Rand Paul Cancels DirecTV Subscription After it Drops OANN: ‘Why Give Money to People Who Hate Us?’
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced on Twitter Monday that he ended his DirecTV subscription due to the satellite television company dropping the far-right One America News Network.
Paul tweeted Monday, “.@DIRECTV is cancelling @OANN so I just cancelled my home Direct TV. Why give money to people who hate us?”
.@DIRECTV is cancelling @OANN so I just cancelled my home Direct TV. Why give money to people who hate us?
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 17, 2022
DirecTV confirmed it was dropping OANN on Friday. In a statement to Bloomberg the company noted, “We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires.”
DirecTV is OANN’s largest distributor in the U.S. OANN has been a bastion of controversy in recent years as the network has been accused of spreading misinformation regarding former President Donald Trump’s allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bloomberg noted that John Bergmayer, legal director at the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said “OANNs support for the ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 election was stolen and the fact that it’s consistently giving airtime to conspiracy theories and misinformation on COVID-19, moves it from a participant in the marketplace of ideas to a peddler of toxic lies.”
As a result of the move, former President Donald Trump suggested a boycott of DirecTV’s parent company AT&T on Saturday night during his rally in Arizona. “The woke executives, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Trump said. “They have so much debt. (DirecTV parent company) AT&T is a company that is in serious trouble. And they need AT&T, and AT&T is saying that they may no longer agree to carry this network that’s doing very well. You know why? Because people told them not to do it.”
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