With the presidential election less than one week away, conspiracy theorists had a field day with a two-day-and-counting blackout of Fox News Channel and CNN on DirecTV, lighting up social media with claims of a liberal bias to keep supporters of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the dark.
DirecTV subscribers haven’t been able to watch FNC or its liberal counterpart CNN for about two days, as intermittent outages have blocked the channel. DirecTV customers tuning in the channels have been greeted with a screen stating the satellite service was “experiencing temporary technical difficulties. Please stand by. We apologize of the inconvenience.”
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Those that tuned into CNN were notified the channel was unavailable, according to a report in the Washington Times.
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Bewildered viewers voiced some of their opinions on social media and DTVUSAforum.com, with some claiming a conspiracy by liberal DirecTV employees to block FNC. No word on whether they felt more conservative DirecTV employees had a hand in blocking CNN.
In a statement, DirecTV parent AT&T said it is having technical difficulties involving eight HD channels and offered impacted customers a work-around to watch the networks.
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“We’re experiencing technical difficulties impacting 8 HD channels, including CNN HD and FOX News HD, for our satellite customers,” AT&T said in a statement. “These and most of the other channels are available in SD and via our streaming apps. Customers can learn how to unhide SD channels at http://soc.att.com/2f1HYN5. We apologize for the inconvenience. We’re working to address the issues and will update accordingly.”
