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What the MSM Was Afraid to Tell You

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OAN takes direct aim at the networks it says buried the summer’s biggest stories.

One America News Network dropped a monologue in mid-July 2020 called “What the MSM Was Afraid to Tell You,” and the title alone tells you where this is headed. The segment argues that CNN, MSNBC and the broadcast networks spent the summer sitting on stories that didn’t fit their preferred narrative — from law-and-order developments to economic data — while amplifying whatever cast the Trump administration in the worst possible light.

• OAN frames the piece as a direct accusation: legacy outlets allegedly downplayed violence tied to the nationwide unrest that had gripped cities for weeks by July 2020.
• The network positions itself explicitly as the alternative to what host commentary calls dishonest establishment coverage, a recurring theme across OAN’s programming that summer.
• The monologue ties into OAN’s broader on-air strategy under CEO Robert Herring, with hosts including Pearson Sharp regularly producing similar segments accusing MSM outlets of suppressing pro-Trump economic and law-and-order news.

The Case OAN Is Making

The thrust of the segment isn’t subtle. OAN’s commentary team argues that as riots, looting and standoffs played out in cities like Portland, Chicago and Seattle through June and July, the major networks either soft-pedaled the violence or framed it almost exclusively as a response to police conduct rather than as unrest with its own body count and property toll. That argument echoes coverage InfoSearched has tracked closely, including reporting on a single weekend in Chicago that left 16 dead and 47 wounded — the kind of story OAN’s hosts say got a fraction of the airtime devoted to protest coverage elsewhere.

OAN also leans on the idea that mainstream anchors ignored or minimized stories that reflected well on the administration’s economic and public safety record, while giving heavy rotation to anything that could be read as controversy. It’s the same framing the network applied when covering figures like the St. Louis couple who pointed firearms at protesters outside their home, a story OAN argued was covered with a slant that assumed the couple, not the crowd approaching their property, were the aggressors.

Identifying the Primary Messengers

OAN built its identity in 2020 around exactly this kind of programming — short, punchy monologues that name mainstream anchors and networks directly rather than speaking in generalities. Robert Herring’s network had, by that summer, become a go-to outlet for viewers who felt CNN and MSNBC were editorializing rather than reporting, a complaint that dovetails with commentary from Fox’s own opinion side.

The pitch isn’t subtle: while you were distracted by one story, here’s what they didn’t want you to see.

That skepticism toward legacy coverage wasn’t confined to OAN. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany spent much of that summer sparring with the briefing room press corps directly, a dynamic covered in daily briefings that became must-watch television for conservative audiences. Greg Gutfeld made a similar case on his own program that summer, arguing CNN’s coverage had grown more slanted by the week — the same critique OAN’s monologue applies with a sharper edge.

OAN Coverage Omission Details

The segment’s list of alleged omissions centers on three buckets: crime statistics from cities under unrest, economic data points the administration touted, and any pushback from local officials against the prevailing narrative on policing. OAN’s hosts point to city leadership decisions — like New York’s move to cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget as violent crime was climbing — as exactly the kind of consequence-and-cause story that got flattened into a single-side narrative on cable news.

Whether or not every specific claim in the monologue holds up to independent fact-checking, the pattern is consistent with OAN’s entire 2020 output: name the story, name the outlet that allegedly buried it, and tell viewers this is why they need OAN instead of the networks they grew up watching.