NRA, in Lawsuit: NRATV Was ‘Racist’
The National Rifle Association said in a new court filing that it found the content of now-defunct NRATV “distasteful and racist.”
The Daily Beast first reported on the reference to NRATV in an Oct. 25 amended complaint filed by the NRA in its ongoing legal battle against advertising firm Ackerman McQueen. Officials for the NRA said the channel “strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist.”
The NRA pointed specifically to a segment on Dana Loesch’s program on NRATV, which featured a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine photoshopped to wear a Ku Klux Klan hood because the children’s television show had introduced a new character.
“One particularly damaging segment featured children’s cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods,” the lawsuit read.
Before it went belly up, NRATV featured many personalities who now often appear on Fox News like Dan Bongino and Loesch.
The NRA also alleged Ackerman McQueen was “evasive” and “hostile” to attempts to rein in NRATV’s content and alleged the firm “fabricated and inflated sponsorship and viewership claims.”
“Tellingly, when NRATV finally shut down in June 2019, no one missed it,” the NRA said on page three of the filing. “Not a single sponsor or viewer even called, confirming what at least some NRA executives suspected—the site had limited visibility and was failing the accomplish any of its goals.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Ackerman McQueen alleged NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre “controlled every aspect of NRATV for which he recruited talent, approved every budget, audited every metric and required ultimate confidentiality. Ackerman McQueen routinely offered and toward the end of the relationship demanded that an outside firm audit NRATV performance but LaPierre refused.”
The NRA said through an attorney that the charges “reveal pattern of corruption that included NRATV, a failed media enterprise the agency proposed, managed and sustained through misleading accounts of viewership and promised commercial viability.
