‘Insulting’: DCNF Reporter Hits Back After Mayorkas Runs From Border Questions

'I’m going to write about what Americans are concerned about'

DCNF Reporter Who Confronted Mayorkas Says He Was ‘Not Prepared To Answer’ Tough Questions About Border Crisis

'He is not around press secretaries'

Newsmax Returns To DirecTV After Months-Long Dispute

DirecTV and Newsmax reached a deal to stream the conservative news network on its satellite service once again

James O'Keefe leaves Project Veritas after overturned firings, employee complaints



Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe has reportedly resigned, according reporter Neil McCabe of One America News.

McCabe reported on Twitter that O'Keefe read a resignation letter to his staff and board members at the company's headquarters:

"Exclusive: James O'Keefe III, my friend and former boss at Project Veritas, just read his resignation letter to his former team and board members at their Mamaroneck, N.Y. headquarters. James will make his own way—as he always has before," said McCabe.

\u201cExclusive: @JamesOKeefeIII, my friend and former boss at @Project_Veritas, just read his resignation letter to his former team and board members at their Mamaroneck, N.Y. headquarters. James will make his own way\u2014as he always has before. @OANN\u201d
— ReporterMcCabe (@ReporterMcCabe) 1676911734

McCabe told the Daily Beast that O'Keefe "just resigns and walks out the door to start a new life." “Now we’ll see: Does the organization he created survive?" McCabe added.

Another colleague of O'Keefe however, R.C. Maxwell, claims that O'Keefe was "removed" from Project Veritas.

"This is not accurate. James was removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board. They are in charge now," Maxwell said on Twitter.

\u201cThis is not accurate.\n\nJames was removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board.\n\nThey are in charge now\u201d
— R.C. Maxwell \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@R.C. Maxwell \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1676914713

Maxwell reported for Project Veritas as recently as three weeks before O'Keefe's alleged ousting.

Less than two weeks before his exit, O'Keefe was placed on paid leave after employees signed a letter condemning some of the founder's actions.

Executive director of Project Veritas Daniel Strack said at the time that O'Keefe was taking “a few weeks of well-deserved [paid time off].”

Prior reports stated that Project Veritas was deeply divided among board members and employees, with some sticking with O'Keefe and others complaining about his leadership.

A third of the company's employees reportedly wrote an internal memo claiming that O'Keefe had been particularly mean to some of them. Employees said they felt “publicly humiliated” by O'Keefe, suffering through what was described as “public crucifixions.”

“I would describe Project Veritas’ current environment with this saying: ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves,’” a staffer wrote in the memo.

Two executives who were fired by O'Keefe were also reportedly reinstated when he was put on leave.

Five days before his departure, Project Veritas remarked on Twitter that "of course James O'Keefe III is alive and well. Why wouldn’t he be? We’re sure many of you can agree, there is nothing better than enjoying a well deserved vacation."

\u201cOf course @JamesOKeefeIII is alive and well. Why wouldn\u2019t he be? \n\nWe\u2019re sure many of you can agree, there is nothing better than enjoying a well deserved vacation.\u201d
— Project Veritas (@Project Veritas) 1676487647

Maxwell has not yet responded to a request for comment; McCabe was unavailable for comment as well.

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Sen. Rand Paul leads boycott of DirecTV after they drop OANN: 'Why give money to people who hate us?'



DirectTV dropped the One American News Network from their lineup, and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky responded by leading a boycott of the cable provider.

DirectTV confirmed that they would not be renewing their contract with OANN which is known for being very conservative and pro-Trump. The news of the separation was first reported by Bloomberg News.

“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” said a spokesperson for DirectTV to the Daily News.

On Monday, Paul responded by saying he would drop DirectTV and implied that others on the right should follow his lead.

"@DIRECTV is cancelling @OANN so I just cancelled my home Direct TV. Why give money to people who hate us?" tweeted Paul.

.@DIRECTV is cancelling @OANN so I just cancelled my home Direct TV. Why give money to people who hate us?
— Senator Rand Paul (@Senator Rand Paul) 1642443805

The tweet was very popular with Paul's 3.4 million followers. It garnered more than 45k likes and nearly 10k retweets.

The decision will be devastating to OANN since DirectTV was their largest TV programming distributor. Their broadcasting agreement will end in April.

One poll in Feb. 2021 found that many supporters of former President Donald Trump have turned away from Fox News as their trusted source of news. OANN was one of two networks they turned to in place of Fox News, Newsmax being the other.

While Fox News has reclaimed its coveted top ratings spot among cable news channels, their competitor CNN has seen a massive drop in ratings since the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in 2021.

Here's more about the drop in CNN ratings:

Scandal-ridden CNN sees ratings dive by 90% after 2021 coverage | New York Postwww.youtube.com

DirectTV to axe conservative One America News Network from its lineup



DirecTV plans to drop conservative One America News Network from its lineup, Bloomberg reported.

At the time of this reporting, no other major U.S. cable providers carry OAN.

What are the details?

The nationwide satellite television broadcaster recently notified Herring Networks, OAN's owner, that it would no longer carry the company's channels.

In a statement obtained by Bloomberg, the company said, “We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires.”

The contract with Herring Networks is set to expire in April.

At the time of this reporting, Herring Networks has yet to issue a public statement on the matter.

DirecTV began offering OAN to its customers in 2017 after Herring Networks forced the company's hand by suing the cable provider to carry its channels.

Reuters reported that the move could "financially cripple" OAN.

"The announcement by DirecTV, which is 70% owned by AT&T, comes three months after a Reuters investigation revealed that OAN’s founder testified that AT&T inspired him to create the network," the report noted, citing an October report. "Court testimony also showed that OAN receives nearly all of its revenue from DirecTV."

The news agency added that during a 2020 court proceeding, an OAN lawyer said, "If Herring Networks, for instance, was to lose or not be renewed on DirecTV, the company would go out of business tomorrow.”

What else is there to know about this?

In response to the news, former President Donald Trump said that DirecTV targeted OAN over its politics and suggested a boycott against AT&T.

"Maybe what we should do is not use AT&T," he said.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said that the news was a “victory for us and the future of democracy.”

“At a time when we are seeing our rights infringed upon, OAN only seeks to create further division," he said. "We must continually choose truth over lies and common sense over hysteria.”

OAN is currently litigating what is reported to be a billion-dollar defamation suit, which was filed by Dominion Voting Systems and argued that the network was complicit in deliberately spreading defamatory information about the company's role in the 2020 presidential election.

Liberal social media furious after Wall Street Journal dares to allow Trump to attack Big Tech in scathing op-ed



Former President Donald Trump issued a scathing rebuke of Big Tech in an op-ed published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, detailing why he is suing Big Tech giants and how he believes certain corporations are complicit in squashing the speech and diverse ideas of everyday American people.

Liberal social media quickly went into a frenzy over the paper's decision to allow the former president to write a piece for its pages.

What are the details?

In his article "Why I'm Suing Big Tech," Trump explained that he believes Big Tech is working in tandem with the government to "censor the free speech of the American people."

"One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with the government to censor the free speech of the American people," he wrote.

Pointing out that the very idea is not just wrong, but unconstitutional, the former president vowed, "To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it.

"Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers, and television networks were in prior generations," he continued. "The internet is the new public square."

Trump added that in recent years Big Tech platforms have been censoring Americans and discriminating against free speech by de-platforming, suspensions, and more, "controlling the political debate" in America.

"Consider content that was censored in the past year," he wrote. "Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true."

He also pointed to Big Tech's censorship on hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19 cases as well as how the mainstream media and social media networks appeared to quash reports about the laptop controversy surrounding President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and more.

"Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social media accounts of the sitting president," Trump continued. "If they can do it to me, they can do it to you — and believe me, they are."

Pointing to his recent class-action lawsuit against Big Tech giants such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Trump added, "This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country."

"The suit seeks damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts.," he added.

In a Wednesday statement announcing the suit, the former president said, "I stand before you this morning to announce a very important and very beautiful, I think, development for our freedom and our freedom of speech. ... Today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I'm filing as the lead class action representative a major class action lawsuit against the Big Tech giants including Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as their CEOs."

The lawsuit is seeking an immediate injunction to stop social media platforms from what he says is the "illegal, shameful censorship of the American people."

"Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it's unconstitutional, and it's completely un-American," Trump added.

Trump, concluding the op-ed, warned that Democrats are coordinating with Big Tech to suppress any nonconformist thought from social media platforms.

"This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional," he insisted. "The Supreme Court has held that Congress can't use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful and un-American."

What are people saying?

One user complained, "Trump screams 'I AM BEING CENSORED!' from the editorial page of a mainstream international media outlet. Shame on you, @WSJ, shame on you, @WSJopinion."

Another added, "It's not the biggest takeaway from Trump's op-ed (the biggest has to do with what WSJ opinion has become) but it was still perplexing to me that Trump's use of 'illegal alien' wasn't changed by an editor. AP stopped using the term in 2013, and many pubs have since followed suit."

"WSJ must know the case has no merit and is being used as a fundraising tool. You have some duty to your readers don't you? Maybe some duty to yourselves? Some code of ethics?" another fumed.

"And again, reminding me why I canceled my WSJ subscription," one user quipped.

Another took aim at the paper for not being "serious" or thoughtful."

"Future generations will marvel when we tell them the Wall Street Journal was once considered a serious, thoughtful newspaper," the user wrote.

Another snarked, "*NOTE* @WSJopinion is not @WSJ, rather more similar to right-wing propagandists such as @seanhannity and @OANN."

Democrats' 'chilling' letter demands cable providers account for 'misinformation' and 'lies' from 'right-wing media outlets' they carry



Two Democratic members of Congress penned letters Monday to a dozen cable providers demanding they account for "misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies" from "right-wing media outlets" they carry — and the networks specifically named were Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network.

What are the details?

The letters from U.S. Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, both of California, were addressed to AT&T, Verizon, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Charter, Dish, Cox, Altice, Alphabet, and Hulu. The letters leveled numerous accusations against the aforementioned news networks, including that their coverage helped the "radicalization of seditious individuals who committed acts of insurrection on January 6" at the U.S. Capitol.

"Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm," the letters said. "Misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse."

Citing "experts" who claim "the right-wing media ecosystem is 'much more susceptible...to disinformation, lies, and half-truths,'" the letters said "right-wing media outlets" like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN "all aired misinformation about the November 2020 elections." The letters also accused the networks of "spreading misinformation related to the pandemic."

What do the Democrats want?

Eshoo and McNerney demanded in their letters that cable providers explain "what moral or ethical principles (including those related to journalistic integrity, violence, medical information, and public health) do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?"

The letters also asked the cable providers to detail what steps they've taken to "monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation" from news networks they carry, as well as any punitive measures they've taken against such channels — and if they plan to carry networks like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN once contracts expire.

The letters were penned ahead of a hearing set Wednesday — "Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media" — to be hosted by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on which Eshoo and McNerney sit, CNBC reported.

What was the reaction?

Fox News told CNBC in a statement that "as the most watched cable news channel throughout 2020, FOX News Media provided millions of Americans with in-depth reporting, breaking news coverage and clear opinion. For individual members of Congress to highlight political speech they do not like and demand cable distributors engage in viewpoint discrimination sets a terrible precedent."

CNBC said Comcast declined to comment, and representatives for the other cable providers to which letters were addressed didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Republican Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr called the letters a "chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys," CBNC said, adding that Carr's fellow Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington reacted similarly.

"The Majority is flirting with violating the First Amendment," a GOP aide for the House Energy and Commerce Committee told CNBC in a statement. "Should the government be pressuring private industries to censor legally protected content and suppress the freedom of the press? No. If a free and independent press is still valued and mainstream in America, this censorship campaign should alarm every single journalist and member of the media."

Haven't we seen this movie before?

The Democrats' letters mirror CNN's assertion last month that cable providers should "face questions for lending their platforms to dishonest companies that profit off of disinformation and conspiracy theories" — and again the three named were Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN.

CNN's Brian Stelter has been on the aforementioned warpath of late, specifically saying a few weeks back that "liar" Fox News' influence must be reduced through a "harm reduction model" — which he said isn't censorship. Later Stelter interviewed a Democratic congresswoman who called for a "truth commission" to root out "extremist ideology" so Americans can mouth a "common narrative."

In his chat with freshman U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs of California, Stelter decried the "impact of cellphones and this constant connectivity, social networks and far-right television networks" — all of which he said are "fueling a fire" of extremism.

Former top Facebook official argues conservative content should be deplatformed: 'Extremely radical'



A former top official at Facebook openly declared Sunday that television service providers should stop airing conservative content, citing TV networks like One America News and Newsmax.

Speaking on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer at Facebook, essentially argued that telecommunications giants like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon need to censor right-leaning content.

In fact, Stamos outright said, "We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences," citing right-wing YouTubers who have larger audiences than "daytime CNN."

"They are extremely radical, and pushing extremely radical views," Stamos claimed.

"It is up to the Facebooks and YouTubes, in particular, to think about whether or not they want to be effectively cable networks for disinformation," Stamos continued.

"And then we have to figure out the OANN and Newsmax problem that these companies have freedom of speech, but I'm not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and such to be bringing them into tens of millions of homes. This is allowing people to seek out information if they really want to, but not pushing it into their faces I think is really where we're going to have to go here," the former top Facebook official said.

Earlier in the interview, Stamos explained the advent of the information age, bringing with it massive social media platforms, has created an environment of echo-chambers, where people can selectively choose to consume only information that confirms their narratives, while ignoring any information that contradicts what they believe.

Stamos claimed such an environment provides an incentive for media companies to "become more and more radical."

"One of the places you can see this is on the fact that you now have competitors to Fox News on their right, OANN and Newsmax, which are carried by all the major cable networks, who are trying now to outflank Fox [News] on the right because the moment Fox introduced any kind of realism into their reporting, immediately a bunch of people chose to put themselves into a sealed ecosystem," Stamos said. "They can do that both on cable. They can do it online, and that becomes a huge challenge in figuring out how do you bring people back into the mainstream of fact-based reporting and try to get us back into the same consensual reality."

Interestingly, Stamos did not say that left-leaning content or liberal media companies should be targeted, despite their culpability in helping drive political tribalism.

Former Facebook insider Alex Stamos tells @brianstelter: "We have to turn down the capability of these Conservative… https://t.co/7BhDJx5mIo
— Daily Caller (@Daily Caller)1610906976.0

Election software company Smartmatic accuses Fox News of defamation, demands retractions, threatens lawsuits



Election software company Smartmatic on Monday demanded that Fox News and other right-of-center media outlets retract "false and defamatory" statements made about the company in the wake of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

In legal notices and retraction demands, the company accused Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network of making "dozens of factually inaccurate statements" as part of a "disinformation campaign" to discredit the results of the election.

Business Insider obtained a copy of a letter addressed to Fox News executive vice president and general counsel Lily Fu Claffee claiming that the network "continually and repeatedly published demonstrably false information and defamatory statements."

"Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes," the letter stated.

The company, which designs and implements election security technology, was central to claims of voting fraud made by attorney Sidney Powell as part of the legal challenges to the 2020 election filed on behalf of President Donald Trump. Powell and others claimed that Smartmatic's software was created in Venezuela at the direction of socialist dictator Hugo Chavez "to make sure he never lost an election." She also claimed Smartmatic worked in partnership with Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine manufacturer, as part of a conspiracy to illegitimately swing the election for former Vice President Joe Biden.

At the time, Smartmatic issued a statement denying Powell's claims and clarifying that no ownership nor financial relationship exists between itself and Dominion.

"Smartmatic had nothing to do with the 'controversies' that certain public and private figures have alleged regarding the 2020 U.S. election," Smartmatic said Monday. "Multiple fact-checkers have consistently debunked these false statements with stunning consistency and regularity."

"They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence. This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections," Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said. "Our efforts are more than just about Smartmatic or any other company. This campaign is an attack on election systems and election workers in an effort to depress confidence in future elections and potentially counter the will of the voters, not just here, but in democracies around the world."

Smartmatic's statement noted that contrary to claims made by Powell and others, the company's only involvement in the 2020 U.S. election was as a manufacturing partner, system integrator, and software developer for Los Angeles County's voting system.

Smartmatic has reserved "all its legal rights and remedies, including its right to pursue defamation and disparagement claims" should Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network refuse to retract their respective statements.