The NRA will shut down production of new content for its streaming-video NRATV outlet, The New York Times reports.
The report said the gun-rights lobbying organization may continue to run older content on the broadband outlet, but it will no longer feature Dana Loesch and other regular hosts in live programming. The demise of programming takes place as the powerful advocacy group has grappled with feuding among some of its top executive and has had its finances examined by New York’s attorney general.
“Many members expressed concern about the messaging on NRATV becoming too far removed from our core mission: defending the Second Amendment,” Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s longtime chief executive, wrote in a message to members that was reviewed by The Times. “So, after careful consideration, I am announcing that starting today, we are undergoing a significant change in our communications strategy. We are no longer airing ‘live TV’ programming.”
Loesch gained some notoriety for her NRATV videos, which often depicted her intoning about the dangers new efforts at gun control could bring to the United States. “The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth,’ she said in one video lecture. In September of last year, she railed against the children’s show “Thomas & Friends” after the long-running program partnered with the United Nations to widen the diversity of its characters.
The NRA has cut ties with the marketing agency Ackerman McQueen., which operated NRATV.