This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Far-right cable channel One America News Network has been going through a talent exodus these past few months, largely due to the uncertainty over its future after satellite provider DirecTV dropped the channel from its lineup this spring. But not everyone who’s left OAN is a casualty of the existential crisis the network currently finds itself in.
According to four current and former staffers, OAN host Dan Ball’s workplace behavior prompted at least one person to bolt the network. Sources tell us that earlier this year Ball hurled a phone at a producer during a heated newsroom confrontation. That incident, the culmination of a volatile feud with the producer, saw the employee part ways with OAN shortly afterward.
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According to Confider’s sources, Ball would make casual sexual jokes in front of everyone, occasionally scream obscenities in the newsroom, and even air his personal drama with his much-younger fiancee—who was hired alongside Ball as his booking producer—in front of the newsroom.
“He was like a habitual line-stepper you know, he would just always try to say things and try to get a rise out of people,” one insider said. Another said he was “more of a screamer type” while a current staffer called him “a jerk.”
These allegations don’t exactly come out of left field.
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Ball, who bounced around local news before landing at OAN in 2020, was ousted from a Las Vegas station in 2012 after a “sometimes-turbulent 21-month stay,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Sources told the newspaper that Ball “was suspended at least once” and “got in trouble for screaming an obscenity at a co-worker,” resulting in Ball being “greeted with packed boxes and escorted out of the station” when he arrived at work one day.
When Confider reached out to one of his OAN show’s staffers a few weeks ago, Ball—who has called on OAN viewers to dig up “dirt” on the network’s supposed enemies—immediately called Confider to chastise us. He declared there had been no human resources complaints made about his behavior internally, but did concede that there was “one disgruntled employee” who may have a grievance.
The ex-producer alleged to have dodged the thrown phone did not confirm or deny the incident, and declined to comment on their experience at the network.
“Go ahead and print your lies. My attorney will be in touch. Have a great day,” Ball responded to Confider via text, alongside emojis of the American Flag and a thumbs-up. One America News did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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