How One America News Network quietly rose to the top of Trump's must-watch TV list
- Fox News has long been documented as one of President Donald Trump's favorite TV news outlets, but another network has slowly but surely won the president's affections since the 2016 presidential election.
- One America News is a lesser-known outlet that has allegedly focused its reporting on more flattering angles for the administration and has earned Trump's seal of approval and a growing audience.
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President Donald Trump has been documented as a loyal Fox News viewer, but another network has slowly but surely won his affections since the 2016 presidential election.
One America News is a lesser-known outlet that has seemingly focused its reporting on more flattering angles for the administration, including airing Trump's rallies in full and having opinion anchors casting impeachment proceedings by House Democrats a lie-ridden "frenzy."
As Trump publicly lashes out at his old favorite Fox, see how the six-year-old network that was launched at the Conservative Political Action Conference made its way up the crowded broadcast news ladder.
Businessman Robert Herring Sr. made his wealth with a technology company before he became interested in news.
In 2000, Herring Sr. won $122 million by selling the family's circuit board printing business, Herco Technology.
The Washington Post reported that upon his retirement, his insomnia allowed him ample time to watch television, which eventually inspired his move into the industry.
He established Herring Broadcasting and first launched Wealth TV in 2004, a cable channel which churned out shows that exhibited luxe lifestyles of the rich and famous and included a few occasional newscasts in a format inspired by networks like Fox News and MSNBC, according to the Washington Post.
Herring's touch on the channel appeared in its first year in a two-hour special on Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who had spent half her life in a vegetative state and became the face of the right-to-die debate. Robert Herring offered $1 million to Schiavo's husband to stop trying to get her off life support. He refused and Schiavo died in 2005 after her feeding tube was removed.
Wealth TV also partially made its name with a live professional boxing event aired in 2011 and a pay-per-view fight in 2012.
One America News was established as a separate Herring entity in 2013 to be a conservative voice in broadcasting.
The channel was formally launched at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference, which is an annual gathering of conservative voters and figures. Charles Herring told the Daily Beast just before the announcement that he believed "it is getting really hard to find just the reliable, credible, fact-based news with substance."
Herring added that the cable channel would include "the second component is to provide a platform where more voices can be heard, voices that are ignored, libertarian and conservative voices."
The tagline "Your Nation, Your News," preceded the network, which Herring described as an answer to their view that Fox News, which was founded in 1996, was not conservative enough.
From the beginning, the network heralded opinion hosts like Tea-Party-tangent figure Rick Amato and Graham Ledger, who was formerly an anchor at Wealth TV, according to the Daily Beast.
The network featured top conservative figures in its programming early on, including a spot for commentator Ann Coulter to promote her book "Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 — Especially a Republican."
Coulter would go on to appear on the network over the next few years to comment on topics like Trump's campaign and legal troubles he faced while in office.
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The fledgling network opened its doors to young, enthusiastic talent and gave rise to Tomi Lahren, who is now a well known conservative commentator on Fox.
Lahren interviewed at OAN shortly after graduating college and was given her show, "On Point with Tomi Lahren," which debuted on August 8, 2014, and would establish her as an outspoken and often controversial conservative commentator. She would go on to host her own shows on The Blaze, Fox Nation, and appear as a contributor on Fox News.
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OAN made its mark in the opening weeks of then-real estate mogul Donald Trump's campaign when it became the first network to carry the presidential hopeful's campaign speeches live and in full.
The move came after a direct order from leadership, including Herring and other top executives, that told staffers other candidates would not enjoy the same exposure, according to internal emails reported by The Washington Post.
Despite only being up and running for a few years, the network earned a coveted spot on the White House press corps covering the Trump administration.
The Washington Post reported that OAN's White House correspondent Trey Yingst was called on in daily news briefings 27 times in Trump's first 100 days in office before the network earned a seat in the White House briefing room.
Like Lahren, Yingst was hired fresh from college in Spring 2016 and handed a job covering international conflict from Washington, DC for the network in the last months of President Barack Obama's administration.
"For me, I wanted to be on air right away — and they let me," he told Poynter. "I think they will often give me opportunities that if I was somewhere else, I might be a production assistant or reading over scripts."
During his time in the press corps, Yingst earned praise from journalism industry figures like the Poynter Institute for his firm and smart questioning of the administration.
In August 2018, 23-year-old Yingst signed with Fox News as a general assignment reporter based in Jerusalem, the same bureau that lost a correspondent who was reportedly worried about the network's direction. Emerald Robinson is currently the OAN chief White House correspondent.
The network drew immediate comparisons to Fox News but had a smaller reach than its more established conservative predecessor.
As of June 2019, the network told The Guardian it has 35 million subscribers and around 150,000 to half a million viewers.
The channel is carried on providers like DirecTV and Verizon Fios, but The Daily Beast reported Nielsen had it rated "somewhere below the Tennis Channel" in May 2019.
Even amid the shifting conservative media landscape, OAN faced some trouble securing its stature as a high-profile conservative outlet.
After Fox News cut ties with longtime anchor Bill O'Reilly in the wake of sexual harassment charges and an exile of around 90 advertisers from his program in April 2017, OAN made a bid for the conservative news heavyweight to secure an offer Herring later said "could have paid him more than he made at Fox."
Herring wrote on Twitter in June 2017 that the network was pulling the deal and told The Hill that it came after going back and forth with O'Reilly's management.
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/877248495740002304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We are pulling offer to @billoreilly, it could have paid him more than he made at Fox. We wish him luck. #OANN
OAN seemed to surpass Fox News on its preference for Trump's messaging, as it continued to broadcast his appearances in full through his presidency.
Robert Herring Sr. makes a point to announce on Twitter the live and uninterrupted broadcasts that have included special counsel Robert Mueller's hearing, Trump's 2020 election announcement, and appearances in cities devastated by mass shootings.
Though the directive could be read as an order to curry as much favor as possible for Trump, Charles Herring told the Guardian in 2019 that the move had nothing to do with the president's politics, but was merely "a function of the news."
"We're the only network that I know of that will carry the president's speech in its entirety and, regardless of who's the president," the younger Herring told the outlet. "I really don't care who the president is: left-leaning, right-leaning, you like him, you hate him, it just seems like that's a function of the news."
Alongside local and national news stories the network's signature structure lies in its fiery opinion shows.
The opinion anchor formula is most similar to that of its right-leaning predecessor Fox News, but can be compared to big names who enjoy their own time slots on networks like CNN and MSNBC, but leadership has been careful to draw a line between these shows and the network's coverage as a whole.
Herring told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019 that "the political talk shows lean to the right, no doubt about it," meaning The Daily Ledger and Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler. However, he told the outlet that the rest of the 20 hours of the network's broadcasting are straightforward news.
"We're a no-fluff, very fast-paced live news service meant to inform," Charles Herring told the Washington Post in 2017. "News anchors are not allowed to express opinions. They simply deliver the news and we leave it up to the viewers to decide."
Trump has, in turn, touted the network by tweeting out quotes from reports he likes, as he does with Fox News, thereby boosting the network's name recognition as a conservative power player.
Herring told the Post in 2017 that "It's not our family's mission to determine the news."
However, the network appeared to broadcast exaggerated and false stories throughout its reporting, which became more noticeable as Trump ramped up his public support while in office.
Part of his parroting the network has resulted in him flatly tweeting conspiracy theories that had been reported as fact by OAN. One such example came in April 2019, when Trump tweeted an OAN headline repeating a claim by Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer featured on the network who Vox reported has been known to traffic in baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats.
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1121006942502182913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign." @OANN WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!
Criticism of the network's origins and coverage reached a fever pitch on September 9, 2019, when OAN retaliated against MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow for calling the network "paid Russian propaganda."
During a report in a September episode of "The Rachel Maddow Show," Maddow referenced a Daily Beast report that an OAN employee worked for Sputnik News, she called the network "the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda."
"Their on-air US politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government," Maddow said.
Maddow's comments prompted the network to file a federal defamation suit that named Maddow, Comcast, MSNBC and NBCUniversal Media and was seeking more than $10 million.
As Trump faces an impeachment inquiry from House Democrats ahead of the 2020 Election, the network's policy of wall-to-wall Trump coverage could come under further scrutiny.
A report published on October 13 by The New York Times described a splintered relationship between Trump and Fox News toward the end of Summer 2019, as the president grew more unhappy with the network's coverage of him, even lashing out on Twitter to call them "HOPELESS & CLUELESS!"
As Trump's legal and election concerns roil on, his timeline could provide a glimpse into his news habits.