There was once talk that Fox News was in desperate trouble, in danger of losing its audience to far-far-right upstart networks willing to tell much bolder lies to the ever-angry Trumpian base. Donald Trump himself tried to promote the perpetually dishonest One America News and Newsmax—and solely because they were willing to suck up to him and promote thoroughly debunked claims of supposed election fraud and share his near-bottomless well of made-up "evidence."
Well, bad news and good news: Newsmax is likely going to be a boil on America's rear end for a while yet, but OAN appears to be on much shakier ground. The far-right propaganda network lost its major backer, AT&T's DirectTV, a few months ago. Now Verizon is dropping the network from its own service, Fios.
That leaves OAN with a much smaller audience and with very little revenue to put on their little show, leading to new press speculation that this may be the end of the line for the plucky fascist revue. The New York Times notes that, aside from a few much smaller cable companies, OAN will now have to look to its own person-by-person subscription service. That's ... not many people. And it remains vanishingly unlikely that many of the 3.5 million households that lost their (mostly unwanted) OAN channel through Verizon are going to be rushing to subscribe.
That's very bad news for the propaganda network, which is being sued for $1.6 billion in damages for pushing hoaxes claiming that Dominion Voting Systems machines were used to rig the 2020 presidential election against Trump. Court action so far indicates the companies Dominion has sued are very likely to lose those lawsuits, though squeezing a billion-dollar-plus judgment out of the network's decaying corpse will probably prove a futile effort. OAN doesn't have that kind of money, and won't be able to get that kind of money.
Back to the question, then. Is this the end for OAN? Eeeeeh ... that's probably not something you should be pinning any hopes on. The far-far-right is currently extremely well funded, thanks to a passel of wealthy right-wing sugar daddies, and even if the network collapses completely, it's likely that the lying hosts, the lying producers, and the lying everyone else will find themselves well taken care of by whichever American billionaire was most enamored of their willingness to repeat whatever implausible nonsense some clown was willing to whisper to them off-camera.
I'm not in a betting mood today, so I'm not going to try to speculate what happens next. The good news is that it turns out the primary tool of fascist movements, the Big Lie, can indeed be fought and defeated. But that's only if the lie pisses off a corporate target with enough revenue to hire a good team of lawyers. If the liars don't mention somebody's trademark, we're probably still out of luck.
Why did it take two of the most powerful telecom companies in the world this long to ditch a fake “news” network known for promoting fraudulent news even after those hoaxes were used to justify a coup and insurrection? No—why did both companies choose to host a network that, from much earlier than that, was shown to be wildly dishonest? Does anybody in these buildings have any standards at all? Is it only after people die, or 10-figure lawsuits start getting thrown around, that, eventually, some executive team wanders into the picture and begins to calculate the damage being done? Good God, people. What an embarrassment to all involved.
RELATED STORIES:
OAN broadcasts terse statement admitting they lied outright about Georgia election workers
Dominion sues Newsmax, One America News over their rampant spread of baseless 2020 election lies
OANN says John Oliver calling them a ‘ragtag band of fascists’ breached its AT&T contract
Well, bad news and good news: Newsmax is likely going to be a boil on America's rear end for a while yet, but OAN appears to be on much shakier ground. The far-right propaganda network lost its major backer, AT&T's DirectTV, a few months ago. Now Verizon is dropping the network from its own service, Fios.
That leaves OAN with a much smaller audience and with very little revenue to put on their little show, leading to new press speculation that this may be the end of the line for the plucky fascist revue. The New York Times notes that, aside from a few much smaller cable companies, OAN will now have to look to its own person-by-person subscription service. That's ... not many people. And it remains vanishingly unlikely that many of the 3.5 million households that lost their (mostly unwanted) OAN channel through Verizon are going to be rushing to subscribe.
That's very bad news for the propaganda network, which is being sued for $1.6 billion in damages for pushing hoaxes claiming that Dominion Voting Systems machines were used to rig the 2020 presidential election against Trump. Court action so far indicates the companies Dominion has sued are very likely to lose those lawsuits, though squeezing a billion-dollar-plus judgment out of the network's decaying corpse will probably prove a futile effort. OAN doesn't have that kind of money, and won't be able to get that kind of money.
Back to the question, then. Is this the end for OAN? Eeeeeh ... that's probably not something you should be pinning any hopes on. The far-far-right is currently extremely well funded, thanks to a passel of wealthy right-wing sugar daddies, and even if the network collapses completely, it's likely that the lying hosts, the lying producers, and the lying everyone else will find themselves well taken care of by whichever American billionaire was most enamored of their willingness to repeat whatever implausible nonsense some clown was willing to whisper to them off-camera.
I'm not in a betting mood today, so I'm not going to try to speculate what happens next. The good news is that it turns out the primary tool of fascist movements, the Big Lie, can indeed be fought and defeated. But that's only if the lie pisses off a corporate target with enough revenue to hire a good team of lawyers. If the liars don't mention somebody's trademark, we're probably still out of luck.
Why did it take two of the most powerful telecom companies in the world this long to ditch a fake “news” network known for promoting fraudulent news even after those hoaxes were used to justify a coup and insurrection? No—why did both companies choose to host a network that, from much earlier than that, was shown to be wildly dishonest? Does anybody in these buildings have any standards at all? Is it only after people die, or 10-figure lawsuits start getting thrown around, that, eventually, some executive team wanders into the picture and begins to calculate the damage being done? Good God, people. What an embarrassment to all involved.
RELATED STORIES:
OAN broadcasts terse statement admitting they lied outright about Georgia election workers
Dominion sues Newsmax, One America News over their rampant spread of baseless 2020 election lies
OANN says John Oliver calling them a ‘ragtag band of fascists’ breached its AT&T contract