It catered to those who had more cash than most of us might spend in a lifetime, any might view decisions in shopping for a yacht, selecting mega-million-dollar properties, and even touring to obscure or fascinating international locations world wide.
To say that the folks operating this channel had been out of contact with the typical human being is an overstatement, however one has to imagine that there have been sufficient to observe them to pay their payments. With programming similar to Boys Toys, Dream Cruises, Personal Islands, and Platinum Playgrounds, anybody with sufficient cash might sit again and be entertained with reveals that matched their way of life. As you may guess, AWE was based by an eccentric insomniac millionaire, Robert Herring.
It didn’t take lengthy for his information junkie focus to develop into uninterested in AWE and so in 2013 he determined to alter the channel to “OAN” (One America Information). All you must do is watch this channel to appreciate that the title is an oxymoron. What could have began with the concept of an actual information broadcasting group made an abrupt proper flip because the daybreak of the 2016 approached. From that time on, OAN turned a form of “Trump television,” and it was carried out to compete with Fox. OAN rapidly transitioned from center of the street reporting to a channel that attempted to seek out essentially the most outrageous and weird conspiracy theories and lies that they might inform to woo Trump to their facet. . .and it labored.
It’s fairly obvious that 80-year-old Robert Herring has lengthy forgotten his middle-class roots. Though he started his skilled profession as a circuit board gross sales rep in Orange County, California, he made his hundreds of thousands by founding after which promoting two circuit board corporations of his personal. If there’s one factor that we will say about many salesmen (or ladies) it’s that they often have their “pitch” ingrained of their souls.
Gross sales reps know that it’s ALWAYS concerning the sale — whether or not the product is nice, dangerous, harmful, or simply an outright lie. That is the philosophy that Herring lives by.
Herring is adept at seeing what “sells” and in information junkie format, he turned obsessive about how MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Fox’s Invoice O’Reilly had been redesigning data by beating one or two subjects to dying.
In a Washington Put up article entitled An inside have a look at One America Information, the rebel TV community taking ‘pro-Trump’ to new heights
“In 2013, the household created its second channel, One America Information. Robert Herring’s thought was to offer one thing that had gone lacking from the cable information panorama — a primary headline service protecting nationwide and worldwide information. Herring, lengthy an energetic donor to political campaigns, had no journalism expertise.
The channel he created is a rapid-fire cavalcade of headlines. Most tales run properly beneath a minute. Nearly the entire stories are learn by the anchors over video footage supplied by the Reuters, Related Press and Euronews providers, in addition to by RT, the Kremlin-funded information outlet {that a} U.S. intelligence report calls ‘Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.’”
The OAN Con: Attraction to Trump and the Trump Cult
Herring could also be famous as one of many first to acknowledge that Trump was broadcast gold. His weird, unusual, ridiculous, sick and twisted presence could make a majority of us need to vomit, however there isn’t any doubting that mainstream media noticed him as a draw for the general public. Herring made positive that OAN broadcast all of Trump’s Hitler-esque rallies, even when different channels weren’t. In addition they consistently praised Trump and by no means criticized or made a damaging phrase about him.
Simply having conservative so-called information that mimicked different broadcasts wasn’t sufficient. Herring knew that he needed to get nationwide recognition within the WH Press Briefings. To that extent he despatched so-called “reporters” to attend, and the success was proven once they had been moved from the again of the room nearer to the entrance when one in every of them refused to adjust to social distancing and later started praising Trump’s declare for the possibly harmful drug, hydroxycholorquine, as a COVID-19 treatment. Herring knew that Trump is a narcissist and all the time rewards people who praise and coo to his facet. However not every part went the way in which of OAN, as even when Herring had a gathering with Trump on the White Home, the channel obtained solely a constructive remark about their graphics.
It has taken nearly 4 years for OAN to achieve favor with Trump, and one could give credit score to Fox as having lastly had sufficient of Trump as they’ve began to truly report “information” that wasn’t the brainwashing propaganda that Trump wished them to inform. On the lookout for one other supply to appease his ego, Trump started to discipline extra questions from the OAN reporters and discuss concerning the station in a extra constructive mild.
Attempting to make a state-run information group like those that we noticed in pre-WWII Germany and Italy is a troublesome job. In an article by CJR: One America Information was determined for Trump’s approval. Right here’s the way it bought it.
“Charles Herring, OAN’s president and Robert Herring’s son, says that the community’s information reveals are unbiased. ‘Our information anchors are NOT allowed to specific their opinion,’ he wrote to me in an electronic mail. ‘They’re presenters, and the STAR of the present is the ‘information,’ not the expertise.’ However to tune in is to enter a dizzying alternaverse through which the least credible of Republican speaking factors are taken as reality. On OAN, Trump is perennially the sufferer of deep-state scheming Democrats’ efforts to dam a census citizenship query had been a ploy to hijack the Electoral School. And the Pentagon, by investigating atrocities dedicated beneath the American flag, is waging a “warfare on warriors.” Final December, OAN ran a three-hour special through which Rion and Rudy Giuliani collaborated to ‘debunk the impeachment hoax.’ (Russian state tv later rebroadcast a part of the particular.)
[Andrew McCormick, CJR writer] spoke with greater than a dozen former and present workers of OAN, some on the situation of anonymity as a result of they feared reprisal. A couple of had variety phrases for the community and for his or her coworkers, however collectively they described a circus, the place ethics are absent, turnover is excessive, and dissent is met with rage. On the helm, they are saying, is Robert Herring, a rich businessman and form of mini-Trump, whose near-singular focus appears to be supporting the president and his insurance policies. ‘[Herring] is the community,’ a former anchor instructed me. ‘He’s answerable for completely every part he needs to be, and if somebody doesn’t prefer it they’re fired.’”
Robert Herring is a form of enigma. Whereas he’s in lockstep with most of Trump’s ideologies similar to anti-immigration, racism, bigotry, and local weather change denial, he additionally drives a Tesla, invests in inventory and calls for that there aren’t any damaging tales on the corporate. Different subjects which might be taboo embody police brutality in opposition to Black People, particularly unarmed Black males. The channel could have began out with a need to be a center of the street reporting, however it has became “no matter Herring needs.”
OAN could also be parroting regardless of the right-wing Trump cult needs to listen to, together with among the tin foil hat stuff from the likes of Breitbart, however they’ve competitors. Fairly a while in the past I wrote an article entitled: Sinclair Conservative Broadcasting Set to Unfold Propaganda to nearly Half of American Properties
THIS SHOULD SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF YOU
That is data relating to the a whole lot of native broadcasting stations that Sinclair has purchased up across the nation:
“As newspapers shut down throughout the nation they create what is called ‘data deserts’ and it’s in these areas that Sinclair has jumped in to purchase up native tv stations in order that they’ll fill the hole with the form of propaganda that one would solely count on to see or hear in an authoritarian regime.
Beneath the guise of ‘balanced reporting,’ Sinclair is manipulating what the typical American sees and hears to match what THEY need you to imagine.
Should you nonetheless doubt, simply check out the video that was uncovered to point out the form of reduce and paste content material that they’re sending out within the over 193 stations that they personal; which is presently 39% of American households.”
Picture supply: Humorous or Die
The Continuation of Loopy with out Trump
Now that Trump is turning into yesterday’s information and everybody from the State of New York to Deutsche Financial institution and the nation of Scotland are coming after him for his prison actions, the query to be requested is: will there be anybody to purchase the nut job reporting of right-wing media?
Rupert Murdoch knew that there was a market within the U.S. for people who would imagine completely something. He made his hundreds of thousands within the U.Okay. with tabloids that did this sort of mendacity after which based “Fox” (not information) within the U.S. These are the identical folks that proceed to purchase our grocery retailer tabloids and watch reveals like Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Some have mentioned that they aren’t the neatest instrument within the shed and based mostly on what we have now seen within the final 5 years, I believe a number of us imagine it.
As Fox has misplaced favor with Trump, we’re seeing organizations similar to OAN and now Newsmax add to the Sinclair Broadcasting efforts to perform the Orwelian mass brainwashing with propaganda that must be apparent to even 10-year-olds. Sadly, it seems that what many world wide consider our residents is true — People actually ARE that silly!
To this point, there are billions of {dollars} invested in these right-wing extremist broadcasting teams and so they aren’t going to let slightly factor like an absence of Trump cease them. We will solely hope that the brand new Biden/Harris administration will work with our legislators to introduce necessities for cable “information” to supply reality in reporting. . .what an idea.
(S. Novi is a journalist that labored within the media and continues to hunt out reality and integrity. A liberal and one that’s suspicious of cults and empty guarantees. This piece appeared on Medium.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
