Trump’s favorite channel, One America News, was never “news” at all

The January 6 insurgency laundering and denial began on One America News the same day.

As President Donald Trump tried to overturn legitimate presidential election results – sparking a deadly riot along the way – cable channel executives sent too clear a message to their team on how to cover this event horrible.

“Please DO NOT say ‘Trump supporters storm Capitol.’ … ‘Just call them protesters or protesters. … DON’T CALL IT’S A RIOT !!! ”came the impassioned directive via email from a staff information manager.

The next day, OAN’s main boss, founder Robert Herring Sr., ordered producers to side with the president, as he launched the conspiracy theory that it was not Trump supporters who broke those windows and storming those barricades – that it was the leftist antifa movement instead.

“We want to report all the things Antifa did yesterday. I don’t think it’s the Trump people, but let’s investigate,” the 80-year-old CEO wrote in an email.

There was simply nothing to support this far-fetched theory: The FBI found no evidence of antifa involvement, and nearly all of the hundreds of indicted suspects were well-documented Trump supporters; some are members of white supremacy or other far-right groups.

When Reuters, the global news agency, published its two-part survey OAN’s most startling discovery last week was that AT&T indirectly provided 90 percent of the channel’s revenue, after making it known it was eager to host a new conservative cable network.

Yes, the world’s largest communications company has played a major role in creating and sustaining the far-right channel that broadcasts wacky ideas, promotes fraudulent covid-19 remedies, and in its fervor, does sound like pro-Trump market leader Fox News almost reasonable. (AT&T disputed aspects of the Reuters reporting and said the company, through its subsidiary DirecTV, provides “views across the political spectrum.”)

But just as notable as AT&T’s involvement was how Reuters’ John Shiffman lifted the curtain on the operation of the San Diego-based network, relying in part on court documents.

What they have shown is that the NAO is not about “news”, which is part of its name, but about propaganda, directed from above.

“If there was a story involving Trump, we had to focus only on positive news or mostly create positive news,” Marissa Gonzales, a former OAN producer who resigned last year, told Reuters. “It was never, ever the full truth.”

This is what was happening in the background. It adds a valuable – if not appalling – perspective to what we already knew about OAN.

We knew Trump valued blind loyalty, promoting the channel more than 100 times on his Twitter feed, often as he complained about Fox News’ failure to fully support him at all times. We knew Herring was far from shy about his bias, tweeting in early January: “If anyone thinks we’ll throw the best the US President has had in my 79 years under the bus, you you are wrong.

And we knew that OAN had let two of its on-air personalities raise over $ 600,000 to help fund a private “audit” of the presidential vote in Arizona. One of them even worked part-time for the legal team in Trump’s recount effort.

It’s no wonder the Dominion Voting Machine Company is suing OAN for libel, for spreading and endorsing false reports that it helped steal the 2020 election from Trump. The Dominion costume succinctly describes the problem: “OAN has helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where the top is the bottom (and) pigs have wings.”

But OAN maintains that it is all a matter of protected freedom of expression or opinion, including a series of pseudo-documentaries on unproven electoral fraud that MyPillow chief executive and Trump loyalist Mike Lindell paid for. broadcast. Over the summer, a federal judge suggested the courts might not accept that defense, as he allowed a number of Dominion-related libel suits, including one against Lindell, to go ahead.

Trump’s relentless disinformation campaign, aided by his staunch media allies, has clearly reached millions of Americans. While there is no factual basis, no supporting evidence, a Reuters / Ipsos poll found in April that about half of Republicans believed the siege was either a non-violent protest or caused by leftist forces “trying to make Trump look bad.” “A majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that widespread electoral fraud has robbed him of a second presidential term.

OAN’s TV reach may not be vast – most Americans won’t encounter it when they turn on their TVs. But the offers on her website may very well show up in their social media feeds. A typical post of these was a three paragraph post on Friday, featuring Trump’s official statement slamming the “Unselected Committee of Partisan Democrats,” under the headline: “Report: President Trump Fighting Probes Led By Democrats in the January 6 demonstration. “

In terms of spreading disinformation and helping Trump deny the devastating realities of the January 6 insurgency, OAN is hitting way above its weight.

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