How AT&T Helped Build Far-Right "One America News" (Reuters Special Report)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Special Report: How AT&T helped build far-right One America News

WWW.REUTERS.COM

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America’s top telecom giant nurtured OAN, the pro-Trump news channel now at the center of a bitter national divide over politics and truth.

 

Quote

 

One America News, the far-right network whose fortunes and viewership rose amid the triumph and tumult of the Trump administration, has flourished with support from a surprising source: AT&T Inc, the world's largest communications company.

 

'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.”

 

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Capital just can't help but prop up reactionaries 

[SuperSpreader]

I have like 5 AT&T accounts

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, SuperSpreader said:

I have like 5 AT&T accounts

 

Fascist.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

4 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Fascist.

[Jason]

17 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Fascist.

 

[marioandsonic]

My family uses AT&T, and I never liked it.  I switched to Verizon a couple years ago, but I feel their coverage area is godawful.  Maybe I should give T mobile a try...

[Ricofoley]

We know for a fact that Trump started watching OANN and Newsmax instead of Fox at the end of his presidency because they were telling him what he wanted to hear. It's undoubtedly true that the feedback loop Trump got from watching that stuff contributed to how much he dug in on refusing to concede after the election. It's probably fair say that AT&T is directly responsible for permanently damaging American democracy by creating this network.

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

11 hours ago, Ricofoley said:

We know for a fact that Trump started watching OANN and Newsmax instead of Fox at the end of his presidency because they were telling him what he wanted to hear. It's undoubtedly true that the feedback loop Trump got from watching that stuff contributed to how much he dug in on refusing to concede after the election. It's probably fair say that AT&T is directly responsible for permanently damaging American democracy by creating this network.

 

You could argue it’s more perverse than that.  One might say that a vast swathe of voters were so in thrall to Trump that they would literally support the creation of an entire news network in a hermetically sealed mediasphere to construct the reality he claimed to be true , rather than reckon with the one they actually live in.  Trump was just reacting the way any run-of-the-mill megalomaniac would when “If I say it, it becomes true” becomes a feature of the world his base lives in.

 

If it hadn’t been AT&T, it would have been someone else.  It’s awful hard to keep supply away from demand.  It was the Trumpists’ job to demand the norms of liberal democracy were more important than their idol, and…they failed.

[brucoe]

When I read the original story on this a few days ago, I started thinking I'd dump my AT&T account with my cell phone, and then little by little I started to realize how many things that were owned by AT&T were basically a part of my life. I have two cell phone accounts, I subscribe to HBO, I watch shows on Warner/HBO all the time, I watch CNN and who knows what else. Basically, boycotting AT&T doesn't make a difference because all along I've been funding AT&T, which basically means I was funding OAN but wanting to blame someone else cause they pulled the trigger.