“DirecTV made the responsible decision to drop OAN. OAN is a cauldron of misinformation and extremism. 

“DirecTV made a negligent mistake in 2021 when they remained silent about how OAN’s industrial scale attacks on the election and stoking of the embers that helped fuel the January 6 insurrection could impact carriage renewal.

"OAN had almost a full unchecked year to undermine our democracy — and our country suffered for it.”

“Just as DirecTV’s silence in 2021 mattered, their decision to drop OAN in 2022 matters too. DirecTV has been functionally propping up OAN for years. Without DirecTV, OAN would certainly not exist in its current form and possibly not at all.”

“Now that OAN’s anchor distributor has dropped them, Verizon FiOS (OAN’s second major distributor) should follow suit. And certainly no other cable provider should pick them up.”

In October of 2021,​​ Reuters published a special report revealing AT&T’s central role in the creation and continued survival of One America News Network. At the time, Carusone explained in a tweet thread the “golden ticket” AT&T provided the network, explaining how OAN and all of its lies would not exist without AT&T’s help prop up OAN financially.

1/ I want to just put a few things out there about OANN and ATT/DirecTV because in a way, the incredibly good Reuters reporting just begins to scratch the surface on how absurd and odious this deal is....

— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) October 6, 2021

Since February 2021, Media Matters has been campaigning to get OAN’s current cable providers to drop the channel and to prevent prospective providers from picking up the channel. 

Previously documented OAN’s noxious coverage includes a deadly TV campaign against COVID-19 vaccines, hateful anti-LGBTQ content, and a network-wide assault on elections meant to hype bogus claims of fraud and overturn the 2020 results. The election attacks include a reporter’s nonprofit seeking to fund fraudulent election “audits” around the country, a demented obsession with the MyPillow CEO and his money, and a correspondent’s call for mass executions of election officials. 

Update (1/15/22): This quote has been updated. The original quote suggested that DirecTV made an active decision in 2021 to allow its carriage with OAN to auto-renew in 2021 — a claim that has been previously made without dispute. Following the publication, this claim has been disputed, but even putting aside prior credible reporting that the agreement would expire in 2021, the larger point stands without it: DirecTV was indisputably silent about the effect that OAN’s coverage could have on carriage renewal and that OAN has been heavily reliant on DirecTV for viability.