chls herring oann

see cyber ninja kraken

trump kid trying to buy?

smartmatic?

oann settle defam of Ga ruby, ran 30 sec story on how , newsflash, GA officials had ruled no voter fraud.

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NOTE TOM SHYDER ON LOCAL MEDIA

an 11 25

Two powerful groups of media executives very friendly to President Donald Trump are currently embroiled in a fight that puts FCC chair Brendan Carr in an awkward position, reports Politico's John Hendel.

"The nation’s largest TV station owners want Carr’s Federal Communications Commission to loosen the rules that limit how many stations a single company can operate, a goal that many conservatives have been pressing for years," Hendel writes.

These owners, however, have a "formidable opponent in Trump confidant Chris Ruddy, the majority owner of Newsmax Media, who wants to keep the rules in place and now appears to be making headway with the president," he explains.

Trump took to Truth Social Sunday to demonstrate that headway, Hendel notes.

"NO EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS,” Trump wrote, "echoing Ruddy’s argument that removing the ownership cap would hurt conservatives," Hendel explains.

“If anything, make them SMALLER!” Trump added.

Carr, Hendel writes, "has shown a knack for disruptive, MAGA-pleasing culture-war moves, like his public upbraiding of comedian Jimmy Kimmel and accusing '60 Minutes' of being unfriendly to conservatives," but now he's conflicted.

"Carr has signaled he may want to change the 21-year-old limit on TV station ownership, which was intended to prevent any one broadcaster from too much power over what Americans see on television," Hendel explains. "Loosening the ownership rule would allow right-leaning companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group to expand."

Large TV station owners are hitting a growth limit, Hendel writes, so "a larger cap would give more power to station owners — seen by many conservatives as an ideological counterweight to the mainstream national networks that control TV programming."

Newsmax's Ruddy, however, is standing in the way, Hendel says.

"Ruddy is trying to block any change, arguing that the cap — which limits a broadcaster’s reach to 39 percent of U.S. households — preserves the right market balance between TV broadcasters and cable outlets, and allows a greater mix of voices," he writes.

“It’s not going to work,” Ruddy tells Politico. "The president doesn’t want this, and so I have no doubt that he will not support the FCC going to extraordinary but potentially illegal lengths.”

Joining Ruddy is Charles Herring, president of the pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN) cable channel, who, Hendel writes, "shares a marketplace wariness of TV station owners gobbling up too much power."

“Independent [and] diverse voices will disappear,” wrote Herring in an X post.

Under Trump, this has turned "into a political tug-of-war and an influence battle between big names on the right," Hendel says.

Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer recently wrote an op-ed in right-wing outlet The Daily Caller in which he argued that Carr should lift the cap.

“Conservatives who believe in free enterprise should not be vocally encouraging Big Brother to continue barring broadcast TV companies like Sinclair and Nexstar from competing in the free market,” argued Spicer, a contributor to Nexstar’s cable network NewsNation.

Nexstar, Hendel notes, is "trying to usher through a $6.2 billion deal to buy rival station owner Tegna, a merger that would only be possible if Carr relaxes the cap. The new company would operate 265 TV stations, reaching more than half the country."

Ruddy, however, says "that the FCC is working to go against the interests of the president and his supporters — and really against most consumers.”

“We have a history of big companies going in and giving conservative think tanks money to do reports and stand on issues,” Ruddy adds “And it’s not working.”

Through all this, Trump "is being pulled in both directions on an issue he cares a great deal about: what’s on television," he writes.

“If this would also allow the Radical Left Networks to ‘enlarge,’ I would not be happy,” Trump wrote.

"That will likely give broadcasters and their conservative allies room to try to counter Ruddy’s narrative — and some are already casting the issue accordingly," Hendel explains.

On Monday, Nexstar said that "Americans want more access to local news and a variety of voices without the filter of the coastal elites."

For now, the person truly stuck in the middle is Carr.

"Carr’s path to lifting the cap is uncertain, and his own staff say they’re likely to end up in court over the issue. Detractors don’t even believe the agency has the authority to unleash this consolidation at all, saying it’s a matter for Congress," Hendel says.

"We haven’t made a final decision there yet,” Carr told Politico on Nov. 18. “I continue to be very open minded.”

---

tdb

MEDIA

OAN Finally Admits ‘No Widespread Voter Fraud’ After Settling Defamation Suit

FINALLY

Georgia election workers were dragged through the mud on OAN by right-wing conspiracy theorists like Rudy Giuliani. Now the network is finally acknowledging there was no fraud.

William Vaillancourt

Updated May. 10, 2022 11:03AM ET / Published May. 09, 2022

OAN

The right-wing cable network One America News Network on Monday ran a pre-recorded 30-second segment acknowledging that there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election workers in the 2020 presidential election. The segment appears to be part of a recent settlement relating to a defamation lawsuit brought against the network by two such workers.

The segment notes that an investigation by state officials into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud made by ex-President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani turned up nothing. “The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct,” a narrator states.

“A legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” the voiceover adds.

Freeman and her daughter, Moss, say they were harassed online and in person after baseless rumors began circulating online, due in part to content published by the conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit, which the pair also sued.

In January 2021, when Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to try to “find” votes to overturn the state’s election results, he mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times. Freeman was also visited by a publicist for Kanye West, who threatened her in an effort to extract a confession about committing election fraud.

And if that weren’t enough, video of the pair doing their jobs was hyped up by Rudy Giuliani—and Sean Hannity—who falsely claimed that it showed “blatant, clear, obvious” fraud. While speaking to Georgia State House Republicans about the video during a Zoom meeting in December 2020, Giuliani at one point can be heard saying, “We should try to get this on Newsmax and OANN.”

Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani as well, and that case is ongoing.

5 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-ceo-praises-tucker-carlsons-real-news-he-pitches-network-charter

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-military/

no lnx pix

he’s a high school dropout who made his mark with savvy business moves in the circuit board industry and combative litigation against adversaries. Now Robert Herring Sr stands atop OAN, a far-right political network former President Donald Trump calls the “hottest” on television.

By JOHN SHIFFMAN in San Diego Filed Oct. 7, 2021

Second of two stories

Two decades before Robert Herring Sr created the far-right TV channel One America News Network, he learned that a circuit board factory he owned was under an FBI investigation.

It was 1994. In retaliation, a court judgment reviewed by Reuters shows, Herring fired an employee who told the Federal Bureau of Investigation about illegal pollution at the plant.

Last year, a jury ruled that OAN fired a Black producer in retaliation for filing a racial discrimination complaint to Herring. The jury awarded the man $1.1 million.

The episodes provide a window into Herring’s pugnacious style and impatience with government regulation. A Reuters review of 33 court cases, many not previously reported, and interviews with two dozen associates reveal how the man running a once-obscure news channel made a fortune from scratch and came to play an outsize role in American politics.

Since November, Herring’s OAN has become a leading TV purveyor of false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against former President Donald Trump,helping fuel new voting restrictions and a wave of threats against election officials in several states.

The records and interviews depict Herring as a hard-driving executive with a knack for prescient timing. The court files, which include a federal pollution indictment against one of his former companies, also reveal a man prone to alleging conspiracies and engaging in scorched-earth litigation.

In a rare interview Wednesday, Herring told Reuters that criticism from former employees and Trump opponents does not faze him. In fact, he said, he appreciates the attention.

“At least we are making progress, where we’re getting out there,” Herring said. “We have to be out there and be known if we’re going to succeed in this business.”

Herring’s journey is in some regards the American dream: a high school dropout who loathed and later changed his given name, then evolved from a businessman of modest means to a sharp-eyed entrepreneur who saw opportunities others missed. Now, at 80, he sits atop an influential network at the center of a virulent national debate over politics and alternate realities.

“This man used to drive a concrete truck,” said Las Vegas entrepreneur Dennis Pierce, 60, who views Herring as a father figure. “He’s just a normal guy who busted his ass, never stopped working, never stopped imagining how it would all turn out.”

AMERICAN STORY: Robert Herring Sr built a fortune and a TV network, but his businesses also faced an environmental indictment and labor lawsuits, Reuters found. Jamie Scott Lytle/REUTERS]

‘Plots revealed’

Like his favorite president, Herring runs a lean family business with his sons, Charles and Robert Jr. He too lives with his third wife, a Russian immigrant, in an 11,000-square-foot Southern California mansion perched on two manicured acres with sprawling views.

Despite his wealth, Herring shares demographic traits with many Trump base voters. He came of age in 1950s America. He lives in San Diego County, a region with a strong military presence and a close-to-the-border perspective on immigration. His views on China are shaped by decades of competing against Asian factories with cheap labor and lax regulation.

Though a conservative since the 1970s, Herring has on occasion donated to Democrats, including $4,600 to Hillary Clinton in 2007. Citing free-speech principles, Herring gave $15,000 to help rescue a 2004 university talk by leftwing filmmaker Michael Moore after the public college withdrew funding. Under oath, Herring said he once voted for Barack Obama for president. Still, the vast majority of his family’s nearly $500,000 in contributions has flowed to Republicans, and on OAN, liberals and Democrats are routinely lampooned.

Herring shares some of Trump’s flair for show business. Like Trump, Herring has invested in Las Vegas hotel projects and promoted fights with boxing’s Don King. Herring trademarked the phrases “Political Plots Revealed” and “Edge of Danger” for OAN program titles.

“If I think I’m right, I just go for it. … Fight it to the very end.”

Robert Herring Sr, in interview

On his network, people arrested during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol are dubbed “political prisoners,” a meme that has gained wide use on the American right. The far-right Proud Boys, a violent group whose leaders have been charged in the insurrection, are described as a “conservative men’s club.” OAN correspondents have solicited more than $600,000 to fund “private” audits of the 2020 election. When OAN airs pro-Trump news, the ex-president often returns the favor.

“One America News (OAN), one of the fastest growing networks on television, and the ‘hottest,’ is doing a magnificent job of exposing the massive fraud that took place,” Trump said in May.

Herring told Reuters he does not believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected, even though a series of audits and recounts have affirmed the Democrat won the election. Herring has barred OAN staff from calling him “President Biden” on air until further audits are completed. “I’ve seen enough that I know the election was taken by force,” Herring said; no credible evidence has shown that to be true.

Reuters has reported on a series of threats nationwide against election officials who affirmed Biden’s win. Herring said he was unaware of the threats. “I think all people working on elections should be treated well, but there’s a lot of fake stuff going on, too,” he said.

Duncan L. Hunter, a U.S. congressman from San Diego from 1981 to 2009, said Herring should be feted for providing positive news about Trump that the mainstream media fails to report.

“Mr. Herring represents the very best of all of America because he is a guy who utilized his money and resources in a very important way, which is giving facts to the American people,” said Hunter, a Republican and an avid OAN viewer. “His service to his country has been enormous.”

Critics, including eight former employees interviewed by Reuters, portray Herring as an opportunist exploiting the current political divide.

“Their primary motivation is definitely not politics – it’s money,” said Martin Golingan, an OAN producer for nearly five years until April, when he was fired after publicly saying he worried his network’s programming likely played a role in stoking the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

“The Herrings run OAN on this McDonald's business model where you keep the customer happy and the business runs itself. If the customers happen to be crazy conspiracy consumers, then that’s what they’re selling. They are grifters in the outrage culture,” Golingan added.

Herring called Golingan “very knowledgeable” but added, “he’s a liberal. He finally went overboard and I had to let him go.”

Herring has testified in litigation that he created OAN “to make money, number one.” He seized the chance after AT&T executives told him the market could use another conservative network, he testified. Further testimony shows AT&T’s DirecTV deal with Herring provided 90% of OAN’s revenue. AT&T said it has “never had a financial interest in OAN's success and does not 'fund' OAN.”

One America News is among the many entities that pay Reuters to publish the news service’s stories, videos and pictures.

The court and regulatory files reviewed by Reuters, including microfilm records dating to 1977, are filled with thousands of pages of testimony by Herring and former employees. The material is so voluminous in part because the OAN founder rarely settles lawsuits but takes cases to trial, even when doing so could cost him more in legal fees than the other side is seeking.

“My case was a nickel-and-dime situation,” said former OAN producer Paul Levikow, who won $22,000 in a wage dispute, plus $50,000 in legal fees. “He would rather spend his money to fight something he knows he’s going to lose than pay someone off to make it go away.”

One of Herring’s largest court losses came last year, when a Black former producer, Jonathan Harris, won the $1.1 million verdict. “The theory of our case was simple,” lawyer Rodney Diggs said. “My client was fired the day after he filed his racial discrimination complaint.”

In court filings, Herring said he did nothing wrong in either case. He said Levikow was paid fairly and Harris was fired for poor performance and for deleting company computer files. Levikow and Harris disputed those contentions.

Herring was once asked in a 2012 deposition why he continues to litigate even when a settlement would cost less.

“Because if I believe I’m right, I will go to the end,” he replied.

It’s a trait Herring developed as a boy.

A boy named Alson

SCHOOL DAYS: Herring in high school, in a photo posted on Classmates.com

Born in 1941 in rural Louisiana, he cringed at his given name: Alson Shelby Herring.

Alson sounded feminine, too much like Allison, and once landed the boy in girls’ gym class, among other indignities. Court and school records show that Herring rebelled and began calling himself Robert or Bob. He didn’t legally change his name until 2005.

The sting never wore off. In 2019, Herring tried to avoid revealing his birth name during a deposition. When compelled to answer, he cited the torment of the kid in Johnny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue.”

As a reminder of his roots, Herring keeps a picture of the single-room house where he spent his earliest years, close to the cotton fields of northeastern Louisiana. “I was born in a barn,” he said.

When he was about seven years old, the family moved to a farm near Bakersfield, California. “We were really poor,” Herring said. “For a time, we lived in a train boxcar.” Later, the family moved to post-war suburbs near Los Angeles.

Herring’s father died when he was a teenager, and he dropped out of high school. He said he quit following a dispute in which he refused an order to scrub the floors with a toothbrush as punishment for a minor infraction he’d committed. “I just left,” he said.

He earned an adult night-school degree, but did not attend college. He married his first wife at age 18; by age 24, the Herrings had four children. Herring worked as a chauffeur and owned several pet shops. “I got paid for teaching people how to groom poodles,” he said. Herring said he discovered that people in sales made more money, and had more fun, so he switched careers. He began selling circuit boards.

His first big break came in 1972, after he turned 30.

In a shrewd lease-purchase deal, he acquired a struggling local circuit board factory and renamed it Industrial Circuits.

The circuit board market was huge because virtually every electronics device, from a thermostat to a rocket, requires them. Much like the foundation for a house, a circuit board is typically a rigid, custom-made sheet of insulating material that serves as a platform to connect components of electronic systems, such as semiconductors, resistors and capacitors. The manufacturing process is complex, requiring as many as 100 steps to fabricate one circuit board.

“Southern California was a hotbed for circuit boards back in the day and Herring had great timing,” said Mike Buetow, editor of the trade publication Circuits Assembly.

By 1974, Herring was successful enough that the local Escondido Times-Advocate ran a profile titled “Little Guy Comes Full Circuit.” Herring was described as making the most of “this land of opportunity,” and he attributed his success to “the willingness to take a chance, that and luck.”

Still, he remained a man of relatively modest means, filings from his 1977 divorce with his first wife show. She drove a Volkswagen and their home had less than $70,000 in equity. Their most valuable assets were shares of company stock, about $80,000 in her name and $152,000 in his.

Finding gold

Herring’s side interests – show business and politics – began to generate headlines in the late 1970s. He helped revive a civic concert series, hiring nostalgia performers Helen Reddy and Ricky Nelson, briefly owned a weekly newspaper and joined the local Chamber of Commerce board.

He developed a habit of acting on news items that intrigued him. In 1981, he read that then-President Ronald Reagan’s son, Michael, a salesman for a defense contractor, quit his job after reports that he dropped his father’s name in letters to military officials. Herring made some calls and hired Michael Reagan as a salesman at Industrial Circuits.

MAKING A CONNECTION: Herring once hired Michael Reagan, son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, as a salesman for one of his companies. REUTERS/Chris Keane/File Photo

“It was very nice of him to reach out because it was a very tough time for me,” said Reagan, now a columnist for OAN competitor Newsmax.

In 1988, shortly after his 47th birthday, Herring struck gold. He sold Industrial Circuits to the Japanese firm Toppan West Inc for $52 million.

A year later, Herring created a new circuit board company, Herco Technology, with sons Robert Jr and Charles as co-owners. They built a new factory in San Diego County and got to work.

Circuit board manufacturing can be a dirty process, creating wastewater saturated with heavy metals, including copper. Under its permit, Herco pledged to treat toxic waste before flushing it into the city treatment system that discharges into the Pacific Ocean.

FBI probe

In 1994, state court records show, a Herco employee repeatedly told supervisors the facility wasillegally flushing copper. Late that year, records show, FBI agents and city investigators visited the Herco factory and the employee at his home.

In 1995, an FBI agent called Herring to ask about the environmental violations. State court records show Herring agreed to meet at the FBI’s office, arrived without a lawyer, told agents he was unaware of the problems and passed a lie detector test.

Two weeks later, Herring fired the employee who spoke to the FBI. The man sued Herco for retaliation and a jury awarded him $78,400 in damages.

Herring said the government was seeking to show the public it was trying to protect the environment. “They were looking for someone big enough to get a little attention but small enough to take on, and I guess that was us,” he said.

The FBI investigation continued. So did the pollution.

INSPECTION NOTES: A 1997 San Diego County inspection report details environmental issues at Herring’s company.

In June 1997, a resident near Herring’s factory called 911 to report “a yellow cloud” spewing into the air amid a release of nitric acid. A San Diego County inspector found “a dark brown sludge” covering a hazardous waste containment area. The inspector’s report noted “thousands of gallons” of improperly stored waste.

“It appears that it is standard operating procedure within Herco … to allow the spillage of hazardous materials and waste without requiring proper clean up,” the inspector wrote.

In November 1997, following a federal grand jury indictment, Herco pleaded guilty to one pollution count and agreed to pay a criminal fine of $170,000. Herring’s company continued to receive pollution violation notices from the county for nearly three more years, for releasing copper, cyanide and silver into the environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHARGE: The opening page of the federal indictment against Herco Technology.

Still, Herring prospered. He kept a yacht moored in San Diego harbor and owned four homes, records show. He invested $4 million in a concert venue at a Las Vegas casino resort run by one of the Republican Party’s biggest benefactors, the late Sheldon Adelson, said two associates involved.

Pierce, the Las Vegas businessman who considers Herring a mentor, said the OAN founder is as comfortable with a mogul like Adelson as he is with his gardener. Pierce would know, he said, because he met Herring while working as the landscaper for the entrepreneur’s homes and factories in the 1990s. They soon became friends and business associates.

“We’d hang out, put our feet up, drink a couple of Coronas, then we’d ride his jet skis,” Pierce said. “He’s just like your neighbor, except he ended up rich.”

Herring divorced his second wife in 1997. Under the settlement, he gave her the cat, the dog, the Mercedes and $1 million. The deal included an extra $600,000 if she vacated their home within a year.

Big deal, big lawsuit

The technology dot-com boom of the 1990s fueled brisk sales in the circuit board industry. But competition loomed from Asia, where labor-intensive circuit boards could be built cheaper, environmental rules were lax, and governments subsidized factories.

“It became a very tough, competitive environment,” said Matthew Holzmann, an industry veteran. “The Herrings could see the writing on the wall.”

In 2000, the Herrings sold Herco and a related company for $122 million in stock to publicly-traded Teradyne Inc, a global electronics company based near Boston.

But then Teradyne’s stock plummeted by about half in one year – and the $122 million fell to about $61 million. The Herrings sued, alleging Teradyne executives misled them during negotiations by saying the future looked promising.

“We were shorted,” Robert Herring Jr said years later in a deposition. Teradyne denied any wrongdoing, saying the company properly disclosed its finances before the deal and that market conditions simply shifted. The deal coincided with the start of the dot-com bust.

The Herrings lost their lawsuit against Teradyne, then filed a complaint against their own lawyers, alleging they’d missed a deadline, but lost again. Within two years, Teradyne closed the plant and laid off most former Herco workers.

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‘Tantrums and meltdowns’

In 2000, at about age 59, Herring married his third bride, a Russian national half his age. A short while later, with a ton of cash, big plans and no network experience, he entered the TV business.

Herring and sons created WealthTV, a luxury lifestyle channel with shows about exotic cars, giant yachts, opulent travel and fine wine. Herring bought a 40,000-square-foot building, built state-of-the-art studios and assembled a staff. Two key hires: a general manager to run operations and an executive to sell WealthTV to cable and satellite providers.

As general manager, Herring hired Dean Harris, an associate in the Las Vegas casino venture.

Harris, a former stock broker, was a convicted felon barred from trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission, records reviewed by Reuters show. In 1999, Harris pleaded guilty to fraud, and the SEC said he received $1.3 million in kickbacks in a conspiracy to steal from an insurance company. Herring hired Harris about a year after he finished serving a 32-month federal prison sentence and gave him a 5% stake in WealthTV, court records show.

In an email to Reuters, Harris said his criminal conviction was unrelated to Herring in any way and that he did not tell Herring about it at the time. Herring said he did not know about Harris’ prison term until a Reuters reporter told him. “I can’t believe it.”

To sell WeathTV to cable and satellite providers, Herring lured Donna Thomas, an experienced TV executive. “We didn’t know really anything about selling the network, so we hired her,” Herring said. “She knew everybody in the industry.”

Thomas, who quit after eight months and sued Herring, declined to comment. Her lawsuit contended Herring went behind her back to clients, belittled her and acted unethically.

“My case was a nickel-and-dime situation. He would rather spend his money to fight something he knows he’s going to lose than pay someone off to make it go away.”

Former OAN producer Paul Levikow

“Some clients expressed anger and demanded that I back off for periods of months due to the incursions of Mr. Herring,” Thomas said in a sworn statement reviewed by Reuters. “On many occasions his offers to clients were offensive to them and unheard of in the industry.”

The offers, meant to help land WealthTV on cable or satellite channels, included gambling chips, lobsters and a sports car, two former employees said in affidavits. In a deposition, a satellite executive confirmed he was offered the car.

In sworn statements, three former employees said they witnessed Herring return from lunch inebriated and then slam doors, yell and, on occasion, make employees, including Thomas, cry. “Herring would have tirades, temper tantrums and behavior meltdowns,” Thomas stated. “The result was a steady pressure of anxiety and fear.”

Herring’s lawyers said there was no evidence his lunch wine drinking affected his work, calling it “simply irrelevant to any issue in this case.” Herring said he drinks wine sometimes at lunch, but just one glass. His lawyers said Thomas quit because she didn’t keep up with Herring’s goal of closing deals faster; she disputed that contention.

At trial, Thomas won about $95,000, including legal fees. But for six months, Herring refused to pay the judgment. He did so only after Thomas’ lawyer placed a lien on WealthTV and threatened to have the sheriff’s department seize the network, records show.

“The idea that a corporation running a television station would play a game of chicken like that on a collection matter was really puzzling,” said Thomas’ attorney, Benjamin Pavone. “I remember thinking, ‘Who is this weirdo?’”

Herring said he can’t recall details of the judgment.

GLOVES OFF: Charles and Robert Herring signed a deal with Don King (center) in 2011 to air boxing on WealthTV. Via PR Newswire

‘Don’t get mad ... get even!’

WealthTV struggled to win deals with major cable and satellite systems. In 2005, a frustrated Herring issued a press release in which he said he had invested “tens of millions of dollars” in WealthTV, but alleged that cable operators were “saving their channel space for new Sports, Gay, Foreign Language, Pornographic or Shopping Channels.”

By 2007, WealthTV was carried on cable systems representing less than 10% of U.S. homes. That amounted to a potential audience of perhaps 10 million, generally not enough to draw interest from national advertisers, records show. Herring couldn’t get some major systems to air WealthTV on a free trial basis, records show.

So, Herring launched a legal assault against four of America’s six largest cable companies to try to force them to carry WealthTV.

At the Federal Communications Commission, Herring alleged that Cox, Comcast, Bright House and Time Warner Cable refused to air WealthTV because it competed against a lifestyle network the cable companies co-owned. Herring told Reuters he believed this amounted to collusion, elbowing out smaller networks like his. The cable providers denied this.

During a 10-day FCC hearing, cable executives testified that they rejected WealthTV for good-faith business reasons, citing limited bandwidth for high-definition channels, similar content on better-branded channels and the Herrings’ inexperience with television.

“Bottom line, nice product, not worth an HD channel spectrum when we can see plenty of videos of wealthy travel locations and great restaurants on Travel and Food TV,” one cable executive testified. “And most importantly, no customer demand.”

FLAGSHIP: The One America News Network, headquartered in San Diego, has seen viewership rise as it devotes coverage to Donald Trump's election falsehoods. REUTERS/Mike Blake

The Herrings pursued the case for five years, until March 2013, when an appeals court affirmed the FCC’s decision in favor of the cable operators.

Two days after the ruling, WealthTV anchor Graham Ledger took the stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a major gathering of conservative Republicans. Ledger announced the birth of One America News, an antidote to the “liberal mainstream media.”

OAN would debut on July 4, 2013, he said.

“This is going to be your network,” Ledger told the crowd of conservatives. Citing a line from the 1978 movie Animal House, he said, “Don’t get mad ... get even!”

Kinship with Trump

In June 2015, when Trump launched his White House bid, Herring discovered a soulmate. Here was a candidate with whom he agreed on nearly every issue important to him: immigration, race, taxes, environmental regulation, climate change and China’s trade practices. Trump also understood that television news was show business.

“There’s almost nothing you can mention that I don’t agree with him on,” Herring said. “Sometimes I don’t like the way he says things, but as far as his actions and everything he’s done, I think he’s even better than I expected.”

Herring directed OAN staff to run Trump’s rallies live without interruption. The Herrings, previously light donors, began showering Republican causes and candidates with cash, records show, donating more than $350,000 since Trump’s announcement.

ON MESSAGE: During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump appeared on Sarah Palin's OAN program. REUTERS/Screenshot]

OAN still struggled to get the largest cable systems to air the conservative network, a problem Trump bemoaned in social media posts. Herring, too, railed in particular against his longtime nemesis, Comcast, which he’d battled before the FCC, and which owns left-leaning MSNBC.

“Is Comcast’s ‘HATRED’ of the President the reason why Comcast customers are denied access to @OANN?” Herring tweetedon June 10, 2019.

A month later, when a controversy erupted over OAN’s journalistic ethics, Herring seized the moment to allege a tangled Comcast conspiracy.

It began when The Daily Beast reported that an OAN reporter was also writing stories for the state-owned Russian TV network Sputnik. That evening, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow featured the story on her show.

“We literally learned today that that outlet the president is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin,” Maddow told viewers. “The most obsequiously pro-Trump rightwing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”

The OAN reporter, Kristian Rouz, issued a statement a short while later saying he wrote about 1,300 freelance articles for Sputnik, but has “never written propaganda, disinformation or unverified information.” A Sputnik spokesperson said the OAN journalist stopped writing for the Russian outlet in 2019; Rouz did not respond to an emailed interview request.

Herring’s lawyer denied any relationship with the Russians and alleged a different conspiracy. At the time, he noted that Maddow’s report came just a week after Charles Herring had again visited Comcast about airing OAN. “This does not appear to be a mere coincidence,” the OAN lawyer wrote. Comcast declined to comment.

At the time, an MSNBC lawyer defended Maddow’s commentary as both “substantially true” and protected free speech. But Herring filed a $10 million defamation suit against Maddow, MSNBC and Comcast. A federal judge dismissed it, Herring appealed and, in a unanimous decision this August, lost again.

As the loser, Herring’s company was ordered to pay the other side’s legal fees and costs. A person involved said Herring’s company paid $520,000 to lawyers for his network’s rival, Comcast.

To Herring, it was worth the money.

“If I think I’m right, I just go for it,” he said. “Fight it to the very end.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oans-last-months-directv-were-train-wreck

no lnx many

OAN's last months on DirecTV were a train wreck

Since DirecTV announced it was dropping the network, OAN has become even more deranged

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 04/06/22

As of April 5, DirecTV has removed One America News Network from its TV subscription packages.

In January, DirecTV announced that it would not renew its contract with the far-right conspiracy theory network. Although OAN provided years of virulent bigotry and right-wing misinformation, including one reporter’s on- and off-screen attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the announcement came after a massive public backlash to a Reuters report which revealed that DirecTV’s owner, AT&T, played a critical role in creating OAN and supplied 90% of its income.

Once news broke of its DirecTV contract expiration, OAN filed a breach of contract lawsuit against AT&T and briefly solicited viewers for “dirt” on AT&T’s board chair. Meanwhile, OAN programming has gotten worse since January, as the network doubled down on old staples like anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election, as well as irresponsible coverage of new topics like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

"There are no long-term studies for this vaccine. None. The only protection we have now is not to get it." - Pearson Sharp attacking COVID-19 vaccines

The OAN line on COVID-19 vaccines, as delivered by correspondent Pearson Sharp, is that the vaccines are “turning into DNA” to become “part of your body’s genetic code,” meaning that “there’s a good chance they could … kill you.” None of this is true, but in February, Sharp took these abject lies about vaccine mortality in a genocidal direction, telling OAN viewers that the survival of the United States depended on COVID-19 vaccines killing liberals. Sharp also appeared on Infowars, where he hypothesized that COVID-19 restrictions could spark a justified revolution.

Though she was not OAN’s only misinformer about the 2020 election, former host Christina Bobb became the network’s face of its attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. She fought for, reported on, and fundraised for the Arizona “audit,” and before she left OAN in March to work for former President Donald Trump, Bobb had begun a new phase of her pressure campaign against state-level Republicans to begin new “audits.”

OAN also attached its brand of unhinged conspiracy theories to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Multiple OAN figures have suggested or stated that the Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, was what Sharp called a “false flag operation” connected to billionaire George Soros.

"It’s deeper – There’s deeper state stuff here, Debbie, don’t you think?” Dan Ball to Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) on Hunter Biden and war in Ukraine

But few OAN personalities took as much of an interest in spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine as prime-time host Dan Ball, who repeatedly spread Russian government propaganda about nonexistent “biochemical weapons plants” in Ukraine, and seems to fervently believe that the war somehow involves President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the 2020 Trump campaign’s old, desperate allegations against Biden and a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. In one segment about Ukraine, Ball even agreed with a guest that the U.S. military should invade and occupy northern Mexico because of immigration.

OAN also spent the past few weeks directing viewers’ ire toward Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Like much of right-wing media, OAN is enthralled by the false narrative that Jackson “lets pedos out of jail early,” according to Ball, who also called the accomplished jurist “scum” based on this smear. OAN programming has called Jackson part of “the pedophilia problem that is currently happening in the left,” an unmistakable reference to QAnon lies (previously seen during the pre-QAnon Pizzagate era) that liberal elites participate in the systematic sexual exploitation of children.

In what may be OAN's waning days, as DirecTV essentially replaced it with Fox Nation and some of its more visible “talent” have fled the sinking ship, OAN launched its own streaming service in an attempt to stay alive. While subscriber numbers are not publicly known, it seems unlikely that “OANN Live” will make up for the financial loss of OAN’s DirecTV contract.

More importantly, OAN’s conduct since losing DirecTV -- suing its former carrier, spreading Russian propaganda, convincing viewers that not only will vaccines kill people but some of them have to die, to say nothing of its shockingly hateful anti-LGBTQ content -- should make it clear to any TV provider that this litigious, conspiratorial disaster of a channel is simply not worth the trouble.

IN THIS ARTICLE

One America News Network

OAN host: Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is “scum”

04/01/22 12:41 PM EDT

OAN's Pearson Sharp spreads anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, claims vaccines cause death and alter your DNA

03/28/22 2:03 PM EDT

Another OAN host left the network to work for Donald Trump

03/25/22

natalie harp. bobb

on Thursday night, One America News Network’s Dan Ball announced that The Real Story host Natalie Harp had quietly exited the far-right channel for a job with Donald Trump. Harp is the second OAN host to leave the embattled channel for Trump-world following Christina Bobb’s recent departure.

[vid]

after a concerned viewer wrote into Ball’s show inquiring about Harp’s week-long absence, Ball announced that Natalie and Bobb “are now working for 45, President Donald J. Trump.”

Bobb had announced recently that she was “leaving OAN, kind of,” to help “fight for election integrity” with Trump’s Save America Pac.

Like Bobb, Harp was central to OAN's promotion of the Big Lie. Since the former Trump Advisory Board member’s March 2021 debut, Harp pushed a variety of patently false, absurd claims about various conservative causes and the 2020 election, Her sycophantic coverage earned her Trump’s praise.

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AT&T has yet to answer for its support of OAN — and customers have had it

Daily Kos October 24, 2021

NAACP President Derrick Johnsonis set to meet with AT&T leadership at the company's Washington, D.C. headquarters today to discuss AT&T's relationship with One America News (OAN). Johnson condemned AT&T after a Reuters investigation published earlier this month found that a lucrative contract with AT&T-owned platforms was responsible for 90% of OAN parent company Herring Networks, Inc.'s funding, and that AT&T even had a hand in creating OAN when it launched in 2013.

"We are outraged to learn that AT&T has been funneling tens of millions of dollars into OAN since the network's inception," Johnson said. "AT&T has as a result caused irreparable damage to our democracy."

OAN head Robert Herring Sr. revealed in a 2019 deposition obtained by Reuters that AT&T executives were the ones who approached him about founding OAN. "They [AT&T] told us they wanted a conservative network," Herring said. "They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one."

Herring hasn't been shy about the editorial freedom and support AT&T has given his far-right network since then. During an interview on OAN last week, Herring showered AT&T with praise and even called on viewers to thank the company.

A full video of the interview also shows Herring outright lying about the controversy surrounding the Reuters report. When pressed by correspondent Pearson Sharp, Herring said that "all of our funding comes from the Herring Networks." Technically true, but much of the funding Herring Networks received appears to come from that AT&T contract.

OAN began airing on U-Verse in 2014. It only started appearing on DirecTV in 2017 after parent company Herring Networks settled a case with AT&T over AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV in 2015. Herring Networks claimed that AT&T had gone back on an oral agreement that would allow OAN to be broadcast on DirecTV once the acquisition went through.

AT&T cited the settlement as the only reason DirecTV even broadcasts OAN. "When we acquired DIRECTV, Herring pressured us for months to carry OAN. We rejected their offer and in response, Herring Networks sued us, claiming we deliberately intended to injure Herring," the company said in a statement. "Only as part of the settlement of that lawsuit did DIRECTV consent to a commercial carriage agreement with OAN four years ago."

OAN is available on other providers, including Verizon FiOS, GCI, and CenturyLink Prism. Those companies appear to be facing minimal backlash compared with AT&T. One source told media consultant Timothy Burke that 20% of the DirecTV cancellations they'd received were because of AT&T's support for OAN.

AT&T really has been hit in the pocketbook lately. The company's stocks have been on a steep downturn since the Reuters report was published Oct. 6, though investors have been wary to hold onto it since the company announced a merger with Discovery Inc. in May. Last week, MarketWatch reported that AT&T was headed for an 11-year low. AT&T's Q3 earnings call today didn't exactly give it the boost the company was expecting, either. The stock rose slightly then continued tumbling and is currently .85% lower than it was when markets closed yesterday.

Last month, CEO John Stankey said the company would focus on a "multi-year effort" to rehabilitate its image. Sticking with OAN doesn't exactly help with that. It remains to be seen what AT&T will do about Herring Networks following the meeting with Johnson. For now, many customers are more than happy to pull the plug on DirecTV and other AT&T-owned ventures instead of waiting for an answer to come.

…and then they teamed up with an OAN reporter?

Giuliani told attorneys that the Trump legal team effectively deputized a reporter for OAN, the pro-Trump news network, to work for the Big Lie.

That, Giuliani said, involved Christina Bobb working for Trump’s “personal lawyers,” referring to her as “part of the legal team.” In that capacity, Giuliani claimed, she focused on searching for anything that would support the myth that the election had been fraudulent in the key states of Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.

“My staff said she was terrific, she was very trustworthy and if we could work out an agreement with One America News, it would be very helpful,” Giuliani said. “She was a very good investigator.”

Bobb has used her TV perch at OAN to both promote the Big Lie and fundraise for elements of it. As the reality of Trump’s loss became clearer after the 2020 election, Bobb became increasingly detached from reality in her rhetoric.

Giuliani claimed that over that time period, she agreed to give the Trump legal team veto power over stories.

“The rules that we made with [OAN editor] Charles [Herring] were that he would defer to us to whatever our needs were,that he couldn’t give it to us permanently but he could loosen up her assignments for the next couple of months, therefore she wouldn’t be working all that much for OAN,” Giuliani said.

Herring, in his deposition, denied that he was aware of the arrangement.

Giuliani added that Bobb agreed that “if she did develop a discrete, good story, she would have to run it past us so it didn’t violate any of our rules or whatever.”

“And I was pretty comfortable they would live by it because they had before,” Giuliani remarked.

OAN has produced a string of documentaries that take ideas floating in the Trumpworld ether and give them form.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/rachel-maddow/

oan pays $250k fails defam

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow scored another court victory in a libel suit by One America News' parent company Herring Networks, after an appeals court upheld a previous ruling in the case.

The right-wing OAN and its owner sued Maddow after she commented on a Daily Beast report on the explicitly pro-Donald Trump network's employment of a Kremlin-paid journalist, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that her statements were not actionable, reported *The Hollywood Reporter*.

"We literally learned today that that outlet the President is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin," Maddow said in July 2019. "I mean, what?… 'In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government."

The libel suit was dismissed in May 2020 when a district court judge found that a reasonable viewer would not interpret Maddow's comment to mean that OAN was paid Russian propaganda, but instead her own hyperbolic opinion on the matter.

"In comparison to the undisputed facts that Maddow reports, the contested statement was particularly emphatic and unfounded: Maddow went from stating that OAN employs a Sputnik employee to stating that OAN reports Russian propaganda," wrote Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. "A reasonable person would understand Maddow's contested statement as an 'obvious exaggeration,' that is, as Maddow explains, 'sandwiched between precise factual recitations' of The Daily Beast article."

The judge awarded OAN to pay $250,000 in legal fees to Maddow and MSNBC.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

UPDATE

May 18, 2021, at 2:13 p.m.

The Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association brought the legal fight to get reporters access to the audit. A previous version of this story was unclear on who led the legal effort.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-host-christina-bobb-has-been-helping-rudy-giuliani-with-trumps-legal-efforts

as it seeks to overturn the election results and keep President-elect Joe Biden from assuming power, President Donald Trump’s legal team, fronted by lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and until recently Sidney Powell, has been operating out of a conference room at the 2020 campaign’s downsized headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

Aiding Trump’s so-called “elite strike force” team in that effort has been an on-air host at One America News Network (OAN), a vociferously pro-Trump cable-news channel that has been endorsed by the president.

Christina Bobb chairs the Weekly Briefing on OAN. She’s also a lawyer by trade.And in recent days, she’s been spotted by several Trump officials at their office in the conference room with the rest of the president’s team. Her presence has caused a bit of confusion among actual campaign staff, who wondered if she was there to embed with the Trump legal “strike force” as a reporter.

But according to multiple knowledgeable sources, Bobb has actually been assisting the president’s long, long, long-shot legal effort—effectively taking on a secondary role as a pro-Trump lawyer even as she continues her job as a pro-Trump TV host.

“Christina is an attorney and has helped with some legal work in her personal capacity and not on behalf of OAN,” Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Trump and his 2020 campaign, told The Daily Beast on Monday afternoon.

### The Year of Batsh*t at OAN, Trump’s New Favorite Channel

ONE AMERICA, UNDER TRUMP

Justin Baragona

Such an arrangement would be absolutely unthinkable in other newsrooms. But OAN’s editorial stance is so committedly pro-Trump that it almost, almost makes sense. Bobb certainly hasn’t hidden her feelings for the president or his current legal endeavors. Even when compared to the output of other OAN on-air staff, she has shown intense commitment to the premise that Trump actually won the election that he clearly lost.

Bobb’s Twitter feed is clogged with baseless claims of fraud and grand proclamations about Trump’s chances of overturning the election results and securing a second presidential term. During on-air segments, she has suggested that there was indeed a “massive amount” of voter fraud both in Trump’s election and potentially in others, including former Republican candidate Kim Klacik’s race in Maryland (she lost her race in a heavily Democratic district by over 40 percentage points).

In recent segments about the Trump campaign’s legal efforts, Bobb has not disclosed that she has been an informal consultant to those very same efforts.

During her weekend show, she interviewed Ellis—her current legal collaborator—about recent developments in the campaign’s challenges to election results in several states. But she did not note during the segment that she had any sort of role in the campaign’s legal fight. On Twitter, Bobb has cheered on the Trump legal team, even praising its performance in a press conference in which such wild conspiracies were spun about voting corruption that the president himself reportedly thought it too far fetched. Once more, she never disclosed that she has been working with that team.

Since Friday, Bobb has not responded to multiple messages seeking comment on this story. Reached by phone on Monday, network founder and president Charles Herring declined to comment on his employee’s activity with the Trump legal team, requesting The Daily Beast email him instead. He did not respond to an email.

Bobb’s cozy relationship with the president’s legal team may be the most brazen example of the cozy relationship Trump and his campaign have maintained with members of conservative media. But it’s hardly the first.

As The Daily Beast reported in 2018, the president has regularly consulted with Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, who would call in to private Oval Office meetings and advise the White House informally on various policies. The president also regularly canvases his friends in conservative media about administration policy and messaging, phoning Fox News stars like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, and hosting Fox personality Laura Ingraham at the White House to advocate for the use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.

### Trump Campaign Disavows Its Own Election-Conspiracy Lawyer

NO LONGER OURS

Lachlan Markay

Other news networks have allowed their personalities to dip their toes into partisan political activity, though to varying degrees. During the 2020 election, CNN contributor Ana Navarro hosted a virtual fundraiser for Biden, a move that the network said did not violate their policies because she was not paid. High-profile on-air personality Van Jones also advised Jared Kushner on the police-reform executive order signed by Trump earlier this year.

To avoid conflicts of interest, news networks generally do not allow their on-air contributors to endorse or run for office or work on political campaigns or political action committees while appearing as a paid analyst. Over the past month, since Joe Biden’s election, MSNBC has cut ties with at least four contributors who have taken advisory roles in the president-elect’s transition effort.

But OAN stands out in its on-air fealty to Trump, even when compared to the standards observed by its competitors in pro-MAGA right-wing media.

Two days before Election Day, The Daily Beast asked OAN president Charles Herring if the network would call the election for Trump if the president, as he had planned to do, declared victory preemptively. Herring responded by messaging a lengthy statement that included, “OAN is a subscriber to the Associated Press’ Votecast data and Votecount elections results technology," and that for "Winner Projections," the network "will be utilizing primarily Associated Press’ Votecast data and Votecount." (The statement also references the “expert analysis” provided by “Christina Bobb, host of Weekly Briefing.”)

In propping up an alternate media universe in which Trump didn’t lose, OAN is ignoring its own system of data collection. The AP has long since called the 2020 presidential election for Biden.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/rachel-maddow/

Far-right One America News must pay $258,391.50 in legal fees to MSNBC.

"A federal judge in California has ordered Herring Networks, the parent company of far-right conservative media organization One America News Network (OAN), to pay MSNBC and host Rachel Maddow $250,000 in attorney's fees stemming from a defamation lawsuit that was dismissed last year," Law & Crime reported Saturday.

"Herring in July 2019 filed a lawsuit against Maddow which claimed the liberal host had defamed OAN when she discussed reports that one of the network's contributors also worked for the Russia state news organization Sputnik. Maddow went on to state that OAN 'literally is paid Russian propaganda,' which OAN's parent company claimed was false and defamatory. Herring, the parent company, then filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million,"Law & Crime explained. "Attorneys representing Maddow and MSNBC responded by filing a special motion to strike the case under California's Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (Anti-SLAPP) law."

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant sided with MSNBC, entitling the network to expenses under California law.

"The court calculated that Maddow's team of high-priced attorneys from the law firm Gibson Dunn—including famed First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, Jr.—were entitled to collect on 363.1 hours of work totaling $247,667.50, plus an additional $10,724 for hours billed by paralegals," Law & Crime reported.

Read the full report.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/19/journalists-blast-one-america-news-series-giuliani-087893

MICHAEL CALDERONE

12/19/2019

Upstart conservative network One America News’ decision to turn over three hours this week to Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories gleaned from his trip to Ukraine found a receptive audience in the White House — less so in major newsrooms and TV studios.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Wednesday that Giuliani brought back “dirt of questionable credibility” from his trip with a reporter from a “far-right fringe cable channel.” On MSNBC, national security correspondent Ken Dilanian said Giuliani floated a “bogus conspiracy theory” about Joe Biden on OAN, a network “which makes Fox News look like PBS.” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake labeled the OAN series “a stunning piece of propaganda."

charles Herring, president of One America News, shot back in an email to POLITICO. “We recognize that some ‘media’ outlets won’t acknowledge proven facts and won’t do their own time consuming and costly investigate work if the facts don’t fit their narrative,” he wrote. “This is simply a part of our media landscape today.”

But for much of the media world, OAN’s decision to give Giuliani a direct role in preparing its Ukraine report presents a troubling ethical development in the media landscape. Where once opinion shows began supplanting traditional news, now openly partisan content — presented largely unfiltered by the president’s personal attorney — is seeking to supplant content that’s opinionated but still independent.

Trump has celebrated OAN’s willingness to take his largely unfiltered line, retweeting several clips from the three-part OAN series this week in making his public case against impeachment. That’s come as he continues to carp at Fox News over its polling and bookings and suggested thatonly its “pro Trump Fox shows do well.”

Trump has displayed no similar frustrations with OAN, which promised in the three-hour series to dismantle House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s impeachment case, and, like the president, framed the proceedings as a hoax. [some gop rep at rnc called it "illegal"?] But while the series features many of the storytelling attributes of a news documentary, media experts say it departs from traditional journalism in giving such a prominent role to the president’s personal attorney.

“I think this completely crosses a line,” said professor Kathleen Culver, director for journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“I would define one of the central characteristics of journalism as independence and here there is no independence. It is taking a source and bringing that source into the actual information gathering,” she said. “By making Giuliani a central figure in the gathering of information,” she added, “I think they’ve moved out of the realm of journalism and into the realm of advocacy."

mark Lukasiewicz, dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, said “the advocate is in the driver’s seat” in the OAN series, with Giuliani bringing forth documents on screen and helping conduct interviews. “The role typically played by an investigative journalist is played by Rudy Giuliani,” he said.

Herring did not respond directly to a question about about OAN’s independence with regard to Giuliani’s involvement in the project. But OAN correspondent Chanel Rion told viewers why her team took Trump’s attorney along to Ukraine and Budapest.

“His hundreds of hours and months of research into what he calls the great political scandal of our time made him the only person to go with us on this trip,” she said of Giuliani. Rion told viewers that their findings would “both astound and enrage” and offer a side kept from viewers by a “complacent media.”

The Herring family, which made a fortune printing circuit boards, is a fairly new entrant to the media business.The company launched lifestyle channel Wealth TV, later renamed AWE, in 2004, and created One America News in 2013. The San Diego-based network, which is reportedly available in about 35 million homes — compared with at least 90 million for Fox News — generally covers the major headlines of the day without excessive punditry and turns to conservative hosts at night.

But OAN's pro-Trump leanings became apparent during the 2016 election, as it turned to his rallies live, and have continued into the presidency. The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher reported in a 2017 profile of OAN that CEO and founder Robert Herring “directed his channel to push Trump’s candidacy” and “steer away from the new president’s troubles.”

Charles Herring disputed the notion that his father takes such a heavy hand in news coverage. “News anchors are not allowed to express opinions,” he told the Post. “They simply deliver the news and we leave it up to the viewers to decide. It’s not our family’s mission to determine the news.”

On Twitter, Robert Herring’s views are clear. “Our ratings are going up because we treat you like you are the President of the United States,” Herring responded to Trump when touting OAN’s ratings. “Your ratings are going up because you are doing a great job. Let’s keep it up!”

As Trump visited San Diego in September, Herring pointed out to the president that OAN “ran a 30-minute special report detailing the accomplishments you have made."

The network’s official Twitter account, however, once called “bullshit” when Trump didn’t mention OAN among his media boosters.“President Trump recently gave a speech, thanking his supporters in the media. Not a single mention of One America News — one of his GREATEST supporters,” read the tweet, which, according to a Guardian report, was sent by Robert Herring. Earlier this month, he tweeted: “If you are upset about the Democrats trying to impeach President Trump, let everyone know by putting an @OANN sticker on your car!”

Trump has returned the affection. He tweeted in October that OAN “is appreciated by many people trying so hard to find a new, consistent and powerful VOICE!” and last month laudedthe network for “seeking the facts and the truth.” Trump retweeted at least five clips from the OAN series this past week.

Charles Herring told POLITICO that OAN is “very appreciative of all our viewers and the support and encouragement they extend to us via comments on our feedback page and tweets/retweets — including from a special viewer in the White House.”

The testimony of current and former officials, along with Trump’s own words, has shown that he urged Ukraine’s president to launch investigations into the Bidens and a 2016 election conspiracy theory as the U.S. withheld aid to Ukraine. The allegations from an unnamed whistleblower, which ignited the scandal, have been largely confirmed, as PolitiFact concluded Monday in giving Trump its “Lie of the Year” award.

Rion told viewers OAN was holding "our own hearing" where they'd be the jury. The OAN team and Giuliani, she said, will present a side “that not only destroys Adam Schiff’s case for impeachment, but uncovers what may be one of the greatest cover-ups of our time."

in the series, Giuliani makes the unsubstantiated allegation that Biden committed “bribery” in calling for the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because his son Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Biden’s request at the time was the view of the Obama administration, which, like several Western nations and international organizations, saw Shokin as not aggressively prosecuting corruption cases.

rion and Giuliani traveled abroad to interview Shokin, as well as Yuriy Lutsenko, whom The New Yorker dubbed in an extensive profile this week as a key Giuliani contact. They also met in a studio with Ukrainian “witnesses” alleging corruption involving Democrats. (The Daily Beast’s Anna Nemtsova wrote the OAN investigation features “some of Kyiv’s most dubious characters”).

Herring said over email that “One America News is seeking the truth regarding Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election” and that “the best way to determine what happened in Ukraine is via interviews with first hand witnesses and a thorough review of the support documentation.” He suggested that “there is an effort to keep the ‘lid on the jar’ regarding corruption that traces back to the United States.”

“We appreciate the efforts by others to shed light on the facts, including first hand witnesses, other investigative reporters and media outlets, and politicians,” he added.

One prominent senator indicated Sunday that he’s interested in hearing about Giuliani’s Ukraine trip. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Lindsey Graham said, "Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found I'd be glad to talk to you.”

===

620 an

President Donald Trump smeared a 75-year-old Buffalo activist seriously injured by police, in a tweet based on a conspiracy theory spread by a Kremlin-linked broadcaster.

The president identified the protester, Martin Gugino, as an “ANTIFA provocateur,” a claim that has bounced around right-wing media circles and then broadcast on the rabidly pro-Trump One America News Network by Russian propagandist Kristian Rouz.

“A new report finds the latest tensions in the Buffalo Police Department could be the result of a false-flag provocation by far-left group Antifa,” Rouz reported for OANN.

The San Diego-based Rouz has been simultaneously working for OANN and the Kremlin-owned Sputnik news aggregator that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election interference, cited a report by The Conservative Treehouse.

“Gugino was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers,” claimed the right-wing news blog. “CTH noted what he was attempting on Thursday night as soon as the now viral video was being used by media to sell a police brutality narrative. [Thread Here] Today, a more clear video has emerged that shows exactly what he was attempting.”

The website claims a slow-motion video shows Gugino was attempting to hack into the police radio signal by waving his cell phone across the officer’s communications belt.

“The practice, known as ‘skimming,’ is an old trick used by Antifa to locate police officers and plan violent activities bypassing the police response,” Rouz reported for OANN. “In addition, the 75-year-old, who’s been referred to as an agitator, was supposedly using the technology to black out police communications. That, however, didn’t quite work, and many Buffalo police officers support their embattled colleagues.”

Two Buffalo police officers — Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe — were charged with assault in the incident, and Gugino remains hospitalized in stable condition after bleeding from his head....matt geertz twt]

ref

11/19

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-trumps-new-favorite-channel-employs-kremlin-paid-journalist

no lnx pix

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

MOONLIGHTING

Kristian Rouz appears on segments for One America News Network—ironic given he is working for a Russian outlet fingered in the 2016 election attack.

Kevin Poulsen

Sr. National Security Correspondent

Updated Nov. 02, 2019 2:02AM ET / Published Jul. 22, 2019 4:41AM ET

EXCLUSIVE

If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.

Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.

Trump’s New Favorite Network Embraces Russian Propaganda

OF COURSE

Kevin Poulsen

Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifathrough her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely,gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”

Other smears target billionaire financier George Soros, a longtime Kremlin bête noire. In one segment, Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, when the Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another Rouz story accused Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.

Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information. A segment on the Syrian rescue workers known as the White Helmets references “allegations of the White Helmets’ involvement in military activities, executions, and numerous war atrocities,” but doesn’t disclose that those “allegations” were hoaxes that originated with Vladimir Putin and his proxies.

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media.”

— Clint Watts

In another report, Rouz cast Clinton’s criticism of Brexit as an extension of her “grievous insults and fake narratives against Russia”—an assertion that makes sense only in the context of Rouz’s multiple reports claiming Russia was framed for hacking Democrats.

In all of Rouz’s OAN segments reviewed by The Daily Beast, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”

Rouz didn’t respond to email and telephone inquiries for this story. Reached by email, OAN President Charles Herring invited The Daily Beast to submit written questions about the network’s arrangement with Rouz. But after receiving the questions, Herring cut off contact.

Online records show Rouz graduated from Novosibirsk State University in 2010 and went on to earn a master’s degree in international relations at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. His byline first appears on Sputnik in December 2014.

A few months later, he emigrated to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles in the spring of 2015, where he played guitar for an indie rock band called White Tar.

“Oh shit, it's fucking Kristian! That's my ex-guitarist…”

— Jov Paradice

A former bandmate, whose stage name is Jov Paradice, told The Daily Beast that Rouz was secretive about his day job, except to say that he wrote articles about economics for a Russian company. In August 2016, Rouz worked for theLos Angeles PR firm the Hoyt Organization, according to a since-deleted tweet by the firm announcing his hire. He appears in an October 2016 photo on Hoyt’s Instagram feed, but isn’t readily apparent in subsequent photos. Hoyt didn’t respond to repeated email and telephone inquiries from The Daily Beast.

Trump Pushed Enquirer to Probe Scarborough ‘Murder’ Rumor

Paradice said he and Rouz frequently clashed over their differing world views.

“We kind of had a thing musically, but we were total opposites,” said Paradice. “When Trump was getting elected, he went into full sports coat mode. He had an indie style before—the whole blurred-line-of-sexuality thing—then he was wearing red ties and a suit. I said, ‘I’m not getting on the stage with Trump.’”

In August 2017, Rouz said he was leaving the band to accept a job offer in San Diego, Paradice recalls. It was only recently that Paradice discovered what that job was, when a Facebook friend posted aOne America video purporting to document a link between antifa and ISIS terrorists.

“I’m thinking, there’s something familiar here, and then I go, ‘Oh shit, it’s fucking Kristian!’” said Paradice. “That’s my ex-guitarist… His bullshit propaganda is good enough now that they gave him a tiny bit of a platform.”

Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.

The Hell of Working at Trump’s New Favorite Network

CHANNEL ZERO

Kevin Poulsen

In July 2017, Sputnik contracted with a struggling Washington, D.C.-area radio station to begin broadcasting Sputnik content 24 hours a day. Until then, the station played bluegrass music.

The move came just months after a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment named Sputnik, and its sister television outlet RT America, as players in Putin’s election-interference campaign. By September, the FBI was investigating Sputnik for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.The next month, Twitter announced it would no longer accept ads from Sputnik or RT.

The FARA issue was resolved in November 2017, when Sputnik formally registered with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign power.

One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.

Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News. Under Herring’s direction, the network embraced Trumpism enthusiastically, starting in 2016.

Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.

Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including the president of the United States. According to Media Matters, Trump has fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.

Kevin Poulsen

Sr. National Security Correspondent

@kpoulsen

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/aiming-to-take-down-fox-donald-trump-jr-reportedly-investing-in-far-right-oann/

Investors aligned with Donald Trump Jr. and Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr. have acquired a major stake in One America News Network (OANN), sources familiar with the deal told Vanity Fair.

“Tommy Hicks and Don Jr. have been looking to buy a station for Trump TV,” a person briefed on the negotiations told Vanity Fair.

“This is all about building a Fox competitor. Trump is really aiming to take down Fox,” the person said.

The report is the first to connect the Trump family to the acquisition, discussions of which were first _{reported}_ in January by the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported that Hicks Equity Partners, a firm belonging to the family of Tommy Hicks Jr., the RNC co-chair, was negotiating a $250 million deal with Herring Networks, the parent company of OANN, a _{low-impact}_ far-right network that offers a home to the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and has _{defended Roy Moore}_ and _{endorsed Russian propaganda}_.

Sources told Vanity Fair the deal has stumbled along for months and still hasn’t closed, but that the Trump-affiliated group had reportedly talked Herring down to $200 million. VF said it was also unclear whether Donald Trump Jr. invested Trump money in the deal, or was given equity.

As the buyout talks progressed, President Trump has repeatedly expressed his growing distaste with Fox News — long perceived as the only network he likes, and certainly the only network that consciously slants coverage and analysis in his favor.

Last month _{Trump accused Fox News of “being on a bad path,”}_ and has _{asked twice now}_ “what the hell is happening” at the network. He _{attacked Fox reporters}_ twice last month _{during White House coronavirus briefings}_, and has taken several potshots at several of the channel’s shows and personalities, _{tweeting}_ in January that Fox News was “really pathetic” and “so politically correct,” _{singling out Chris Wallace’s impeachment coverage}_.

After it was reported that Fox had fired MAGA-world luminaries Diamond and Silk for hawking ludicrous coronavirus conspiracy theories, Trump _{tweeted}_ his support for the duo: “But I love Diamond and Silk, and so do millions of people!”

In late April, _{Trump took to Twitter once again to call for an alt-Fox, pro-himself network}_:

“The people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry,” he wrote. “They want an alternative now. So do I!”

During this same period, Trump often promoted OANN, providing the nascent network — which is viewed with disdain by many reputable journalists — with cover against the White House Correspondents’ Association. Trump even plugged OANN by name in _{a tweet last month}_ as the alternative he has been asking for.

But _{this isn’t the first time}_ Trump has appeared to be switching media mistresses. When Fox soothes him, he reciprocates. When they rankle him, he pumps OANN.

OANN, which has roughly one-third of Fox’s reach, with ratings _{reportedly}_ lower than the Tennis Channel, appears to have no problem _{serving as the president’s megaphone}_.

For instance, OANN hired former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo— the newly-hired spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services who recently disgraced himself with a barrage of racist, pandemic-related tweets — who hosted a special program dedicated to “the Ukraine Hoax.” Late last year a network crew accompanied Rudy Giuliani and _{personal assistant Christianné Allen}_ on a trip to Ukraine, which resulted in a _{three-part series}_ that mainlined viewers with apparentRussian disinformation.

Spokespeople for Trump Jr. and Hicks denied involvement in the deal to Vanity Fair.

President Trump, who is in no financial position to acquire Fox News, views OANN as a fallback business opportunity should former Vice President Joe Biden defeat him in November, according to Vanity Fair, which reported the president might look to OANN as a “post-presidential television platform.”

The cash from the buyout will reportedly help OANN increase its production values and campaign to expand its viewership, two elements Trump would demand of any home for a post-White House TV home.

Trump Jr. and Hicks have been wrapped in scandal before. The president’s eldest son and his younger brother Eric were — along with Hicks and Dallas-based investment manager Gentry Beach — co-registrants for a nonprofit called Opening Day, which insinuated itself in Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s sons had to abandon the organization weeks after its inauguration event was announced, amid _{allegations that they were selling access}_ to their father.

An associate ofGentry Beachdeclined to comment when Salon inquired about his possible involvement in the OANN deal.

TDB

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-trumps-new-favorite-channel-employs-kremlin-paid-journalist

no lnx

OF COURSE

Trump’s New Favorite Network Embraces Russian Propaganda

Kevin Poulsen

Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”

Other smears target billionaire financier George Soros, a longtime Kremlin bête noire. In one segment, Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, when the Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another Rouz story accused Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.

Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information. A segment on the Syrian rescue workers known as the White Helmets references “allegations of the White Helmets’ involvement in military activities, executions, and numerous war atrocities,” but doesn’t disclose that those “allegations” were hoaxes that originated with Vladimir Putin and his proxies.

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media.”

— Clint Watts

A few months later, he emigrated to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles in the spring of 2015, where he played guitar for an indie rock band called White Tar.

“Oh shit, it's fucking Kristian! That's my ex-guitarist…”

— Jov Paradice

A former bandmate, whose stage name is Jov Paradice, told The Daily Beast that Rouz was secretive about his day job, except to say that he wrote articles about economics for a Russian company. In August 2016, Rouz worked for the Los Angeles PR firm the Hoyt Organization, according to a since-deleted tweet by the firm announcing his hire. He appears in an October 2016 photo on Hoyt’s Instagram feed, but isn’t readily apparent in subsequent photos. Hoyt didn’t respond to repeated email and telephone inquiries from The Daily Beast.

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Paradice said he and Rouz frequently clashed over their differing world views.

In August 2017, Rouz said he was leaving the band to accept a job offer in San Diego, Paradice recalls. It was only recently that Paradice discovered what that job was, when a Facebook friend posted a One America video purporting to document a link between antifa and ISIS terrorists.

Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.

[CHANNEL ZERO

The Hell of Working at Trump’s New Favorite Network

Kevin Poulsen]

In July 2017, Sputnik contracted with a struggling Washington, D.C.-area radio station to begin broadcasting Sputnik content 24 hours a day. Until then, the station played bluegrass music.

The move came just months after a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment named Sputnik, and its sister television outlet RT America, as players in Putin’s election-interference campaign. By September, the FBI was investigating Sputnik for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The next month, Twitter announced it would no longer accept ads from Sputnik or RT.

The FARA issue was resolved in November 2017, when Sputnik formally registered with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign power.

One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.

Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News. Under Herring’s direction, the network embraced Trumpism enthusiastically, starting in 2016.

Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including the president of the United States. According to Media Matters,Trump has fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.

Kevin Poulsen

Sr. National Security Correspondent

@kpoulsen

Kevin.Poulsen@thedailybeast.com

almost 1400 results, interesting to compare to cherrypick list in lawsuit?

https://sputniknews.com/search/?query=kristian+rouz

dunno but jaylo headline banner

https://deadline.com/2019/09/rachel-maddow-msnbc-one-america-news-network-1202729817/

One America News Network, one of the rivals to Fox News for right-leaning viewers, filed a defamation claim against Comcast, MSNBC and Rachel Maddow on Monday, over Maddow’s claim that the conservative channel “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego (read it here) claims that the defendants retaliated against One America because its president, Charles Herring, called out MSNBC’s parent company. Comcast, “for their anti-competitive censorship” in refusing to carry the conservative channel. In an email to Comcast’s president of content acquisition, Gregory Rigdon, Herring had sought carriage on Comcast’s cable platforms and stated his concern that the cable giant “opposes including another conservative counter channel to counter MSNBC,” according to the lawsuit.

A week later, Maddow opened her show by telling her audience that OANN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda,” according to the lawsuit.

“Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government,” Maddow said in the July 22 segment.

Skip Miller, a partner at Miller Barondess who represents OANN, said in a statement: “One America is wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego. They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have nothing to do with the Russian government. This is a false and malicious libel, and they’re going to answer for it in a court of law.”

Maddow made the claim after the Daily Beast ran a story by Kevin Poulsen reporting that one of One America’s on-air reporters, Kristian Brunovich Rouz, also was on the payroll for Sputnik, the Kremlin news outlet. One America then demanded a retraction.

But One America said in the lawsuit that “Rouz has never been a staff employee of Sputnik News. He worked as a freelancer for Sputnik News and his work there had no relation to his work for OAN. Rouz submitted articles to Sputnik on his own and would receive approximately $40 if the articles were accepted.”

The lawsuit seeks more than $10 million in damages.

A spokeswoman for MSNBC did not immediately return a request for comment.

ref

LOUIS R. MILLER (State Bar No. 54141) smiller@millerbarondess.com

AMNON Z. SIEGEL (State Bar No. 234981) asiegel@millerbarondess.com

MILLER BARONDESS, LLP 1999 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, California 90067 Telephone: (310) 552-4400 Facsimile: (310) 552-8400 Attorneys for Plaintiff Herring Networks, Inc

ref 2 tenn star

One America News Network (OANN) demanded retractions from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Daily Beast, threatening a lawsuit, after both suggested links to the network and Russian propaganda.

Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast wrote an article stating OANN’s Kristian Rouz “appears on segments for One America News Network – ironic given he is working for a Russian outlet fingered in the 2016 election attack.” That same day, Maddow stated on “The Rachel Maddow Show” that OANN “really, literally is Russia propaganda.”

Rouz does write for Sputnik, a Russian government-owned news outlet. He has “never had decision-making authority with respect to the content that is aired on OAN,” one cease-and-desist letter reads.

“His outside work for other media outlets has no relation to — or bearing on — his work for OAN,” according to a cease-and-desist letter.

Poulsen quoted former FBI agent Clint Watts, who suggested OANN employing Rouz means the outlet has merged with “Russian state-sponsored propaganda.”

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” Watts said. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”

Miller Barondess, LLP is handling the case against on behalf of OANN.

“This is vile, sensationalistic reporting,” Miller wrote in a press release. “These defamatory statements must be retracted immediately. One America News Network has no connection to the Russian government or any other government — no connection whatsoever, financial or otherwise.”

“Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information,” Poulsen wrote July 22, in which he referred to OANN as being endorsed by President Donald Trump.

If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.

The article also reads that OANN is “increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda.”

Maddow described OANN as a “boutique, little news outlet that is designed specifically for Trump mega-fans. It’s called One America … News Network.” She referred to The Daily Beast article during her show.

“We literally learned today that that outlet that the president is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin,” Maddow said July 22. “I mean, what? It’s an easy thing to throw out … ‘Hey, that looks like Russian propaganda.’ In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

OANN’s lawyers have given Maddow and The Daily Beast until Aug. 15 to retract its statements, according to the cease-and-desist requests.

Poulsen declined to comment. Maddow and The Daily Beast did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Shelby Talcott is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.

lawsuit exhibit

Rachel Maddow

The Rachel Maddow Show

Floor 4 West

30 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10112

ATTORNEYS AT LAW

1999 AVENUE OF THE STARS

Sum 1000

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90067

TEL: (310) 552-4400

FAx: (310) 552-8400

'V\VVV .. ~tiLLERBARONDESS.COM

July 25, 2019

LOUIS R. MILLER

DIRECT DIAL: (31 0) 552-5251

SMILLER@MILLERBARONDESS.COM

Re: Notice to Retract Defamatory Statements Regarding One America News Network

Ms. Maddow:

Please be advised that our firm has been retained by One America News Network

("OAN") concerning the July 22, 2019 episode of the Rachel Mad dow Show, in which you

maliciously slandered OAN. This Jetter serves as a demand that MSNBC, by and through

yourself and/or otherwise, publicly correct your defamatory statements in accordance with

California Civil Code § 48a.

You falsely claimed-without a shred of evidence-that OAN "really literally is paid

Russian propaganda." That is false. OAN has never received a single penny from the Russian

government. The assertion that OAN is paid to disseminate propaganda on behalf of a foreign

government is more than a mere falsehood-it amounts to an accusation of treason. Your

comments were beyond the pale and unbecoming of a reporter at any respectable news

organization.

It also appears that the unwarranted attack on OAN was retaliation for OAN's suggestion

that Comcast is refusing to carry it for non-business reasons. On July 15,2019, Charles Herring

emailed Gregory Rigdon, the President of Content Acquisition for Comcast. Herring made the

compelling business case for adding OAN and also stated his concern that Comcast is refusing to

carry OAN because OAN's coverage "generally counters the voice of MSNBC." Exactly one

week after that email, MSNBC's number one show opens with a hit piece on OAN. This does

not appear to be a mere coincidence. Tellingly, nobody at MSNBC or Comcast made any effort

to reach out to OAN for comment prior to airing the defamatory statements. ...

Re: The Rachel Maddow Show

Dear Mr. Miller:

30 Rockefeller Plaza

New York, NY 10112

NBC Universal

I am writing in response to your July 25, 2019 letter concerning statements made

about your client, One America News Network ("OAN"), on July 22, 2019 during The

Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. While discussing an article published that same day

by The Daily Beast concerning OAN reporter Kristian Rouz's simultaneous employment

with the Russian government-funded outlet Sputnik, Ms. Maddow expressed her reaction

to this report by stating that OAN "really literally is paid Russian propaganda." Your

letter claims that this statement is false and defamatory. Your client, however, cannot

state a valid legal claim for defamation.

Your letter acknowledges that Mr. Rouz writes for Sputnik- indeed, it makes

clear that Mr. Rouz has written 1,300 articles for the outlet, which is nearly one article

per day for the past four and a half years. Importantly, your letter also does not dispute

the fundamental fact that Sputnik is funded by the Russian government. Nor could you.

The United States intelligence community has determined that Sputnik played a key role

in the Russian government's interference in the 2016 election and the Department of

Justice ordered Sputnik's affiliated U.S. entities to formally register as foreign agents.

Mr. Rouz's compensation for the more than one thousand articles he wrote for Sputnik

was essentially paid for by the Russian government.

You also do not dispute that Mr. Rouz is employed by and writes for OAN.

Indeed, you state that his job includes collecting and analyzing articles from other sources

and writing articles for OAN based on those other sources. OAN, therefore, publishes

content collected or created by a journalist who is also paid by the Russian government

for writing over a thousand articles. Ms. Maddow's recounting of this arrangement is

substantially true and therefore not actionable.

Case 3:19-cv-01713-JAH-BGS Document 1-4 Filed 09/09/19 PageID.23 Page 2 of 3

Deadline

Ms. Maddow's statement about OAN is also a protected opinion based on

disclosed facts. In her broadcast, she stated the facts acknowledged in your letter

concerning Mr. Rouz's compensation by Sputnik and Sputnik's funding by the Russian

government. She then expressed her view that the implication of these facts is that OAN

"really literally is paid Russian propaganda." Merriam-Webster defines "literally" to

mean "in effect" and states that it is "used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a

statement or description that is not literally true or possible." Similarly, Oxford

Dictionaries defines "literally" to mean "[ u ]sed for emphasis while not being literally

true."

Ms. Maddow's comment could not have been reasonably understood to mean that

the Russian government made checks payable to OAN; indeed, she specifically noted

who was paid by Sputnik.

Use of the word "literally" here is the kind of figure of speech

that connotes opinion and thus cannot give rise to a defamation claim. See Cochran v.

NYP Holdings, 210 F.3d 1036, 1038 (9th Cir. 2000) (per curiam).

Your client, therefore, cannot assert a valid claim against The Rachel Maddow

Show arising from the challenged statement. If you have any questions, or would like to

further discuss this matter, please feel free to contact me at amy.wolf@nbcuni.com.