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AT&T, Which Owns CNN, Helped Build Far-Right One America News
- haliskerbas 5y agoNow when people get mad about one AT&T own property, they can consume the other AT&T owned property to feel agreed with. This is like turbotax selling tax software while lobbying against simpler tax setups. Or Facebook boasting about being a townhall while optimizing for being a barbaric colosseum. Business as usual for unfettered capitalism!
- sk2020 5y agoI don’t know how you can look at the telecom market and make the determination that it’s “unfettered capitalism”. AT&T has an extraordinary amount of special market privileges that shield them from competitive forces. Almost all utilities are quasi-government. That they are allowed to own private infrastructure on public land, sometimes at no cost, is something you or I could not do. Am I unaware of an important counterpoint where Soviet telecoms were high functioning and free of perverse incentives?
- lotsofpulp 5y agoOriginal source: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oneamerica-att/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-onea...
- lightlyused 5y agoProbably should link to that one.
- avelis 5y agoAT&T wants to own & create two sides of the same coin. Not surprising.
- dragonwriter 5y agoOAN is to the right of all the major cable news networks, and CNN is the centermost of the major cable news network; that's not “two sides” of anything. AT&T was heavily invested in the Right causes before acquiring CNN(’s parent, not CNN alone), and is investing to pushing the media space, and thus the Overton Windoe, to the Right; trying to push CNN hard directly would have visible pushback from staff and audience, shifting the ground under CNN doesn't have that problem.
- ajma 5y agoAllsides (https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings) rates cnn and oan on either extreme.
- jimbob45 5y agoFor sure. NPR, Newsweek, and The Christian-Science Monitor aren't centrist by the most charitable of interpretations either unless you stopped reading those publications in 2008. Al-Jazeera (which I don't see on that list for some reason), AP, and the BBC are the only ones I'd place in that middle column. The rest have obvious agendas in my opinion (e.g. if your publication unironically uses the term "incel" to refer to any group, you're not centrist).
- smt88 5y agoWait, what's wrong with using incel to refer to a group? They call themselves incels and congregate on message boards and subreddits devoted to that category. No news org is just randomly finding celibate young men and labelling them incels...
- jimbob45 5y agoIncel is a portmanteau for involuntarily celibate. That is, men/people who are (conceivably) biologically unable to find a sexual partner. The opposite of this would be a slut - a woman or people who are biologically unable to stop themselves from rejecting potential sexual partners. Slut and incel are two sides of the same token. You can easily find women proud to call themselves sluts, both online and in reality. However, one would hope that a news organization would use more specific and less degrading terms to describe groups that they are (theoretically) neutral toward. I've certainly never seen an NPR headline use the word "slut". However, if you look at this NPR article[0], you can be sure that it would seem silly if it read "Police Foiled An Ohio Slut's Plot To Kill Women In A Mass Shooting, Prosecutors Say". One would hope that they would use a word closer to what they were meaning to say like "4chan-viewer" or "prostitute" or "shut-in". You've gotta figure that you'd only ever use a word like "incel" if you were a biased news organization...but, of course, NPR is above that. [0]https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019089834/police-foiled-an-ohio-incels-plot-to-kill-women-in-a-mass-shooting-prosecutors-s https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019089834/police-foiled-an-o...
- JohnWhigham 5y agoThis is what is called "controlled opposition"
- gkoberger 5y agoEh I don't think so. AT&T aren't political ideologues pushing a specific agenda; they just don't care and want money from both sides.
- smt88 5y agoI agree, it's a "traditional media" version of Facebook trying to increase engagement by enraging both sides of every political debate.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoBut ATT execs are too stupid to know how to make money, so they keep pissing it away in these stupid and, in this case, harmful ventures. I have no idea how that C suite continues to be given the liberties they are since they have not made a single smart move since locking up the iPhone to ATT in 2007, and have made multiple boneheaded acquisitions and strategic moves since then. All that money wasted could have been invested in the mobile and fiber networks, from which they could have extracted even higher rents, but they want to let Verizon beat them in that arena and instead play around in Hollywood.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoOr "diversification within a sector."
- artificialLimbs 5y agoSuggestion for title correction: AT&T, Which Owns Far-Left CNN, Helped Build Far-Right One America News
- qzw 5y agoI guess on your scale Fox News is Center-Left?
- duncan-donuts 5y agolol CNN far-left. please
- wavefunction 5y agohaha for real As for context to my post CNN is not far left in my learned and erudite opinion as they are a frequent apologist for the effects of neoliberalism and corporatism upon the peeps of this world.
- gremloni 5y agoIf you think CNN is the far left, you’re in for a huge surprise.
- robcohen 5y agoCNN is not far left. Here’s one study to demonstrate how centrist it is. Refer to page 9. https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/media/sites/media/files/JustinRaoMediaBias.pdf https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/media/sites/media/files/Justin... .
- lettergram 5y agoThe issue with this and many studies and generally perception is the terminology itself. What is far right anyway? The LA times literally ran a headline: > Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-c... From that study CNN scores right next to LA times in terms of skew. The reality, is that most of what people see is left wing. Real far-right news isn’t on the air, and isn’t in most public debate. The Overton window is pretty far left, so anything more moderate seems right or far right.
- lettergram 5y agoLol so AT&T let’s them broadcast and thought it would bring in revenue? And an exec from AT&T started the station? That’s really most of this. So what? Isn’t that the point of commerce?
- jaywalk 5y agoRobert Herring never worked for AT&T. Before OAN, Herring Networks had one station (Wealth TV) which was carried on DirecTV. It sounds like he had a meeting with AT&T execs to discuss what type of content they'd be interested in carrying, and they said they wanted conservative news so that's what he launched. These types of meetings happen all the time. There is zero scandal here.
- lettergram 5y agoI agree, my only quip — I’m the article it mentioned an AT&T executive left in 2013 to help start OAN. I’m not exactly sure what was meant there, but the article itself is my only source.
- jaywalk 5y agoThe article doesn't mention that. I think you may have misread.
- smt88 5y agoVery important story, but seems purely political and not conducive to educational, intellectual discussion. I flagged it as off-topic.
- barbazoo 5y agoWhat's the justification for posting this here? It's not startup/tech related at all.
- jimbob45 5y agoThis seems bogus. The quote claiming that AT&T specifically did this to push rightist propaganda is hearsay and their "contribution" was a simple deal to allow OAN on DirecTV. By that logic, AT&T is responsible for everything bad that comes out of any of their channels on DirecTV. They're a platform and they have a duty to their shareholders to maximize revenue by platforming content creators as long as those content creators don't break the law. This is just wanton cancel culture.
- rasengan 5y agoThere isn’t left or right. It’s simply created division to distract and create faux enemies to keep our focus away from the real horribles.
- kelseyfrog 5y agoIt depends. Left and right is as real as any social construction. Like many social constructions it shares common features: It's hegemonic. It's the basis for identity. It's socially reproduced. It's used as a wedge by elites to maintain power. Substitute politics, race, gender, nationalism, etc. Same pattern. Despite it being socially constructed, there are still real material disadvantages when people don't conform. The choice between putting food on the table or non-conformity is real.
- analyte123 5y agoThe title says "Reuters Special Report", but it really means "Launch of Pressure Campaign against AT&T to Cancel Bad-guy News Channel". OAN is also a competitor to Reuters (origin of the hit piece) and Mediate (booster of hit piece in the article). Whatever you think about OAN, and even leaving the ideological differences aside, there's something so perfect about using your own news channel to bash your competitor as a "self-styled news channel" and "far-right" that needs to be taken off the air. A alternate-universe mirror image of this article basically writes itself, delineating how the US government funds "far-left" NPR, or how various foundations and venture capitalists helped build whatever other news sites that have reported falsehoods or incited violence, and that they all need to be defunded.
- qzw 5y agoFacebook: Hey, did you know that anger creates more engagement?! I'm so brilliantly evil! AT&T: Oh please. Wait until you read my book "Destroying Democracy for Profit".
- jaywalk 5y agoAllowing viewpoints that differ from the mainstream is now "destroying democracy"
- qzw 5y agoIt's all in how it's done isn't it? One way can bring greater understanding, empathy, and a sense of common purpose. Another way can stoke mistrust, resentment, and alienation. Look around you and guess which way most of American media have been choosing.