by Joseph Klein
Threatened by conservative media outlet’s growing clout.
One America News Network (OANN) is a conservative TV network that was formally launched on July 4, 2013 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). OANN is owned by Herring Networks, Inc., a family run business. Robert Herring Sr. is the founder and CEO. The network’s president is his son, Charles Herring. OANN and Newsmax TV have served admirably as alternative conservative voices on cable TV. Before the launch of both these networks, Fox News stood alone to counter the prevailing leftist sources for TV news and political discussion.
OANN is carried by DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS, CenturyLink PRISM, Frontier Communications, and GCI, as well as by numerous local and regional distributors. However, OANN could be reaching many more households if some major cable distributors carrying its competitors’ programming would agree to distribute OANN as well. Charles Herring told me that he believed some cable companies were engaging for political reasons in “viewpoint discrimination.” Democracy suffers, he argued, as a result of such efforts to suppress diverse programming voices.
OANN has most recently been the victim of blatant viewpoint discrimination at the hands of the leftwing White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), which arbitrarily voted on April 1st to bar OANN’s White House correspondent Chanel Rion from the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefings. Her “sin” was asking President Trump a question that hit too close to home, after various White House correspondents had used the race card against President Trump for calling the virus that originated in China the “Chinese virus.” At the March 19th briefing, after introducing the concern that “major left-wing media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese communist party narratives,” Rion asked President Trump to comment. “It amazes me when I read the things that I read,” President Trump replied.
The leftwing media retaliated against OANN’s White House correspondent for speaking truth to power. First, an anonymous note was left on Rion’s desk asking her whether she thought her question was helpful in halting the spread of the coronavirus. Three days later, the White House Correspondents Association mandated that the seat assigned to OANN since 2017, which for years was shared by only one other news organization, now accommodate five networks, including Al Jazeera. OANN’s seat was singled out for such treatment. On March 23rd, OANN was placed in the “supplemental Seat Rotation,” a shared seat with a total of 10 media outlets. OANN for all intents and purposes lost any reasonable opportunity to participate in the briefings as a result of the WHCA’s discriminatory edict. When OANN managed to secure an invitation from the White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham for Rion to stand in the back of the briefing room, the White House Correspondents Association dropped the hammer and sought to close the briefing room door to OANN altogether.
CNN’s Trump-hating Jim Acosta and Oliver Darcy reported that the White House Correspondents Association voted on April 1 to “remove One America News, a small right-wing media organization, from the rotation for a seat in the briefing room.” They went on to rationalize this outrageous action by claiming that the “decision was made after a fringe personality for the far-right media outlet, Chanel Rion, continued to attend the briefings, in defiance of the WHCA’s new rules limiting the number of journalists in the room.” Charles Herring has confirmed that OANN’s White House correspondent was present as “an invited guest to the President’s briefings by Stephanie Grisham, White House Press Secretary.” Chanel Rion stood apart towards the back of the room to adequately address any social distancing issues. “The WHCA organization members were aware that Ms. Rion was extended an invitation by Stephanie Grisham but took retaliatory action anyway,” Charles Herring said.
The briefing room is on the White House premises, which belongs to the people and not to the White House Correspondents Association. Yet the White House Correspondents Association tried to flex its muscles to keep Rion, an accredited journalist, out of the White House briefing room. It didn’t work. Rion communicated with Stephanie Grisham and received another invitation to attend the April 2nd White House press briefing. Rion not only appeared at the briefing. President Trump called on her for a question, which disturbed the lamestream media no end. “Trump makes sure to take a question from OAN staffer Chanel Rion even though she was banished from the White House Correspondents’ Association for attending briefings she wasn’t supposed to be at,” leftwing Vox reporter Aaron Rupar tweeted.
full story at https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/leftwing-media-try-block-oann-white-house-briefing-joseph-klein/