President Trump tweeted on Thursday about a report from One American News Network that repeated debunked claims about election software by Dominion Voting Systems.
It was not the first time in recent months that the president helped amplify reports from the conservative cable outlet, which has developed a reputation for airing conspiracy theories. In fact, the network appears to have become one of the president’s favorite news outlets, along with Newsmax, another conservative cable news network. Neither network has called the election for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., while Fox News has.
In recent days, One America News has produced a series of videos that include false claims about the integrity of the vote and assertions that Mr. Trump won the election. The videos have collectively been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.
YouTube says that it does not consider One America News to be an authoritative news source and that therefore the network’s videos do not appear prominently when people search YouTube for election information. The tech company added tags to several of the network’s videos, with a note saying that the election had been called for Mr. Biden. YouTube also stripped out ads from the videos but did not remove the segments from its platform.
“Like other companies, we are allowing discussions of the election results and the process of counting votes, and are continuing to closely monitor new developments,” Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Twitter has also labeled several posts from One America News and about its reporting as misleading.
NewsGuard, which uses dozens of journalists and analysts to evaluate news organizations for reliability and trustworthiness, urges readers and advertisers to “proceed with caution” with One America News, finding that it “severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency” and regularly includes “false or distorted information.”
One America News, which is based in San Diego, was founded in 2013 by the California businessman Robert Herring Sr. The network, which has run Mr. Trump’s rallies live and uninterrupted, has described itself as one of the “greatest supporters” of the president, whose interest helped pull One America News out of obscurity.
Data about how many viewers the network has have been tricky to come by. Neil Ripley, a spokesman for Comscore, a media measurement firm, said in a statement that the company could not report audience data for One America News because the network “does not meet the minimum reporting standards required to be included in Comscore’s national television measurement.” And the network does not subscribe to Nielsen’s television measurements.
Herring Networks, which owns One America News, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.