Verizon Fios will no longer carry One America News (OAN) at the end of this month, dealing a major blow to the far-right television network that has become a hotbed of misinformation.
Verizon was the largest pay-TV provider still carrying the OAN, according to the Daily Beast, which first reported the network was getting dropped. Verizon and OAN were unable to reach an agreement to continue providing the network and customers will not be able to access the service after 30 July.
The development means that OAN in effect will not have a major television platform in the US. DirecTV, a major revenue provider for OAN, announced that it was dropping the network in April.
The only network still carrying the channel is General Communications Inc, available in a little over 100,000 households, the Daily Beast reported. OAN is also still available on two little-known streaming providers.
“One America News Network will be left without a major carrier to spread its often harmful and dangerous disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories,” said Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group that urged Verizon to drop OAN. “This is a welcome change but long overdue.
“No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy.”
Common Cause and other civil rights groups have pressured carriers to drop OAN.
The network, which has staunchly supported Donald Trump, has played a significant role in spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president.
It is facing billion-dollar lawsuits from voting equipment vendors Dominion and Smartmatic over its false claims. In May, as part of a settlement in a defamation lawsuit, the network retracted untrue information about two Georgia election workers falsely accused of committing crimes while ballots were being counted in Atlanta in 2020.
One of OAN’s top correspondents also helped fundraise and support a partisan review of the 2020 election in Arizona as she covered it for the network. That correspondent has since left to work for Trump’s political action committee.
Earlier this year, the OAN host Dan Ball urged viewers to dig up dirt on AT&T executives as the carrier weighed dropping the network. Ball last week pleaded with viewers to contact Verizon and urge them not to drop the network.
Reporters are leaving OAN, and one person there told the Daily Beast that there has been a push to focus on content that can go viral on social media.
