One America News Network, a far-right television broadcaster that has continued to support false claims about the 2020 election and promote ineffective COVID-19 treatments, has received a big boost from Dallas-based telecommunications and media giant AT&T, according to a new investigation. obtain .
John Shiffman recently reported for Reuters on OANN, including its connections with AT&T.
Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below to learn more about how payments from the DirecTV satellite network – formerly part of AT&T – make up most of OANN’s revenue, and how the channel’s owners believe that AT&T sponsored the creation of OANN.
This transcript has been slightly edited for the sake of clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us a little about OANN for those who haven’t seen it before. What is it exactly and who is behind it?
John Shiffmann: One America News Network is a television station that was founded in 2013 but didn’t become famous as a Conservative broadcaster until 2015 when it started doing everyone [former President Donald Trump’s] Speeches and rallies live. It ended with it signing a deal with AT&T in April 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, which at the time was owned and, to some extent, still owns DirecTV. And they emerged as leaders in conspiracy theories, both on COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election results.
Could you say a little more about the AT&T connection? Is it just that AT&T carries this network, or is there more?
When I started investigating One America News Network, I started searching court records and found that, according to court records and affidavits from Robert and Charles Herring, the owners of One America News, they were talking to AT&T executives and considering one Add news channel or maybe a boxing channel. And they said that AT&T executives told them that a conservative network is needed – that they need one to counter the supposedly more liberal broadcasters. And so they said in several affidavits, statements, court records – that AT&T suggested this and [that] they put One America News together.
You’ve spoken to some people who say AT&T is to OANN what the late Roger Ailes was to growing Fox News. What do you mean by that? Does AT&T manage its coverage of OANN?
AT&T is pretty clear about this – what AT&T does is that they paid tens of millions of dollars between 2017 and today. It is normal for you to pay for a network. That’s what cable and satellite companies do. You pay fees for broadcasting various channels CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN. They all paid fees from cable and satellite companies. But what is unusual here is that the OANN executives say that AT&T executives are the inspiration for this.
But the other unusual thing is what I found in some court statements from the OANN accountant. 90% of its revenue comes from the AT&T deal. OANN is fighting to get to other carriers, other satellite networks. And her attorney said in a court testimony that if OANN lost its deal with DirecTV / AT&T, OANN would go out of business tomorrow sometime last year.
You write that AT&T once considered buying the network. When was that and what happened?
In 2013 and 2014, AT&T considered buying a 5% stake in the network – actually the parent company of two networks, [OANN and] one called AWE, a lifestyle network, but it’s very, very obscure. And AT&T executives flew from Dallas to San Diego. You did some due diligence. There were meetings. You discussed it. At the end of the day, they decided to get a regular deal instead of AT&T getting involved in the network and getting the programs on the air. AT&T simply paid the fees, which run into the millions each year.
Has AT&T responded to your reporting?
They have. We’ve talked to AT&T before and before launch, of course, and we know they said, ‘Look, we don’t control the content that we have. We try to offer a wide variety of content to our consumers. They turned down the idea of funding OANN, saying they pay fees to move OANN. But at the end of the day, these fees make up 90% of the OANN budget, according to the accountant.
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