Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced Monday that he cancelled his at-home DirecTV subscription after the TV provider moved to drop One America News Network.
"Why give money to people who hate us?" the GOP senator declared on Twitter.
.@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 is set to drop OANN's parent company, Herring Networks Inc., when its contract expires in April. The conservative network will be booted off the channel lineup in the spring, according to a scoop from Bloomberg reported Friday.
Paul's stand against DirecTV comes after former President Donald Trump joking about the Make America Great Again movement boycotting AT&T, the owner of DirecTV, at the Save America rally in Florence, Arizona, on Saturday evening.
"I'm not going to use the word, 'boycott.' I will not say, 'Boycott AT&T!' I promised Robert I will not do it. So I will not say, 'Boycott them!'" Trump jested.
Trump alludes to One America News Network getting dropped by DirecTV and laments that the channel is "threatened" by "the woke executives" at AT&T. He goes on to suggest people should boycott AT&T. pic.twitter.com/0lho5yV0g0
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2022
In a press statement, DirecTV said the company made the controversial decision that ignited outrage on the right "following a routine internal review."
A DirecTV spokesperson told NPR that the company looks at a wide variety of factors in deciding whether to renew a contract. The question for DirecTV was whether OANN's programming appeals to a broad enough base of customers, given increasing programming costs and more competition for consumers, NPR reported. The representative said that business needs drove the move and keeping the Herring Networks programming wasn't in the best interests of DirecTV.
The DirecTV spokesman declined to comment on whether OANN's specific editorial policies had anything to do with the cancellation, but maintained that censorious calls from outside advocacy groups didn't drive the decision.
AT&T has faced calls to drop OANN, whose political news coverage has contributed to Trump's rise and continued prominence in right-wing circles.
"OAN's 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," Public Knowledge legal director John Bergmayer said. The group was among figures advocating for cable and satellite providers to drop OANN.
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