Pro -Trump News Outlet An AT&T -Funded American News Outlet – Report – Deadline

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One America News, the enthusiastic right-wing media outlet best known for doggedly backing Donald Trump before, during and after his presidency, got nearly 90% of its financial support from AT&T.

That turned -up news, which identified pushback from the telecom giant, was reported in a part of the Reuters investigation. The news agency reviewed the court records and walked away with a stunning set of financial details and connections not yet reported.

Robert Herring Sr., the 80 -year -old founder of OAN who made a profit in the circuit board industry, testified in a legal deposit in 2019 that the decision to launch the network in 2013 was driven by AT&T. “They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said, according to the report. “They only have one, which is Fox News, and they have seven others on the other side [left-wing] side When they said that, I jumped in here and built one. ”

Tens of millions of revenue came from distributing the deals to DirecTV, which was owned by AT&T from 2015 until a spinoff was completed earlier this year, the report said. (In 2013, the company was a participant in the pay-TV space through its U-verse cable operation.) The company still has a 70% stake in DirecTV, but the satellite operator is now controlled by a separate entity with private equity support.

In a statement issued at Deadline, AT&T said it “never had a financial interest in OAN’s success and never‘ funded ’OAN. When AT&T acquired DirecTV, we refused to bring OAN to that platform, and OAN sued DirecTV as a result.Four years ago, DirecTV reached a commercial carriage agreement with OAN, as did hundreds of other channels and as OAN did with other TV providers which carries its program. “The statement went on to emphasize that DirecTV” does not dictate or control the program on the channels. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong. “

In the Reuters piece, AT&T spokesman Jim Greer disputes the description of AT&T playing a quasi-Roger Ailes role, promoting a startup news outlet with a clear political intent. He declined to address any of the finances disclosed in the court testimony, but said AT&T aims to offer “insights from across the political spectrum” to its customers.

Herring said he was offered $ 250 million for OAN (an overture that did not result in an agreement), and his accountant testified under oath that there was no deal with DirecTV and AT&T support, the amount of OAN will be “zero.”

OAN remains a fraction of the size of major cable news rivals, but it has gained noticeable strength by embracing a tighter, more reliable version of the feedback loop that exists within of many years between Trump and Fox News. Before finally banning his Twitter account, the former president tweeted OAN promotions more than 120 times in his last two years in office, according to a Reuters estimate. Chanel Rion, the network’s White House announcer, has become so closely associated with the media atmosphere around Trump that she made for a ripe on-screen satirical target for Sascha Baron Cohen in the Borat Next Moviefilm .

Like NewsMax and several other right-wing outlets, OAN also benefited after the election in November, as Fox News experienced a backlash after it called the election for Joe Biden. OAN is among the hardline supporters of the lie spread by Trump and other Republicans about election fraud in 2020.

The relationship between AT&T and OAN is especially striking in the context of the long-standing acronym between Trump and CNN. That bad blood reportedly prompted the Justice Department’s 11th-hour decision to sue AT&T to try to block its acquisition of Time Warner. Antitrust regulators have always insisted that the case is about consumer protection and monopoly concerns, rather than any personal agenda. The federal judge who heard the case took the Trump element to the table, blocking evidence and testimony that sought to establish the former president’s potential motive. An article by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker’s in 2019 established a connection between Trump’s animus toward CNN and the antitrust case.

While AT&T stood by CNN and made promises it would not sell or remove it from its $ 85 billion deal with Time Warner, throughout the merger period it supported a right -wing rival, Reuters found. Today, AT&T is in the process of transferring CNN parent WarnerMedia to a new stand-alone entity through a $ 43 billion merger with Discovery. The company will retain a large stake, but Discovery will be in control.

The situation on the right -wing network was not the first AT&T political turmoil of the week. On Monday, the Dallas -based company’s support for lawmakers supporting strict new law limiting abortion, was burned from the Democratic super PAC.

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