‘Journalist’ For Right Wing Propaganda Outlet OAN Fired For Accidentally Almost Doing Honest Journalism
from the whoops-I-did-a-truth dept
We’ve long written about One America News (OAN), the right wing propaganda mill pretending to be cable news journalism. The “news” outlet, originally funded and proposed by AT&T, traffics in no limit of dangerous conspiracy theories and authoritarian fan fiction, ranging from fake election conspiracies to the false claim that COVID was created in a North Carolina lab.
OAN “reporters” relentlessly kiss Donald Trump’s ass like dutiful stenographers. But OAN’s Gabrielle Cuccia, assigned by the network to pretend to seriously cover the Pentagon, has apparently paid the price for wandering a little too close to the truth.
Cuccia’s work at the network has consisted of fearmongering about immigration and taking fascists like Sebastian Gorka seriously. She recently posted a fairly unremarkable Substack post.
It spends a thousand words or so kissing Trump’s ass before eventually getting around to some light criticism of the Pentagon’s ongoing hostility to journalists, which has included banning reporters from large, non-secure parts of the Pentagon and assigning them goonish handlers:
“This marks a troubling shift in how the Department of Defense engages with the press and, by extension, the American public.
The Pentagon Press Association (although I am not officially part of the association —again hello I am MAGA) has raised valid concerns over the new restrictions on the movement of credentialed journalists within the Pentagon, even in non-secure, unclassified hallways.”
Hesgeth, himself a former fake journalist who failed upward into his completely unqualified role as Secretary of Defense, has launched a new harmful assault on real journalism to cover up the fact his short tenure has been potholed by a steady stream of staffer leaks and historically problematic security fuck ups. Screw ups which Cuccia’s broader post, of course, dutifully downplays.
Unfortunately for Cuccia, being too honest about Hesgeth’s assault on the First Amendment was apparently enough to get her booted from the Pentagon and fired from OAN, according to the Associated Press:
“Three days after her Memorial Day Substack post, Cuccia said her Pentagon access badge was revoked. “By Friday,” she said, “I was out of a job.”
The AP frames this as an almost-serious news organization firing a reporter because she expressed a human opinion in her off hours:
“Traditionally, the legacy media does not want its journalists expressing opinions about people they cover, since it calls into doubt their ability to report without bias. But exceptions are often made in cases where media access is at issue, said Tom Rosenstiel, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.”
The belief that reporters can’t express human, personal opinions in their free time without harming the credibility of their employer is something many major news outlets still adhere to as a form of performative ethics (recall the AP fired promising young journalist Emily Wilder because she did some light activism in college and wrote a few tweets sympathetic to Palestinians).
That’s of course gibberish. One because it implies OAN is real journalism. And two, because real outlets that enforce these types of restrictions will usually turn around and publish fifty stories in a row credulously parroting the strange claims of law enforcement, lobbyists, or CEOs without batting an eyelash. Or turn their websites into glorified blogspam affiliates for Amazon.com several times a year.
In this case, Cuccia was clearly fired for not towing the authoritarian line, which is OAN’s entire purpose. The firing is particularly ironic coming from the same Republican party that insists that any cable or satellite TV company that refuses to carry OAN (it genuinely doesn’t have that many viewers) is engaged in an act of overt, unfair censorship.
When DirecTV refused to carry OAN because the network wasn’t profitable for them, you might recall it was such a crisis that six Republican AGs felt the need to whine publicly about unfair “censorship,” and make vague threats against DirecTV for the crime of… making their own choices. But an OAN employee gets shitcanned for stumbling accidentally into the truth in her free time, and it’s crickets.
Again because Trump Republicans, shockingly enough, don’t actually care about free speech. They care about parroting, protecting, and perpetuating authoritarian bullshit.
Filed Under: defense department, donald trump, free speech, gabrielle cuccia, journalism, media, pentagon, propaganda, transparency
Companies: at&t, one america news
Comments on “‘Journalist’ For Right Wing Propaganda Outlet OAN Fired For Accidentally Almost Doing Honest Journalism”
And then they stopped giving a shit because they figured out the First Amendment was still a thing and DirecTV had every right to disassociate itself from OANN. (I wonder if Chozen ever figured that out. I miss the old trolls; at least they could be entertaining instead of straight-up sociopathic.)
as Techdirt authors are usually good at correct idiom, but it’s toeing (not “towing”) the authoritarian line.
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Yeah. i hate to be that guy also, but after seeing weeks of wrong things (mostly not here, at least in articles) i end up feeling compelled. Particularly in regards to speakers i respect.
The phrase has a very different meaning when spelt the other way, but i guess it has a similar gist when viewed broadly from extreme distance.
It’s “toe the line”, like a soldier in formation, not “tow the line”, like a tugboat.
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In fairness, it makes perfectly good sense either way.
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No, it doesn’t because a tugboat doesn’t tow the line, it tows the ocean liner.
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If I were her husband I would break into their computers to say she was downsized instead of fired for an article she wrote
This is so that any future employer where she applied wouid never see that
Once those records are changed, future employers would see that and nothing else
A good husband wouod do that for his wife
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If her resume crossed my desk, I’d judge her more harshly for the “used to work for OAN” part than the “got fired for an article she wrote” part.
Re: First things first
Again your have to have had consensual sex before getting married.
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If I weren’t her husband, and I’m not, I’d point out that there are news articles reporting that she was fired, so this fantasy hacking sequence you’ve imagined is easily defeated by the company she’s applying to simply being able to google her name, which is probably one of the first things any HR department does these days.
Should read Hegseth* (typo is repeated elsewhere)
'I was on Team Leopard!'
The look on her face must have been priceless when she found out she’d been fired. ‘But I’m one of the good ones, the leopards weren’t supposed to go after my face!’
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The good(?) news is that leopards also shit.
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All the faces taste the same.
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That’s the thing with being one of the “good ones,” you only are until they decide you’re not. One step out of line and you’re up against the wall with everybody else.
And by the time you realize you’ve fallen out favor, it’s too little, too late.
ITS NOT BS.
Its fertilizer. It makes things grow. and stink.
Pete Hegseth: prime example of rising to the level of one’s incompetence, a concept known as “the Peter principle.”
pushing a limp rope
Very unlikely. More probable, Cuccia was fired for not keeping
her toe on the approved line (a/k/a ``toeing the line”).