online platforms, cable TV news channels like OAN are often dismissed as less relevant. But in a nation where elections are often decided by a few hundred votes, a dedicated propaganda network (one at the direct beck and call of Donald Trump) really can make all the difference, media experts say:

"If you have 12 Americans being fed a diet of untruth, that’s 12 too many – and here, it’s literally millions,” Watson said of the OAN audience. “When you have that sort of poisonous influence on mass media, it’s a problem; because elections in the United States tend to be so close, a few percentage points here or there can really make a difference."

The story saw a tiny fraction of the mind-space usually reserved for modern day issues surrounding "big tech." While Facebook certainly deserves intense scrutiny for very serious screw ups, there's an obvious asymmetry in policy and media attention when it comes to "big telecom." That apathy extends to the Biden government, which rushed to appoint a big tech critic at the FTC in Lina Khan, but still hasn't been bothered to staff the nation's two top telecom and media regulators, the NTIA and FCC. This despite the fact COVID has highlighted broadband's importance, and issues like media consolidation are more important than ever in the face of a struggling news industry and soaring propaganda.

However bad Facebook is (and I 100% agree with complaints that its executives are monumentally terrible), think about this: in just the last few years AT&T has been: fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families; fined $105 million for helping "crammers" by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills; fined $60 million for lying to customers about the definition of "unlimited" data; caught in a scandal in which the company paid Trump's fixer $600,000 for closer access to the President; fined $7.7 million for turning a blind eye to drug dealers running directory assistance scams; caught lying about its claims it stopped funding politicians supporting January 6 insurrectionists; and was accused of ripping off the nations school systems for years by one of its own, former lawyers. I'm sure I missed some.

Now AT&T has been found to be not only the primary backer, but the brain child of an outright propaganda network that's so extreme, it's to the far right of Fox News. A network that routinely promotes anti-democratic election conspiracy theories, as well as anti-science COVID hysteria.

The occasional, piddly fine is laughable to a company that enjoys not only a regional broadband monopoly in many parts of the country, but received a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for doing absolutely nothing (technically less than nothing, given it has laid off roughly 50,000 employees since the 2017 cut). Tethered to both our domestic surveillance and first responder systems, AT&T is largely immune to serious government accountability because it's effectively now a patriotic part of government. It shouldn't be.

Where's the week long hearing about AT&T getting billions in subsidies and tax breaks in exchange for nothing? Where's the several-year exclusive media focus on the shoddy state of U.S. telecom and media? Where's the Congressional hearing about how cable and telecom giants are funding and promoting outright, blatant propaganda? Where's the endless parade of think pieces and deep dives into these problems? Why has Facebook, and big tech, completely dominated the policy discourse? Why are we seemingly incapable of chewing gum and walking at the same time?

We haven't seemed to figure out yet that it's all one, over-arching problem tethered to consolidation, monopolization, antitrust apathy, regulatory dysfunction, and corruption. "Big telecom" is seeing a tiny fraction of the scrutiny of "big tech," something the telecom sector is actively encouraging. Similarly, countless U.S. industries are filled with sectors dominated by heavily consolidated giants, created by the mindless rubber stamping of terrible mergers. Not a one is seeing equal levels of scrutiny. I'm not saying we shouldn't be heavily scrutinizing Facebook and technology giants, whose failures are clearly established. I'm just saying that the bizarre asymmetrical policy myopia -- where "big tech" is seemingly all that matters -- is starting to drive me a little batshit.

Filed Under: big tech, cable news, charles herring, disinformation, propaganda, tv news
Companies: at&t, directv, facebook, oan

Dominion Sues Newsmax, OAN, And The Head Of Overstock.Com For Election-Related Defamation

from the paper-tigers-asked-to-convert-allegations-to-USD dept

The failed insurrection may be over -- all but the Capitol cops ending their own lives after being assaulted by "law and order" types, who thought they could bypass the peaceful transfer of power with violence. (Fuck all those people, by the way -- all 500+ of them.) But the hope remains. It must have been stolen, say a collection of denialists and grifters. Let's win back the election process, say those unable to count votes or put their faith in the institution that put their boy in the White House in the first place (looking at you, Electoral College).

So the grift continues. So does the denialism. But it's going to start costing people some serious money. The people that decided that backdrafting Trump's odorous emanations following the November election are still theoretically on the hook for besmirching the election process and the machinery behind it.

While it's always appropriate to question the security and trustworthiness of election tech, it makes zero sense to air a bunch of insane conspiracies as actual fact. A bunch of acolytes thought they could call the presidential election into question if they amplified QAnon-level speculation into the public discourse. The stupidity of these actions has been called out by a frequent target of unvetted speculation: Dominion Voting Systems.

The challenges were only raised in areas where Trump expected to win but lost, indicating these "challenges" had nothing to do with election integrity. After all, if the integrity of the election was in question, wouldn't these people be questioning election results where Trump won? Everyone knows it's a façade -- a carelessly edited sermon to the converted. Playing to the base usually pays off. But it may not in these cases.

Dominion has been suing over these false statements, implications, and complete, utter bullshit. The company first targeted Trump legal figures (both past and present) like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. Now it's coming for Trump's favorite non-gorilla-related programmers: One America Network and Newsmax. Both companies stepped up during Trump's last couple of years mismanaging the country to prove they could be even further right than far-right mainstay Fox News.

Two more lawsuits have been filed by Dominion. They reiterate many of the same allegations raised against Powell and Giuliani. That shows "Republican" figureheads have all been operating off the same cheat sheet when it comes to contesting the parts of the election they don't like.

I won't quote the latest lawsuits by Dominion at length. We've already covered the lies and misinformation spread by defendants who now claim this was all just heated rhetoric and hyperbole (even when portraying these same claims as "evidence" of voter fraud in lawsuits where they were the plaintiff). It's all more of the same: a debunking of literally incredible claims by defendants willing to sell out their credibility (if not their defamation insurance providers) by attaching themselves like so many remora on a shark in the midst of capsizing in its own wake.

Here's one representative accusation (taken from Dominion's suit [PDF] against One America Network):

OAN spread these lies by broadcasting and promoting interviews with discredited figures such as Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, Patrick Byrne, and Mike Lindell. But OAN went further, helping create and nurture the false and fabricated Dominion narrative by endorsing, promoting, and manufacturing these known falsehoods, including by pointing to the so-called “evidence” OAN was broadcasting in support of these lies and by falsely claiming the lies had corroborated “all of our investigations.”

To capitalize on the interest its target audience had in the false Dominion narrative, OAN effectively deputized its Chief White House Correspondent, Chanel Rion, as an in-house spokesperson for all Dominion-related content. After priming its viewers with a steady diet of post-election programming falsely claiming Dominion rigged the 2020 election, OAN and Rion began producing an entire line of programming exclusively devoted to defaming Dominion, descriptively named “Dominion-izing the Vote,” which branded OAN’s disinformation and defamation campaign against Dominion into a single catchy phrase that is now synonymous with fraudulently flipping votes.

How much of this will be determined to be defamation rather than heated electoral-related rhetoric remains to be seen. But enough Trump acolytes decided it was better to tongue the ex-presidential boot than protect themselves from billions of dollars of defamation damages. And that's fine. The law protects the assertions of inveterate assholes. But it doesn't protect the supposedly factual claims of people not in possession of actual facts. That's libel. And that's going to add up to real money should a court decide Dominion is in the right.

Dominion has also sued [PDF] Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com founder. Someday the time capsule will be exhumed and our descendants will wonder how a pillow salesman and an internet entrepreneur became inextricably entangled in presidential politics. Wikipedia's explanation of "dark money" will likely fail to clarify anything. But Byrne better have a satisfactory explanation for his decision to translate his late-stage-capitalism failures into election theft electioneering. LOL deeply at the opening sentence:

After blowing up his career at Overstock by having an affair with a Russian spy, Patrick Byrne soon found himself a new pet project: promoting the false narrative that the 2020 election had been stolen. In fact, as Byrne has publicly admitted, he had already committed to that narrative three months before the election took place. After the election, Byrne manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), prominent Republicans, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Dominion, which, Byrne falsely claimed, committed fraud and helped steal the 2020 presidential election.

Don't be shitty, Patty. You're too smart for that, alleges Dominion.

Byrne was not hoodwinked by the ex-con or the conspiracy-theorists-for-hire. He is far too intelligent to buy the nonsense he has been selling to the American public. He is a Dartmouth-educated Marshall Scholar with a PhD from Stanford who, until he was pushed out in disgrace in 2019, had a national platform as the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. By lying about the 2020 election, Byrne catapulted himself back into the national spotlight, where he promoted himself as an “us-against-the-world” hero, and won access to the highest echelons of political power, including an in-person meeting with Trump at the White House.

LOL. This is Dominion preemptively striking any motions by Byrne saying he was just talking out of his ass. He had to know what he said was not only false, but demonstrably false. And yet he chose to do it anyway.

Dominion has a high bar to meet in its defamation lawsuits. Good. That's the way it should be. If defendants can indicate they were just being hyperbolic when discussing election issues, that protects the rest of us who don't have internet startups or pillow companies to absorb the blows of speech-related lawsuits. But Dominion's suits appear to allege defendants knew they were trafficking in lies but chose to do so anyway. And that certainly shouldn't protect the Sydney Powells and OANs of the world from putting their reputations (and liquid funds) at stake to stump for an obstinate failure and his inability to accept reality.

Filed Under: defamation, election, election integrity, patrick byrne, voting, voting machines
Companies: dominion, newsmax, oan, oann

For All The Hype, Trump's Favorite 'News' Channel (OAN) Faces Shrinking Footprint

from the dysfunction-junction dept

The President's favorite sycophancy channel, OAN (One America News) has seen no shortage of headlines in the recent weeks for its dubious "news" programming. Said programming has included claims that elderly people are Antifa agitators, that the coronavirus was created in a North Carolina lab as part of a "deep state" plot, all while banning polls that dare to suggest that dear leader may not be doing all that hot in the wake of corruption, incompetence, and a raging pandemic. That's before you get to media allegations that the outlet has some uncomfortable parallels to Russian state TV.

But the people hyperventilating over the network's Trumpist disinformation and pole position in the White House briefing room often forget to mention that the channel doesn't actually have all that many viewers. While the channel currently reaches 35 million potential households (notably fewer actually watch), that's a far cry from the 119 million TV households that have access to major news networks like CNN and Fox News. Major cable TV providers like Dish, Charter, and Comcast don't carry the channel at all, leaving Verizon and AT&T as the only major cable TV providers that think it's worth it.

And even that could be changing. The company's contract with AT&T/DirecTV, first signed in 2017 and expiring in 2021, could be in trouble. Most notably because of the tough terms affixed to carriage at a time when cable providers are already being pushed to cut expensive dead weight due to cord cutting:

"One hurdle to getting carried by other major TV providers may be OAN’s contract with DirecTV. Under the terms, DirecTV is required to make OAN available to 85% of its subscribers, and the channel must seek the same arrangement with other pay-TV companies, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. In addition, OAN and its sister channel, AWE, which stands for “A Wealth of Entertainment,” charge pay-TV providers a monthly fee of about 15 cents per subscriber, according to Herring."

Cable providers have been cutting dead channel weight for several years as they work to try and cut their own costs -- to in turn prevent more cable TV customers from cutting cable TV out of their diet entirely (it's not really working). Sources told Bloomberg those conditions are likely too onerous for AT&T/DirecTV, and if that falls apart, OAN would lose access to yet another 19 million US households:

"Together, those provisions may be too onerous to entice big cable-TV providers to carry the network, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the contract is private. And OAN will have a large chunk of its audience at stake when it negotiates a contract renewal with AT&T, which has about 19 million pay-TV customers."

OAN, to this point, has tried to frame AT&T's decision to carry disinformation as an act of bravery:

"We are very pleased that AT&T seems to want to offer programming for everybody and not just people with one viewpoint," he said.

But if you're familiar with AT&T, you know it's not about bravery, it's about profitability. The company is swimming in debt from a recent slate of megamergers and losing customers hand over fist due to debt-recouping rate hikes. It's in the process of firing employees en masse (despite a parade of huge favors from the Trump administration), and examining every opportunity to save a buck. Combine that with growing OAN criticism and the potential for a looming political sea change, and concerns that OAN is on the cusp of being a major league media player don't appear entirely warranted.

Filed Under: donald trump, news, propaganda
Companies: oan, one america news