On Monday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced that he was canceling his subscription to satellite TV provider DirecTV, after the service had already announced that it would no longer carry the conservative news channel One America News (OAN).
The Daily Caller reports that DirecTV first made its announcement on Friday, declaring that it would not seek a renewal of its contract with Herring Networks Inc., the parent company of OAN. The decision was made “following an internal review,” DirecTV said in a statement.
Following the satellite provider’s controversial decision, Senator Paul tweeted on Monday that since “@DirecTV is canceling OAN, I just canceled my home DirecTV.”
“Why give money to people who hate us?” Paul asked at the end of the tweet.
Even President Donald Trump acknowledged the censorship during his rally in Arizona on Saturday, saying that “all I can tell you is the people that are telling the truth in America like One America News are being threatened.” He further suggested that “maybe what we should do is not use AT&T,” the parent company which owns DirecTV.
DirecTV’s decision is expected to be a massive blow to OAN’s viewership and finances, as satellite providers such as DirecTV have proven to be the top source of OAN’s revenue, according to a Reuters report in October of last year. After the report emerged, numerous far-left media groups such as Media Matters and Color of Change sent a joint letter to AT&T demanding that the provider censor OAN, falsely accusing OAN of spreading “misinformation.”
OAN, along with Newsmax, is widely seen as one of the two most prominent conservative alternatives to Fox News, which has been accused of ideological backsliding away from conservatism in the aftermath of the 2020 election, during which Fox supported Joe Biden and prematurely called several states in his favor. Since then, OAN and Newsmax have been two of the only sources to continue discussing widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, even as Fox and other outlets refuse to address the scandal.