Originally published at: AT&T is responsible for 90% of far-right propaganda network One America News' revenue | Boing Boing
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And of course AT&T is one of those companies it’s nigh impossible to boycott because they own so much of the infrastructure our modern communication networks are built on.
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AT&T is a company run by people, not a rogue AI.
WHO at AT&T paid this money? WHAT PERSON injected this poison into our society?
I WANT NAMES GODDAMMIT
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If anybody finds a petition or email address at ATT to protest to, please share it. Thanks.
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ATT CEO Randal Stephenson retired in 2020 ($64 Million parachute.)…
“There was one person who was happy to see Stephenson head out the door—President Donald Trump. AT&T owns CNN, along with around 90-plus other major corporate divisions. Trump’s not a fan of CNN and giddily tweeted about the the CEO’s departure:”
“Leery of an all-too-powerful AT&T after the purchase of Time Warner (which includes CNN), Trump’s antitrust division sued to block the deal, which ultimately went through. Holding a grudge, Trump continued to rage against CNN and told customers to unsubscribe from AT&T, in an effort to push for “big changes” at CNN.”
And now it’s Stankey at the healm.
“It’s a highly recognized brand, but we’ve got to take it to a new place,” Stankey said.
Heading into trumpian slime pools is his idea of a “new place”?
Seems Stankey’s been hand slapped by shareholders:
On April 30, 2021, AT&T announced that a nonbinding shareholder vote had rejected AT&T’s executive compensation proposal by a slight majority.[21] This was after several AT&T executives, including Stankey and Jason Kilar, gained significant stock awards in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, massive layoffs, poor service and subscriber results, continued subscriber losses, and middling stock returns.[22] The vote represents an example of a recent trend of shareholders and the general public growing tired of the seemingly inexorable recent obscene growth in CEO pay despite clear and obvious mismanagement and failure that has continued through economic downturn and even downturn in company performance.[23]
Stankey is not just limiting contributions to propaganda and lies but also to attacks against democracy…
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Yep… I was thinking “well guess who I’m not doing business with anymore,” but like… how? They’re involved with so much, including internet backbones and shit like that. I’ll definitely try not to buy anything from them directly, but it’s irritating that there’s no real way to escape them. Just another reason internet service should be considered a utility and run by the government…
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When it comes to the channels we carry for customers, we do not exercise control over their editorial content.
“All we really care about is money. If some right-wing sugar daddy pays us millions to carry a fascist network on DirecTV, that’s how things are!”
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All the complaining about “Big Tech” is nothing more than a smokescreen for Big Telecom.
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isn’t that the opposite of what happened? at&t paid millions to put it on the air.
from the reuters article:
AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show.
they’re hoping that it brings subscribers - but like fox news ( probably even more so for oan )- it’s a loss leader. they pay to keep it on the air
people sometimes talk about pulling ads from fox news or boycotting the channel, but none of that matters so long as people pay their cable subscription bill each month
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I’ve been with AT&T since my first cellphone (Cingular, Nokia 3310). This is enough for me to switch to Mint Mobile.
Bring back Ma Bell!
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Well, poop. Was just pondering a move to ATT for local fiber and cellphones but this news dampens my anticipation.
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Back a right-wing reactionary news network with the production qualities of a junior high television production class? You will.
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Well played! I had a friend at uni that liked making dark variations of those commercials.
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Someone high up (or the highest) at AT&T is an alt-right stooge.
And, what are they getting for their money, anyway: OAN looks no better than a high-school closed-circuit TV.
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One bit of analysis I read posits that AT&T helped create OANN as leverage with Fox-- when FNC was the only angry conservative “news” network they could make demands on carriers-- it was about money more than ideology.
Not to defend it, because having two hateful paranoid channels is twice as bad. It might seem like it’s good for business now, but when the angry masses start a civil war your profit margin tends to take a hit.
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Robert Herring Sr, founder and CEO of OAN, which shares a large overlap of viewers with Fox News, said in 2019 during a deposition that the channel was the brainchild of AT&T executives.
“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” he said at the time, according to 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.”
You know - for balance.
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I’m sure as this quote was given out the spokes person thought “Except when we (reportedly) explicitly ask them to astroturf for us to get mergers past the FCC.”
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And even if you did boycott them, who the hell are you going to switch to? Comcast? Centurylink?
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AT&T is a company. It is an elaborate legal fiction designed to shield humans from the consequences of their actions and liability to debt.
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I have ATT phone still, but switched to Comcast from them for internet. It’s going from one neglectful, borderline abusive relationship to another.
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