“That’s what happens when people listen to us.” — One America News producer Marty Golingan upon seeing Capitol insurrectionist holding a flag emblazoned with his network’s logo.
One America News Network continues to promote conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” At least a few staffers are uneasy about that. Sixteen of 18 staffers the New York Times interviewed “said the channel had broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.”
“The real question is to what extent.”
To go by much of OAN’s reporting, it is almost as if a transfer of power had never taken place. The channel did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and Inaugural Address. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald J. Trump as “President Trump” and to President Biden as just “Joe Biden” or “Biden.” That practice is not followed by other news organizations, including the OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.
OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators. Toward the end of a March 4 news segment that described the attack as the work of “antifa” and “anti-Trump extremists” — and referred to the president as “Beijing Biden” — Mr. Sharp said, “History will show it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence.” Investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the Capitol riot.
Charles Herring, the president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports casting doubt on the election. “Based on our investigations, voter irregularities clearly took place in the November 2020 election,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”
Spoken as if the answer to that question is none of his concern.
Charles Herring defended OAN’s coverage. “A review process with multiple checks is in place to ensure that news reporting meets the company’s journalist standards,” he said. “And, yes, we’ve had our fair share of mistakes, but we do our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.”
Mr. Golingan added that, since Inauguration Day, OAN’s news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Mr. Biden as “President Biden” in news copy. Ms. Oakley did not reply to requests for comment.
More than a dozen employees have resigned since the Capitol riot.
“And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble,” said Allysia Britton, a former OAN news producer.
Dominion Voting Systems has sued Fox News, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell over alleged defamatory claims about its voting machines in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, something OAN has done as well. One of its most popular YouTube videos is hosted by OAN White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, features a man claiming to have heard “company executives say they would ‘make sure’ Mr. Trump lost.”
Mr. Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees had hoped Dominion would sue the channel. “A lot of people said, ‘This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, we’ll stop putting stories like this out,’” he said.
Not as long as there are Trump cultists ready to believe.