One America News sues Rachel Maddow for $10 million
today

SAN
DIEGO (AP) — A conservative television network sued Rachel Maddow for
more than $10 million on Monday for calling it “paid Russian
propaganda.”
One America News filed the federal defamation suit in San Diego.
The
small, family-owned network based in San Diego is challenging Fox News
for conservative cable and satellite TV viewers and has received
favorable tweets from President Donald Trump.
The
lawsuit contends that Maddow’s comment on her July 22 MSNBC show were
retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused cable television
giant Comcast of censorship. The suit contends that Comcast refused to
carry the channel because it “counters the liberal politics of Comcast’s
own news channel, MSNBC.”
A week after
Herring sent an email to a Comcast executive, Maddow opened her MSNBC
show by referring to a report in the Daily Beast that said an OAN
employee also worked for Sputnik News, which is linked to the Russian
government.
“In this case, the most
obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really
literally is paid Russian propaganda,” Maddow said on “The Rachel Maddow
Show.”
“Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government,” Maddow said.
In
the lawsuit, OAN said Kristian Rouz was a freelancer for Sputnik News,
not a staff employee, and his work there had nothing to do with his work
for OAN.
The lawsuit includes a statement
from Rouz that said he wrote some 1,300 articles over the past 4 ½ years
for Sputnik but “I have never written propaganda, disinformation, or
unverified information.”
“One America is
wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego.
They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have
nothing to do with the Russian government,” Skip Miller, an attorney
representing OAN, said in a statement. “This is a false and malicious
libel, and they’re going to answer for it in a court of law.”
The suit names Maddow, Comcast, MSNBC and NBCUniversal Media.
A message seeking comment from an MSNBC spokeswoman was not immediately returned.
However, the lawsuit included an Aug. 6 letter from Amy Wolf, an attorney for NBCUniversal News Group, to OAN’s attorney.
It
said OAN “publishes content collected or created by a journalist who is
also paid by the Russian government for writing over a thousand
articles. Ms. Maddow’s recounting of this arrangement is substantially
true and therefore not actionable.”
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