"AT&T helped build far-right One America News" - Reuters
It's easier to follow the money and trace the connections with a relationship map. Use this map to follow the connections between:
- AT&T, DirecTV and One America News (OAN)
- Major AT&T investors including BlackRock and Vanguard
- AT&T Board of Directors
- OAN reporters and the content the produce
- COVID disinformation and Jan 6th insurrection
- Dominion Voting Systems, My Pillow and Rudy Giuliani
- The disconnect between corporate proclaimed values and what they really do
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Follow the money
When in doubt about the real motives, follow the money as DeepThroat advised. Relationship maps like this one created with the free Kumu app and public info make it easier to do.
"One America News, the far-right network whose fortunes and viewership rose amid the triumph and tumult of the Trump administration, has flourished with support from a surprising source: AT&T Inc, the world's largest communications company." - Reuters
"OAN’s devotion to racist lies like smearing Floyd’s name, its falsehood-based hysterics and its promotion of conspiracy theories undermine AT&T’s “moral and business obligation to engage on this fundamental issue of equality” and DirecTV’s “advocacy toward equality and inclusivity” -- and yet, both AT&T and DirecTV pay for it. Without DirecTV distribution, OAN would seem to lose about 64% of its potential audience for its brand of desperate, corrosive misinformation. If AT&T dropped OAN altogether, that figure rises to 81%." - Media Matters.
How AT&T and DirecTV helped build far-right One America News
"OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives. “They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”
AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant. Herring has testified he was offered $250 million for OAN in 2019. Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value “would be zero.” - Reuters
Talk the talk, walk the walk
Talk is cheap. Corporations present noble ideals on their website while funding groups directly or through investments which weaken democracy, promote violence and spread COVID disinformation. Where does corporate greed end and social responsibility begin?
Withdrawing economic support
As Martin Luther King Jr. advised a generation ago when corporations aren't acting ethically. (Source: Your Black World)
"We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
Here is the adapted script packaged in a free BigStage Teleprompter in case you'd like to practice the lines.
TakeAway: Encourage companies and investors to live up to their own proclaimed values.
Deepak
DemLabs
How to use the relationship map
