AT&T funds rightwing channel One America News, Reuters reveals – By Samira Sadeque (The Guardian) / Oct 7 2021
AT&T, the nation’s largest telecom provider, has been discovered to be a crucial cog in the operation of One America News, the rightwing news channel which has seen a rise in its viewership through its promotion of unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump.
A Reuters investigation revealed that AT&T has been the source of 90% of OAN’s revenue since the news channel was launched in 2013. AT&T disputed the report, claiming that their partnership with DirecTV merely “carried” the channel.
Robert Herring Sr, founder and CEO of OAN, which shares a large overlap of viewers with Fox News, said in 2019 during a deposition that the channel was the brainchild of AT&T executives.
“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” he said at the time, according to 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.”
