OAN sues Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, Comcast, NBC Universal for $10 million

One America News Network (OAN), a conservative news network for people who think Fox News is too liberal, has filed a $10 million dollar defamation lawsuit against Rachel Maddow, MSNBC and its parent companies Comcast and NBC Universal.

The network claims Maddow defamed them during an episode of her nightly show when she referred to OANN as "paid Russian propaganda."

Maddow was referencing OAN's employment of Kristian Brunovich Rouz as an on-air reporter covering US politics while he is also employed as a reporter for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire. If Sputnik sounds familiar, that could be because it was found to have been part of Russia's 2016 election interference scheme.

From The Daily Beast:

Rouz's on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that "went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains."

OAN's lawsuit also claims that Comcast is engaging in anti-competitive censorship by refusing to carry the channel. No response as of yet from Maddow, Comcast, et al.

Herring Networks vs. Rachel Maddow (Scribd) (Photo: top, Shutterstock; below, Wikimedia Commons)