John Shiffman

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – 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 (NYSE:), the world’s largest communications company.

A Reuters review of court records shows the role AT&T played in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.”

Since then, 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 testified that he received $250 million in OAN funding for 2019. Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value “would be zero.”

Dallas-based AT&T, a mobile-phone and Internet provider, also owns entertainment giant Warner Media, which includes CNN and HBO. AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 and in August spun off the satellite service, retaining a 70% share in the new, independently managed company. AT&T’s total U.S. television subscriber base, including satellite and streaming services, fell from 26 million in 2015 to 15.4 million as of August.

AT&T spokesman Jim Greer declined to comment on the testimony about OAN’s revenue streams, citing confidentiality agreements. He said that DirecTV broadcasts “many news channels that offer viewpoints across the political spectrum.”

“We have always sought to provide a wide variety of content and programming that would be of interest to customers, and do not dictate or control programming on channels we carry,” Greer said. “Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.”

Although the contracts are confidential, in court filings Herring cited monthly fees included in one five-year deal with AT&T. According to an AT&T filing citing Herring’s numbers, those fees would total about $57 million. Greer said that figure is inaccurate, but declined to say how much AT&T has paid to air OAN, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Herring, his sons and their adult children own OAN and manage it as a subsidiary to the closely-held Herring Networks in San Diego. Their AT&T deal includes Herring’s other network, a little-watched lifestyle channel, AWE. Interviews were not granted to the Herrings.

Herring is an 80-year old self-made businessman. He started his career in circuit boards and then moved to TV and boxing promotion. OAN’s influence rose in late 2015, when it began covering Trump rallies live, at a time when some of the media still saw the New York celebrity businessman as a longshot presidential contender. OAN continues to lavish Trump with attention, and it often acts as a platform for Republican friends.

Trump, as president, often urged his followers to check OAN. Trump made sure to mention @OANN online in his two final years of office. He did so at least 120 occasions.

“Hope everybody is watching @OANN right now,” Trump tweeted on December 1, citing a dubious report about a truck carrying more than 100,000 fake ballots. “Other media afraid to show.”

The state and federal court documents reviewed by Reuters detail a lucrative relationship for OAN with AT&T, even as the two occasionally tangled in court.

The records include a reported offer by AT&T to acquire a 5% equity stake in OAN and AWE, though the two sides ultimately signed a different deal. The court filings also cite a promise by OAN to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during newscasts.

The confidential OAN financial records are drawn in part from testimony, including by Herring and the accountant, generated during a labor lawsuit brought against OAN by a former employee and unrelated to AT&T. When that case went to trial last year, the network’s lawyer told the jury that AT&T was keeping OAN afloat.

“If Herring Networks, for instance, was to lose or not be renewed on DirecTV, the company would go out of business tomorrow,” OAN lawyer Patrick Nellies told the court, a transcript shows.

Researchers who have followed the rise and fall of conservative media pillars Rush Limbaugh or Fox News found many similarities, especially during their formative years.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania said that OAN and Fox News share two common threads: opportunity and money. It was noted by Jamieson that Roger Ailes, a Republican political operative who died in 1990s, had recommended that Fox start a conservative network.

“If somebody recognizes there’s a market for something and there’s a lot of money attached to that market, you get a news outlet,” Jamieson said. “So this is AT&T playing the Roger Ailes role.”

Greer, the AT&T spokesman, called that comparison “a ridiculous claim,” noting that other distributors also carry OAN.

A BOOST FROM THE INSURECTION

America’s post-election turmoil, punctuated by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, continues to roil the country. Reuters reports that dozens upon dozens of Trump-lost election administrators have faced death threats. A Reuters poll in May showed that a quarter of Americans – and 53% of Republicans – wrongly believe Trump won the 2020 election.

OAN serves this market. Trump’s loss was OAN’s gain, social media data show.

The network’s online audience soared in November, after conservative mainstay and OAN competitor Fox News affirmed Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s camp attacked Fox. According to Sensor Tower data, a record number of people downloaded the OAN app in January, which was nine times more than October’s. Trump supporters marched to the U.S. Capitol on January 1, with at least one OAN flag affixed. In January, the number of app installations jumped to 517,000.

According to data company Similarweb (NYSEI:), OAN receives an average of 8 million monthly visits from mobile and desktop users. This peak was reached between November and January when 15 million people visited the site. A desktop computer user is twice as likely to return to this website than a mobile user. It has a loyalty rate that’s similar or higher than Fox News and Newsmax.

One America’s television ratings are harder to measure, partly because it is available in only about a quarter of the estimated 121 million TV households in the United States. Both Comscore and Nielsen, both rating services, show Fox News as the top cable network. However, they do not provide OAN numbers. In an internal email, an OAN news director told staff that the week of the Capitol assault produced the network’s “best ever” ratings, but gave no statistics.

OAN states it is fourth-rated news channel, following Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and MSNBC. It also ranks ahead of CNBC. The BBC, Newsmax and BBC have all claimed this, although they did not provide figures. (Each of these networks, including One America News, pays Reuters fees to publish the news service’s stories, videos and/or pictures.)

John Watson is an American University journalism professor, who studies ethics and media laws.

“If you have 12 Americans being fed a diet of untruth, that’s 12 too many – and here, it’s literally millions,” Watson said of the OAN audience. “When you have that sort of poisonous influence on mass media, it’s a problem; because elections in the United States tend to be so close, a few percentage points here or there can really make a difference.”

A threat note was sent to an official election official by at least one OAN regular viewer. Sheila Garcia, a Riverside County resident, wrote a scathing letter to Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State, in August. Biden beat Trump in Colorado, and Garcia accused Griswold, the state’s top election official, of treason – warning her that punishments for that crime are hanging and legal injection. “Within several months you will have to decide between the two,” Garcia wrote.

In an interview, Griswold stated that she considers threats such as Garcia’s message a real threat to her life. This threat along with dozens more prompted her to look into additional security options, she stated.

Garcia, 55, told Reuters she’s convinced Biden stole the election and said she gets most of her news from OAN. Garcia, 55, said she believes Biden stole the election and that U.S. media is similar to Chinese propaganda outlets. She stated that she was legal in her message to Griswold. “If you’re afraid of a little old lady in a trailer park in California, I feel sorry for you,” she said in an interview.

Neil W. McCabe, OAN’s former Washington bureau chief and now national political correspondent for The Tennessee Star, rejects the idea that the network is a toxic influence. According to McCabe, OAN plays an important role in the public and is loved by viewers with a similar outlook on life.

“When you give a voice to the voiceless, you’re going to bond with them,” McCabe told Reuters. “Who else is doing these stories?”

Multiple instances show that records have shown that statements and theories broadcast by the network were false in many cases.

YouTube suspended OAN from making money off its YouTube channel last year for, among other things, repeatedly violating its COVID-19 policy, which prohibits content claiming there’s a guaranteed cure. OAN claims hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that Trump promotes as a treatment for COVID. There’s no evidence to support this claim.

During last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, OAN aired an unconfirmed report that an elderly demonstrator in Buffalo, New York, who was knocked down and seriously injured by police was trying to jam the cops’ radios. Trump, citing the OAN story, tweeted that the man “could be an ANTIFA provocateur.”

It went viral. Zignal Labs’ analysis for Reuters revealed that in the first two days of the OAN broadcast one-third all internet references cited this network.

On January 6, after Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol, an OAN news director cautioned staff via email, “Please DO NOT say ‘Trump Supporters Storm Capitol …’ Simply call them demonstrators or protestors … DO NOT CALL IT A RIOT!!!”

Herring said the following day that the antifa left-wing movement might have orchestrated the riot as a fake flag operation. “We want to report all the things Antifa did yesterday. I don’t think it was Trump people but lets investigate,” he emailed OAN producers. Federal Bureau of Investigation has not found any evidence of Antifa participation in the Riot. Only a few of the 600 people charged have been left-leaning Trump supporters.

The next day, Herring tweeted: “If anyone thinks we will throw the best President America has had, in my 79 years, under the bus, you are wrong. We will continue to give him honest coverage.”

His network went on to support Trump in an unusual way: OAN allowed two reporters to raise $605,000 to help fund a “private” audit of the presidential vote in Arizona, despite Republican officials’ assurances that Biden won the state. According to an OAN executive, they did so with the network’s blessing but in a private capacity.

One of the OAN reporters, Christina Bobb, also worked part-time for the Trump recount legal team, according to a recent deposition by Trump’s then-lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. The arrangement was confirmed by an OAN executive. Bobb is a former Trump administration official and a lawyer. He did not respond to our request for comment.

Five former OAN producers said in interviews that they found the practice of reporters raising funds for events they cover unethical, but said OAN’s move did not surprise them.

“If there was any story involving Trump, we had to only focus on either the positive information or basically create positive information,” said Marissa Gonzales, an OAN producer from 2019 until she resigned in 2020. “It was never, never the full truth.”

OAN has been selling hours of informationmercial time to Mike Lindell of MyPillow, who is a prominent purveyor for false claims of election theft. Lindell has used that time on OAN to repeatedly broadcast his election conspiracy “docu-movies.” A primary Lindell target is Dominion Voting Systems Inc, whose machines count votes in 28 states and use paper ballots and records for auditing.

In August, Dominion sued OAN for defamation. “OAN saw a business opportunity” and fueled bogus conspiracies about alleged vote tampering, Dominion contended. “OAN helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings,” the lawsuit said.

The network’s lawyers have said in letters to Dominion that the election coverage is protected free speech and that the Lindell programs include a disclaimer that they are “opinions only and are not intended to be taken or interpreted by the viewer as established facts.”

In related Dominion lawsuits, Lindell, Sidney Powell and Giuliani, all Trump supporters offered similar defenses to free speech. In August, a federal judge said the Lindell, Giuliani and Powell cases should proceed toward trial, noting that the Constitution does not necessarily offer “blanket immunity for statements that are political in nature.”

The network has fewer commercials than its rivals. Former bureau chief McCabe stated that the lack of advertising was a form of superpower. The network’s reliance on fees from cable, satellite and streaming providers, instead of commercials, inoculates it from advertiser boycotts faced by counterparts such as Fox News and rightwing online news site Breitbart, in McCabe’s view.

“Because they basically live off the cable and satellite fees, nobody can organize a protest against One America News,” McCabe said.

AT&T & OAN: ORIGIN STORY

Robert Herring Sr. along with his two sons Charles Herring Jr. created high-profitable circuit board companies from the beginning of the 1970s until the end of the 1990s. One of these businesses was sold in 1988 for $52 million, and two more in 2000 for $122 millions.

In 2004, they created a television network called WealthTV, a channel dedicated to affluent lifestyles – yachts, mega-mansions and private jets.

The sale was difficult. Many cable and satellite companies declined to offer WealthTV, even though the Herrings provided it at a reduced price, or for no charge, to help them get their program on-air. “We went to every place you could think of, begging to get on,” Herring said last year on his network.

Herring applied to the Federal Communications Commission for assistance in 2007. In 2008 and 2007, Herring claimed that cable operators favored co-owned networks, discriminating against broadcasters independent of them. They countered by claiming that broadcasting channels were their right.

FCC concluded providers had used appropriate business discretion. Federal court agreed with that finding. According to two lawyers for two of the carriers, Herring litigation caused irritation and it made it difficult for WealthTV subscribers to receive their services via cable or satellite.

Still, the Herrings say they developed a good relationship with AT&T, which began carrying WealthTV in 2006 through U-verse, an Internet set-top box service that can access live TV and video on demand. WealthTV was able to provide news updates as well as live boxing by 2012. To launch another network in San Diego, the Herrings wanted to make use of their San Diego production assets.

In a pivotal moment for the company, the Herrings say in court filings, depositions and sworn statements, unidentified AT&T executives told them there was an audience for another conservative news network. Herring grabbed the opportunity.

In his 2019 deposition in the labor suit unrelated to AT&T, the elder Herring said he created OAN for two reasons.

“To make money, number one,” Robert Herring said. “But number two, is that AT&T told us … they wanted a conservative network.”

Rodney Diggs followed up on Herring’s lawyer questions.

“So,” the lawyer said, “AT&T kind of dictated the kind of network that they wanted. Because there was an opportunity, you jumped at it?”

“Yes, sir,” Herring replied.

EQUITY, CELEBRATION AND SURPRISE

A few months after launching OAN in July 2013, AT&T proposed acquiring a 5% stake in Herring Networks.

Charles Herring of OAN stated in a signed statement that he accepted the oral deal made by AT&T on October 2013. Emails show that the two sides executed a non-disclosure agreement that December and that AT&T due-diligence executives visited the Herrings in San Diego in January 2014.

The equity proposal was not accepted and signed. Instead, in April 2014 the two sides signed a more conventional deal: AT&T agreed to pay the Herrings 18 cents per subscriber on U-verse each month for five years. AT&T had 5.7 million U-verse subscribers.

After years of rejection, suddenly the Herrings became players.

It lasted for less than one month. In May 2014, AT&T announced that it planned to acquire the satellite service DirecTV, which had 20 million TV subscribers at the time.

This alarmed the Herrings because their deal with AT&T was limited to U-verse. If AT&T moved all its U-verse customers to DirecTV, the Herrings feared they might receive nothing, court filings show. OAN could lose millions of viewers.

To prevent that, Charles Herring hustled to Los Angeles to see a key AT&T executive.

LOBBYING FOR AT&T

That executive, according to Charles Herring’s sworn account in a lawsuit the Herrings would later file against AT&T, was Aaron Slator, then AT&T’s president of content and advertising.

Slator told him AT&T needed help to allay FCC and other officials’ concern that the DirecTV deal – a consolidation of providers – might make it harder for independent networks to get on the air, Charles Herring said.

So, he said in the affidavit, Slator proposed a new deal: If the Herrings lobbied on AT&T’s behalf, AT&T would air OAN and WealthTV on both U-verse and DirecTV. Although the Herrings would receive a third less per subscriber than DirecTV, DirecTV has so many subscribers that it could potentially be worth $100 millions over five years.

The Herrings were able to get on with their jobs.

FCC records reveal that Charles Herring employed a Washington lobbyist to meet with FCC officials. He says he signed a filing of support “ghostwritten by AT&T” and sent it to the FCC. As part of his campaign, he said he went to a Republican fundraiser that cost $50,000 per person.

The Herrings even offered to air positive news about AT&T on OAN, the network said in its lawsuit against AT&T, which said it could not comment on the litigation.

“Herring’s support of AT&T ran deep,” the Herrings’ lawyers wrote. “Herring invited AT&T to utilize OAN’s news programs to cast a positive light on the acquisition and advocated for other issues affecting AT&T’s business.”

In court records, AT&T denied it made such a deal to carry OAN on DirecTV if the Herrings lobbied for the merger. “Support for the merger was never a condition of or part of any content agreement,” an AT&T spokesperson recently told Reuters. Slator, no longer with AT&T, could not be reached for comment.

Another former senior AT&T executive told Reuters the company never made quid-pro-quo offers linking network deals to political support. “You just don’t mix the two,” he said.

According to the ex-executive, any lobbying done by a conservative news station would not be possible or effective because they would have been during Barack Obama’s presidency, which is a Democrat. “The Herrings were not going to have influence with Obama’s people,” said the former AT&T official.

The FCC approved the AT&T-DirecTV deal in July 2015.

The Herrings say AT&T still refused to put OAN and WealthTV on DirecTV, leaving them only on the shrinking U-verse platform. In March 2016, the Herrings sued AT&T, alleging it had broken an oral promise.

AT&T denied any wrongdoing, issuing a statement at the time that said, “This lawsuit is simply a ploy by Herring to negotiate a slanted deal.”

A federal judge granted the Herrings a prejudgment ruling that was crucial to their case. However, it was resolved on undisclosed terms in March 2017. OAN, WealthTV (later renamed AWE), began airing on DirecTV one month later.

KEEPING HIS INTERNETWORK ACTIVE

On February 5, 2020, the U.S. Senate, sitting as a jury during Trump’s first impeachment trial in Washington, acquitted him of abusing his power for asking Ukraine’s president to launch an investigation into then-candidate Biden.

Robert Herring was also present in San Diego’s courtroom that afternoon. He was before another jury. This one heard testimony from OAN accountants in an employment case.

OAN was already found guilty of wrongfully firing the former producer after he filed a racial complaint. The jury considered punitive damage. In order to help decide the right penalty, OAN was allowed to testify about his financial situation.

In addition to testifying that AT&T provided 90% of Herring Networks’ income, the accountant said the company’s book value – the net value of its assets – was a modest $16.6 million.

When Herring took the witness stand, he said OAN’s market value was far higher. According to a 2020 Wall Street Journal report, pro-Trump investors had sought out OAN’s purchase for $250 million. Herring stated to the court that he gave the group several months for the funds, but it only had $35 million.

“No way I would sell for $35 million,” Herring testified.

Herring worked with his three sons for nearly forty years to create several businesses that were successful, including OAN. He said that the network had sentimental value.

“I am not sure I want to sell for anything,” he said.