On March 5, the “People’s Convoy” of trucks and civilian vehicles is scheduled to arrive in the Washington, D.C., area from California to protest COVID-19 mitigation efforts, and One America News Network has gifted the convoy adulatory coverage as heroes, while also promoting the website and ways for viewers to donate. OAN’s support for the People’s Convoy is the latest face of the network’s attacks on vaccination efforts, as well as another example of its complete disregard for anything resembling journalistic standards. 

OAN previously celebrated the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” as “the greatest grassroots freedom movement since 1989,” referencing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. One OAN host shared the hope that the network’s coverage of the Canadian anti-vaccine protest “inspires more folks down here to take action” and start their own “glorious” convoys to D.C. 

The Canadian protest ended after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- “little baby Hitler” to OAN -- invoked emergency powers to disperse the demonstrators.

In California, once the People’s Convoy was declared, OAN got an early start to its coverage, including doing an interview with co-organizer Brian Brase days before it began. Brase predicted that “tens of thousands of people” would join the convoy by the time it reached D.C., and claimed that “we’re not going until some of the things that we’ve outlined are met,” including an end to vaccine and mask mandates, and congressional investigations of the pandemic response. 

OAN embedded new reporter Stefan Kleinhenz with the convoy, where he has provided daily reports on the progress across the country, complete with human interest anecdotes highlighting support for the convoy coming from other truckers, “relatively blue” areas, Navajo Nation, and, in Ball’s words, at least one “brave Haitian immigrant.” 

 

In many of Kleinhenz’s reports, particularly his regular appearances on Real America with Dan Ball, OAN airs fundraising information for the convoy, typically putting the convoy website in the on-screen chyron. Ball has noted that “they’ve got to have cash to do all this,” and in an appearance on The Real Story, Kleinhenz said that supporters are giving cash and “people can chip in” on the website: “These truck drivers have to fill their tanks. … Gas is very expensive right now, and they’ve got to go all the way to the nation’s capital.”

OAN has also made a handful of varying attempts to estimate, or exaggerate, the size of the convoy. On February 28, Kleinhenz reported that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said the convoy was “built of 7,000 vehicles and stretched 30 miles … and presumably will get bigger for the rest of the trip.” Several days later, Kleinhenz said that it’s “very difficult to count the trucks,” but “we know more than 100, at least” are present. 

On March 2, Ball and Kleinhenz attempted to generate a controversy involving a convoy member and the truck rental company Penske. The driver reportedly used a Penske truck to display a sign reading “People’s Convoy.” Ball whined that Penske “got a little woke, and didn’t want to see their truck in the convoy” and lamented that “a company who made their money in NASCAR” wouldn’t support “America First-type folks.”

Also on March 2, Kleinhenz shared “a great metaphor … that sums up these truckers,” explaining that one trucker “compared conservatives to grizzly bears, and Democrats to a pack of coyotes. And he said, a grizzly bear isn’t going to attack you, but if you push it 20 times, it will. Where the coyotes are always working in a pack, always looking for something.” 

OAN’s approval of this trite metaphor signals its extremely blinkered, us-vs-them vision of American conservatism. OAN exists in a bunker mentality, where well-meaning conservatives are under constant attack from the left — the attack in this case being vaccine and mask mandates. And so it is up to brave protesters -- the convoy -- to deliver a message to the left that Real Americans have had enough. Even though the alleged tyranny is simple public health measures that, despite a wealth of vitriol and conspiracy theories also pushed by OAN, serve to improve everyone’s odds of surviving the pandemic.