28 United States The EconomistAugust 8th 2020
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hortly aftertouching down in Texas on July 29th, Donald
Trump gave a review of the in-flight entertainment on board Air
Force One. “It is amazingwatching @FoxNews how different they
are from four years ago. Not even watchable. They totally forgot
who got them where they are!” he tweeted. The president’s rela-
tionship with his once-favourite cable-news network has publicly
soured. With its “phony polls, done by the same group of haters
that got it even more wrong in 2016”, Fox is “doing nothing to help
Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd”, Mr Trump
has complained. “Watching @FoxNews on weekend afternoons is
a total waste of time,” he tweeted in April. Fortunately, however,
“We now have some great alternatives, like @oann.”
Great or not, the One America News Network is certainly alter-
native. Launched on Independence Day in 2013 by Robert Herring,
a circuit-board millionaire who decided to cash in his chips and
spend them on running a television network, the cable channel
serves up news from another dimension. Its reports suggest that
the coronavirus, whose seriousness it considers exaggerated, may
have been developed in a North Carolina laboratory. Hydroxychlo-
roquine is a miracle drug—not that you are likely to hear about it,
because of a massive disinformation campaign orchestrated by
Big Tech and the Chinese-controlled World Health Organisation.
Another thing you won’t know is that Martin Gugino, the 75-year-
old who fractured his skull when he was pushed to the ground by
two police officers in Buffalo in June, was using an antifa-inspired
police-tracking device on his phone when he was tackled.
This is the regular-strength, daytime stuff. oann’s evening
talk-shows are still more eye-opening. Graham Ledger usually
kicks off his hour-long slot by announcing: “The doors to the
newsroom are locked, and the pcpolice are not getting in!” Mr Led-
ger, who considers wearing a face mask to be an act of submission,
recently filmed himself going out for a clandestine haircut, in
breach of California’s lockdown rules. “This is not unlike, of
course, what they had to live through during Hitler’s time,” he ob-
served, from behind dark glasses, on his way to the salon. Mr Led-
ger’s show is followed by “Tipping Point”, presented by Liz
Wheeler, who denounces the “trained Marxists” of Black Lives
Matter with a glare that could turn liberals to stone.Thrillinglyangry talk-shows are not new to the American air-
waves. They became a fixture on radio after the abolition in 1987 of
the Fairness Doctrine, which had required broadcasters to give
equal treatment to competing points of view. As America was
criss-crossed with cable and audiences got access to hundreds of
channels, television networks found that they, too, could get high-
er ratings by zeroing in on one group—conservatives, say—than by
trying to cater to everyone. As a bonus, it turned out that opining
was cheaper than reporting. Advertisers preferred the more opin-
ionated channels too, within reason, as they were able to tailor
their ads to more specific audiences. Commercials on oann fit the
content perfectly: after watching an apocalyptic report about prot-
ests in Portland, viewers might be shown a commercial for a dy-
namo-powered emergency radio (“Your life may depend on it!”).
After bulletins that question the validity of mainstream science,
they see ads for alternative supplements, such as crystals that pro-
mise to unlock the power of beetroot.
This has helped cable news remain profitable—and influen-
tial—even as other forms of journalism have withered. While
American newspapers have shed about half their newsroom staff
in the past ten years, as readers and advertisers have fled online,
the cable-news industry employs about as many people as it did a
decade ago, according to the Pew Research Centre. Ratings have
held steady, helped in recent years by a White House that generates
extraordinary amounts of news.
oannis only a small fish in a big swamp. It is not carried by
some of the large cable and satellite companies (despite a cam-
paign that has included a billboard ad encouraging people to call
the mobile-phone number of an executive at Dish, a satellite firm).
It claims to make money, though it declines to say how much. The
network appears to be run on a shoestring, making free use of li-
brary footage, suffering from occasionally dodgy sound and mis-
spelled captions, and employing just 50 journalists, who are most-
ly confined to studios or stationed outside the White House.Square-eyed, swivel-eyed
Still, it would be foolish to switch off to the dangers represented by
oann. It is the fourth-rated cable-news network, after Fox, cnn
and msnbc (and ahead of the likes of bbcAmerica, cnbc, Fox Busi-
ness and Bloomberg). Mr Trump, who well knows that a joke can
turn into something serious, promotes its stories to his 85m Twit-
ter followers with a relentlessness that makes some wonder if he is
planning a career at the channel after his presidency. For those
who swallow oann’s stories, whether by tuning in directly or hear-
ing them second-hand, it is an unhealthy addition to their news
diet. The pandemic has shown how misinformation can kill.
The bigger reason to worry about oann, however, is that tvis a
lagging indicator of opinion. Talk-shows are less about persuasion
than about affirmation: of views formed online, on social media
and in forwarded emails and WhatsApp messages. Viewers don’t
tune in to Ms Wheeler to learn about the world, but to experience
an expression and celebration of the opinions and the identity
they have already been introduced to on the fringes of the internet.
“There are tens of millions of Americans who have developed a
taste for these sorts of conspiracy theories, and for whom Fox may
be too tame,” believes Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk-ra-
dio host who quit his show in 2016 after opposing Mr Trump. Even
if Mr Trump loses in November, fake news will thrive. Like oann,
he amplifies harmful nonsense. But the act only works because so
many cannot distinguish politics from entertainment. 7Lexington Channel-hopping
The president’s new favourite network reveals more about America than it intends