--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What if there were a news network that didn't really care about facts?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Department of Justice has weaponized the FBI and is now actively targeting its political enemies. No, I'm not talking about Fox News. Before Biden became the masterpiece and senility he is today, he was a bonafide creep, a class A pervert. I'm talking about something even less factual. But we're labeled the crazy tinfoil hat wearing loonies for calling this out in the Pizzagate scandal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up on today explained the rise and fall of One America News and what it says about our conspiracy-fueled, fact-free information age.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can only go so far with conspiracy theorizing and telling lies before it's going to catch up to you because people are not going to want to do business with you anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Guess what I never thought I'd be talking about on national television? Gay penguins. And yet, here we are.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explain.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram from Vox.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Hi, I'm Justin Baragona, a media reporter for The Daily Beast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I fear the hosts aren't fans, neither is the owner. So, and many of their guests, specifically the MyPillow guy.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Okay, this is me. Three terrible reporters for The Daily Beast. Aswin and Adam. And the other guy, Justin. Justin Borgamon. Justin Bargona. Bargona. Bargona. Justin Bargona. What a shameful person to our country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yes, I've gotten called out a few times on air by OAN folks who are not happy. And yep, Daily Beast and Media Matters and the rest of you a-holes out there can do an article on this.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Justin became a persona non grata on OAN by writing about their distinct approach to the news. And more recently, their business woes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the show today, he's going to tell us how OAN went from the former president's favorite fact-free broadcaster to getting, well, canceled.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Oh, yeah, it is a conservative, quote unquote, news network that began in 2013 and quickly drew attention for itself over the years by leaning further and further to the right of Fox News, jumping full on into the fever swamps of the Internet and trying to mainstream that type of stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And eventually it got the attention of Trump and his audience that then became champions of OAN.
--:-- Justin Baragona: OK, a couple of questions. Go ahead, OAN.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll take a few questions. Emerald, OAN.
--:-- Emerald: And I want to congratulate you on the network. It's a great network. OAN.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, sir. Very good. Thank you very much. They treat me very nicely.
--:-- Justin Baragona: For those people who have trouble envisioning something more conservative than Fox News, can you help them understand how OAN could out Fox Fox?
--:-- Emerald: Oh, yeah, because OAN doesn't really have any newsroom standards that a Fox News would have. They would grab onto any type of bubbling internet conspiracy that was out there and put it out to its viewers without checking on it first.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Take the Parkland shooting, for example, back in 2018. They were out there putting out stories that David Hogg, outspoken advocate for gun safety, that he was running cover for his retired FBI agent father in the aftermath of the shooting.
--:-- Justin Baragona: It's disgusting that these trolls are out there trying to make this about me and not the people that were murdered.
--:-- Emerald: They didn't have any proof behind it other than maybe a gateway pundit story, which, again, we're talking about the fever swamps on the right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then all of a sudden, it's starting to get more and more coverage out there on the Internet. By Tuesday, the conspiracy went viral on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
--:-- Justin Baragona: The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., liked two tweets.
--:-- Emerald: When something like that happens, it just emboldens O.E.N. Moore to do more and more stories like that. Because all they're trying to do is get the attention of Trump world with these type of things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That MAGA base that feels like it's not getting enough from Fox News, that they're too establishment, that they're too scared of the deep state and all that, and that they aren't going to go ahead and give you the real unburnished truth, which is these crazy conspiracy theories.
--:-- Justin Baragona: It reminds us how important the mission is that we're on, and that's to speak truth to power, to hold the powerful elite accountable, and help save this amazing republic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the origin story of OAN? Where does this network come from? How does it establish itself on people's TVs in America?
--:-- Robert Herring: Hello my name is Robert Herring and I owner and CEO of One America News Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Robert Herring, who is the founder and the owner of the station along with his sons said that it was actually AT that came to him to fund a conservative network alternative.
--:-- Robert Herring: This would be a channel that they could offer their customers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so what happened in 2013 is, you know, he announced the launch of it at CPAC that year.
--:-- Robert Herring: I have worked with AT&T in one capacity or another starting when I was 20 years old. I started out as a chauffeur driving their executives around town.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And later in life, this little news network that I built with my family and a small group of the hardest working individuals I know found its way into the AT&T channel lineup.
--:-- Robert Herring: So wait, AT&T would just go up to people and ask them to create deeply political infotainment networks?
--:-- Justin Baragona: Apparently they at least asked this guy to do this uh and we do know that they were responsible for the vast amount of funding to OAN throughout the majority of its history that without AT&T this station would never have actually existed uh i mean harring himself is a rich guy and he He could have bankrolled some of it, but, you know, he needed, one, the funding structure behind AT&T to do this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he needed to be able to be on millions of television sets across the country to be able to make this work at the beginning.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Okay, so AT&T pitches this guy, Robert Herring, on creating an even more conservative quote-unquote news network. What happens next?
--:-- Robert Herring: At that time, then, OAN actually gets in bed with the Washington Times, which is a conservative newspaper out in Washington, somewhat reputable, at least in terms of right wing media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that OAN would run out of the Washington Times building.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Now, that was almost short lived. OAN kind of went its own way. Washington Times kind of pulled back.
--:-- Robert Herring: But that was the original idea, was that this was just going to be a somewhat reputable conservative news network.
--:-- Justin Baragona: I mean, in those first couple of years, during the day, you would have just very boring newsreads with an occasional opinion-ish type segment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you'd have your primetime shows that leaned a little bit more to the right.
--:-- Justin Baragona: The only thing that actually stood out from OAN in those first couple of years was Tommy Lahren.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Four United States Marines are now dead. Climate change didn't kill them. Lack of free community college didn't kill them. The income gap, wage inequality. Nope, not those things either.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Gay marriage. Nope. Oh, white racism. Not that either.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what did? President Obama, if you won't say it, I will. Radical Islam.
--:-- Justin Baragona: She was the big name for OAN back in like 2014, 2015.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well known for her sort of bite-sized rants about all culture war issues or hot button GOP talking points.
--:-- Justin Baragona: She eventually moved on, probably just because One American News couldn't pay her what Glenn Beck over at The Blaze was going to pay her, and then eventually what Fox News was going to pay her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what OAN was until Trump came along.
--:-- Justin Baragona: If there's anything the Democrats want above all else, it's power. And who stands in their way? Trump supporters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once you know that Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, they decide to just kind of follow his lead. And so they just start shamelessly pandering to him.
--:-- Justin Baragona: It's like a soulmate situation. It's like, here's an ostensible news network that isn't wild about facts, and here's a presidential candidate who's also not that wild about facts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly. Basically, the first two or so years of Trump's presidency, he essentially ignored OAN. They were trying their hardest to get his attention. But he was like, whatever.
--:-- Justin Baragona: But then he got mad at Fox News and then he starts talking about how great OAN and Newsmax are again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I really think the person that appealed to him best that really got him fully getting into OAN was Chanel Rio.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Lefties are those twisted members of society who love criminals and desire chaos. Chanel Rione is probably the one person that any listener out there is going to associate with One American News at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because she also was a White House correspondent. And we remembered her from those COVID era press briefings where she was sort of Kayleigh McEnany's security blanket.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Kayleigh would constantly just let her ask her a question when everything started getting a little heated in the press room and then she needed a way to get out of that press briefing and knowing that Chanel would just softball one up to her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you consider the term Chinese food racist? Because it's food that originates in China or it has Chinese food.
--:-- Justin Baragona: No, I don't think it's racist. I don't think it's racist at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On that note, major left-wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives, and they're claiming you are racist for making these claims about Chinese bars.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Part of the ascendancy of OAN within Trump world kind of goes along with the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's first impeachment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: First of all, I have to say that Chanel has performed a real public service in getting this information out.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And then that's where we start seeing, like, you know, they're peddling COVID-19 full-on disinformation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's extensive evidence now that these shots are nothing more than a bioweapon designed by Benito Fauci in conjunction with the Chinese Communist Party to cripple America and usher in what Geriatric Joe calls the New World Order.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And then as we get closer to the election, they start ramping up what Trump was ramping up, which is this election is going to be stolen from him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's in advance of the 2020 election.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Yes. What does OAN do after the 2020 election as Trump begins the Stop the Steal campaign?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Donald Trump will prevail because once this is all laid bare in court the trickery and secrets won withstand the light of day
--:-- Justin Baragona: On air they are just parroting everything that Trump and his legal team is out there saying which is that, you know, there is obvious evidence of widespread voter fraud that stole all these states from Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know it in Pennsylvania. We know it in Arizona. We know it in Nevada. We know it in Georgia, blah, blah, blah, that a big, you know, semi truck of ballots was being shipped in from New York to Pennsylvania.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And then also stating that like Smartmatic and Dominion, these were voting machines that were in league with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and China and that they were flipping millions of votes for Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dominion and two others dominate the voting technology market in America. This is a problem, especially if their Antifa-drenched engineers are hell-bent on deleting half of America's voice.
--:-- Justin Baragona: They don't have the proof for it, but they're like, of course they are because we've got the algorithms or whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Solomon says that in order for the ratios to be that exact at clearly designated times, computer software must have used an algorithm to change the votes.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And they just say the word algorithm because they know that the audience doesn't understand what algorithm is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Brutal. Brutal.
--:-- Justin Baragona: This whole time that this is happening, one of OAN's hosts is actually working as a legal advisor for him. That host is Christina Bob, who works on the Trump legal team as she is a host for OAN.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At this point, there's just no veneer at all left. We're all in it for Trump. We're going to do what we need to do to keep him in office. we're going to push these baseless allegations and essentially what we call now the big lie as hard as we can.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Is Stop the Steal and their coverage of Stop the Steal peak OAN?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is peak OAN.
--:-- Justin Baragona: We know it's peak OAN because at the January 6th insurrection, you actually saw an OAN flag being waved there because they know that OAN, they've got Trump's back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up, OAN comes crashing down.
--:-- [Music transitions]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when you set up direct deposit through Chime, they say you get access to fee-free features, such as free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, so much more.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees.
--:-- Justin Baragona: You can work on your financial goals through Chime today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can open an account in two minutes at chime.com slash explained. That's chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Chime feels like progress.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancor Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Chime checking account required.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why shop at Burlington?
--:-- Justin Baragona: Maybe it's the deals that are new each time you drop by. Maybe it's the brand names you'll be shocked Burlington has in store.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or maybe it's the quality of the items, the amazing selection, and the newest trends.
--:-- Justin Baragona: If you like to save but also like to stay in style, Burlington is your answer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the question you'll be asking yourself is, why go anywhere else?
--:-- Justin Baragona: Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Call your cable provider and kindly demand that One American News is added to your lineup. Call and subscribe today.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Explain.
--:-- [Music transitions]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, Justin, we just talked about how January 6th stopped this deal. this conspiracy theory that Trump really was the winner of the election is peak OAN because they go all in.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Yeah, it totally leads to their demise.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just like the other networks, Newsmax and Fox News, that had found themselves pushing out basically lies about the voting machine companies dominion and smartmatic they end up finding themselves on the receiving end of a billion dollar lawsuit from those two companies a billion dollar lawsuit 1.6 billion dollar to be exact and because they were shamelessly pushing it more so than the other two networks.
--:-- Justin Baragona: They felt like not only was OAN hit with it, but many of their hosts like Chanel Rion were named in those lawsuits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: OAN, as you point out, continues to this day to give a platform to people like Mike Lindell, despite knowing or recklessly disregarding the truth about his lies and about how false everything he is saying about Dominion is.
--:-- Justin Baragona: At the same time, they also got hit with a defamation lawsuit from two Georgia election workers over their repeated claims that these two election workers had brought in stolen ballots during the counting phase of the 2020 presidential election in Cobb County.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They ended up having to settle that lawsuit and they had to air an apology about that.
--:-- Justin Baragona: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the same time, you've had a lot of left-leaning activists and media organizations like the liberal media watchdog Media Matters advocating for AT and DirecTV to drop OAN from its lineup
--:-- Justin Baragona: This year even after all of the insurrection all that violent stuff that you referenced before well AT renewed with One America News knowing full well everything that they had done over the previous year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't have to, they made that active decision.
--:-- Justin Baragona: So AT&T, which was responsible for creating OAN and owns DirecTV, comes out earlier this year and says, you know what? We're good on OAN.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes.
--:-- Justin Baragona: In so many words, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The majority of the revenue comes from what we call carriage fees.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And that's how, you know, the cable provider, the television provider, the satellite provider, they, to offer you so many channels, it's so much money, you know, per month.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, they split that out between the channels, depending on how big they feel one channel is for bringing in subscribers, they get a bigger slice of the pie.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And OAN was getting millions and millions of dollars a year just from AT&T just off carriage fees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They weren't getting much money anywhere else. 90% of the revenue was coming from AT&T DirecTV, and it's largely through the carriage fees that they had negotiated.
--:-- Justin Baragona: We would also like to ask you, our viewers, to please reach out to the cable provider in your area, whether it's Spectrum, DISH, or any of the other great providers, and let them know that you would like for them to carry One America News.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you had a host, Dan Ball, urging viewers to dig up dirt on AT&T executives, specifically the chairman, in order to maybe blackmail them into keeping a way in on the air.
--:-- Justin Baragona: If you've got any dirt on Mr. Kennard, I'd love to see it and put on this program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You bring me concrete evidence of whatever it may be, cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife, saying racial slurs towards white people.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Folks do that. Whatever it may be, find it for me, bring it, and we'll air it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everybody's got dirty little sins and secrets they're hiding.
--:-- Justin Baragona: None of that actually worked.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then in late July, Verizon just put a message to its subscribers out there a few days prior saying, you know, we're in negotiations with the Herring Network to continue to provide you with One American News and another channel that they have.
--:-- Justin Baragona: A few days later, they released a statement saying, yep, we weren't able to reach negotiation. We tried.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're gone on July 31st.
--:-- Justin Baragona: But as this is all happening, OAN's losing employees left and right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the only other thing is to lash out, is to gripe about how Verizon's a cancel culture company too, and they're super woke and how dare they do this to us, just like AT&T and all the rest of the ultralibs that are trying to cancel everything that's even slightly conservative.
--:-- Justin Baragona: That's basically, you just go scorched earth at that point on the airwaves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Although these threats to drop these conservative networks are always labeled as business decisions, We know it has something to do with viewership or profit.
--:-- Justin Baragona: It almost always has to do with woke leadership, with these companies just caving in and left wing pressure campaigns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But where are these airwaves even showing at this point?
--:-- Justin Baragona: It's essentially just become an Internet company, you know, an online product.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's like a couple of cable providers that even have it on their lineup.
--:-- Justin Baragona: And it's like 100,000 homes in Alaska have it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's where you could go see OAN if you want to watch it on television.
--:-- Justin Baragona: They have a YouTube account.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're not going to post their content there because YouTube demonetized OAN back in late 2020 for peddling too much COVID-19 misinformation.
--:-- Justin Baragona: So yeah, they could post their stuff there, but they're not going to get any ads.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're not going to get any revenue.
--:-- Justin Baragona: So their only hope is to get people to subscribe to their app and maybe they can run some MyPillow ads there, buy gold ads, maybe some supplements.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But these are super low paying ads.
--:-- Justin Baragona: So where does that leave the network? Is it dead or dying?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'd call it dying.
--:-- Justin Baragona: You can't say it's dead yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If they can make it work on streaming, maybe.
--:-- Justin Baragona: But the business model was not set up that way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The business model was centered around being a cable network.
--:-- Justin Baragona: I mean, there is a lot of right-wing streaming options out there that are going to constantly just be beating them, whether it's from the Daily Wire, whether it's from the Blaze.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I just don't know if they're going to be able to survive in this environment.
--:-- Justin Baragona: It just feels like they're almost already a relic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And though OAN is dying, how are the ideas they promoted doing?
--:-- Justin Baragona: The ideas that are promoted on OAN aren't going anywhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're out there. And they're out there full force.
--:-- Justin Baragona: You just have to look for them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of times we're just deciding not to look at them, you know?
--:-- Justin Baragona: And that's probably to our peril sometimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's tons of sites out there. media outlets, streaming channels, even some stuff that's on TV that's going to put out stuff that is similar-ish, if not the same as OAM.
--:-- Justin Baragona: Justin Baragona is a media reporter for The Daily Beast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by Avishai Artsy, edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Miles Bryan, and mixed and mastered by Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Justin Baragona: I'm Sean Rameswaram for Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. Thank you.
