from the whoops-I-did-a-truth dept
We’ve lengthy written about One America Information (OAN), the precise wing propaganda mill pretending to be cable information journalism. The “information” outlet, initially funded and proposed by AT&T, traffics in no restrict of harmful conspiracy theories and authoritarian fan fiction, starting from faux election conspiracies to the false declare that COVID was created in a North Carolina lab.
OAN “reporters” relentlessly kiss Donald Trump’s ass like dutiful stenographers. However OAN’s Gabrielle Cuccia, assigned by the community to fake to significantly cowl the Pentagon, has apparently paid the value for wandering a bit of too near the reality.
Cuccia’s work on the community has consisted of fearmongering about immigration and taking fascists like Sebastian Gorka critically. She just lately posted a reasonably unremarkable Substack submit.
It spends a thousand phrases or so kissing Trump’s ass earlier than ultimately getting round to some mild criticism of the Pentagon’s ongoing hostility to journalists, which has included banning reporters from giant, non-secure components of the Pentagon and assigning them goonish handlers:
“This marks a troubling shift in how the Division of Protection engages with the press and, by extension, the American public.
The Pentagon Press Affiliation (though I’m not formally a part of the affiliation —once more whats up I’m MAGA) has raised legitimate considerations over the brand new restrictions on the motion of credentialed journalists throughout the Pentagon, even in non-secure, unclassified hallways.”
Hesgeth, himself a former faux journalist who failed upward into his utterly unqualified function as Secretary of Protection, has launched a brand new dangerous assault on actual journalism to cowl up the very fact his quick tenure has been potholed by a gradual stream of staffer leaks and traditionally problematic safety fuck ups. Failures which Cuccia’s broader submit, after all, dutifully downplays.
Sadly for Cuccia, being too sincere about Hesgeth’s assault on the First Modification was apparently sufficient to get her booted from the Pentagon and fired from OAN, in keeping with the Related Press:
“Three days after her Memorial Day Substack submit, Cuccia mentioned her Pentagon entry badge was revoked. “By Friday,” she mentioned, “I used to be out of a job.”
The AP frames this as an almost-serious information group firing a reporter as a result of she expressed a human opinion in her off hours:
“Historically, the legacy media doesn’t need its journalists expressing opinions about individuals they cowl, because it calls into doubt their potential to report with out bias. However exceptions are sometimes made in instances the place media entry is at problem, mentioned Tom Rosenstiel, a journalism professor on the College of Maryland.”
The assumption that reporters can’t specific human, private opinions of their free time with out harming the credibility of their employer is one thing many main information shops nonetheless adhere to as a type of performative ethics (recall the AP fired promising younger journalist Emily Wilder as a result of she did some mild activism in school and wrote just a few tweets sympathetic to Palestinians).
That’s after all gibberish. One as a result of it implies OAN is actual journalism. And two, as a result of actual shops that implement some of these restrictions will normally flip round and publish fifty tales in a row credulously parroting the unusual claims of legislation enforcement, lobbyists, or CEOs with out batting an eyelash. Or flip their web sites into glorified blogspam associates for Amazon.com a number of occasions a 12 months.
On this case, Cuccia was clearly fired for not towing the authoritarian line, which is OAN’s total function. The firing is especially ironic coming from the identical Republican celebration that insists that any cable or satellite tv for pc TV firm that refuses to hold OAN (it genuinely doesn’t have that many viewers) is engaged in an act of overt, unfair censorship.
When DirecTV refused to hold OAN as a result of the community wasn’t worthwhile for them, you may recollect it was such a disaster that six Republican AGs felt the necessity to whine publicly about unfair “censorship,” and make obscure threats towards DirecTV for the crime of… making their very own selections. However an OAN worker will get shitcanned for stumbling by accident into the reality in her free time, and it’s crickets.
Once more as a result of Trump Republicans, shockingly sufficient, don’t really care about free speech. They care about parroting, defending, and perpetuating authoritarian bullshit.
Filed Below: protection division, donald trump, free speech, gabrielle cuccia, journalism, media, pentagon, propaganda, transparency
Corporations: at&t, one america information
