A breaking news reporter for Nexstar Media Group’s political publication The Hill who was fired after the news outlet was dropped from a defamation lawsuit involving President Donald Trump had been previously reprimanded for filing articles that contained factual inaccuracies, The Desk learned this week.
The journalist, Olafimihan Oshin, was the subject of a lengthy article published by Semafor on Monday, which suggested his termination from The Hill in December 2023 was a compromise between Nexstar and Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) over an article he wrote one month earlier that wrongly inflated the amount of money Trump’s media company had lost during the year — a claim repeated by other news outlets named as defendants in the lawsuit, including Reuters, Rolling Stone, Axios and the Daily Beast.
The Semafor article suggested Oshin’s termination was the direct result of a settlement reached between Nexstar and TMTG, with at least one unnamed source claiming that Nexstar was “eager to avoid Trump’s wrath.” The remainder of the article focused on how Nexstar has curried favor with Trump administration officials over the past few months in order to lobby for media deregulation and other outcomes favorable to their business.
The Hill covers political affairs matters from Washington. Oshin joined the news outlet as a contract breaking news writer in March 2021; five months later, Nexstar acquired the parent company of The Hill for $130 million and began integrating its editorial products into other parts of its business.
Colleagues who spoke with The Desk described Oshin as a gifted journalist, eager to work and quick to turn around a story. One of his primary duties was to monitor press releases and other news outlets and identify emerging topics that fit squarely with The Hill’s editorial coverage of political matters in Washington, which included influential figures like Trump and his businesses.
The fast-paced nature of breaking news demands that a story is researched, sourced, written and filed within a relatively short amount of time — in some cases, minutes — where a feature story on The Hill may take days or weeks to complete. The time constraints that breaking news writers like Oshin work through lends itself to the inevitability that errors will occur; while reporters and editors are supposed to catch mistakes before they are published, small inaccuracies often slip through the cracks, and are only caught and corrected after a story is published.
In that respect, Oshin was no different from any other reporter at The Hill. But, over time, the errors became more egregious, to the point where editors felt the inaccuracies were the result of rushed, sloppy work.
In early 2023, Oshin was issued a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), a tool that Nexstar uses to help underperforming, but otherwise good, employees adjust their work to meet certain job expectations. The PIP came with additional training that was meant to help Oshin improve his research and writing based on his coverage area. Oshin completed the training as required by the PIP, but the plan ultimately wound up being used against him when the company decided to terminate his employment.
On November 13, Oshin read a story on the website of the Hollywood Reporter that initially claimed TMTG had lost $73 million between its formation in 2022 and the first half of 2023. The figure was apparently based on an in-house calculation that the Hollywood Reporter did on its own, using TMTG’s financial filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during its time as a publicly-traded company.
“Former President Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, has lost $73 million in net sales since the platform’s official launch in February 2022, according to a new financial disclosure filing from Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC),” the story said, according to a copy reviewed by The Desk. The opening paragraph of the 490-word story included a direct link to the SEC filing, which did not list the $73 million figure anywhere.
The Hollywood Reporter story was cited in the third paragraph of Oshin’s article, which noted that the outlet reported a $50 million loss on $1.4 million in sales during 2022 and another $23 million loss during the first half of 2023 to settle on the $73 million loss figure. The calculation wound up being incorrect, and the Hollywood Reporter and other outlets later amended their reports to include updated figures after a spokesperson for TMTG disputed the accuracy of their reports. (The updated story on the Hollywood Reporter’s website said TMTG actually lost between $31.5 million and $60.5 million when taking into account, or exclusding, the value of derived liability.)
Oshin’s story contained numerous references to the SEC filing made by TMTG, yet only one reference to the Hollywood Reporter. As written, the article strongly suggests that Oshin and The Hill did its own independent research before publication, though editors later determined most of his writing was based on the earlier Hollywood Reporter story.
Attorneys representing Trump and TMTG filed their defamation lawsuit on November 21, with The Hill and Nexstar named as defendants. The lawsuit contends that none of the news outlets apparently reviewed the SEC document, and simply copied each other’s work, which allowed the $73 million loss to be construed as fact and caused substantial reputational harm to the company.
In December, TMTG and Nexstar reached a settlement that resulted in the removal of the broadcaster and The Hill as defendants in the case. The details of the settlement are confidential, but a source familiar with the matter said it required Nexstar to fully retract Oshin’s story on The Hill’s website and to effort its removal on other platforms like Yahoo News, which license and republish The Hill’s content.
The settlement did not require The Hill or Nexstar to issue an apology or other public statement, nor did it require Nexstar to dismiss or otherwise discipline anyone at The Hill, the source said.
Still, days after the settlement, Oshin was asked to participate in a Zoom meeting with The Hill’s Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. During the meeting, Cusack fired Oshin, noting a continued pattern of errors appearing in Oshin’s articles despite the PIP and additional training provided earlier in the year. The article on TMTG’s financial loss was one of several cited during the meeting.
Reached by The Desk on Monday and Tuesday, Oshin confirmed he underwent additional training in early 2023 as part of a PIP, and that Cusack complained about continuing errors in his stories when he was fired over Zoom that December. But he said the Semafor article made it abundantly clear that the real motivation for his dismissal was Nexstar’s desire to be removed from the defamation case. Oshin said he is considering legal action against Nexstar and is looking for an attorney.
Gary Weitman, Nexstar’s spokesperson, denied to Semafor that the company agreed to dismiss Oshin as part of a settlement with TMTG. The Desk asked Weitman to independently confirm the company’s denial, and for further comment on Oshin’s dismissal. Weitman declined to comment for this story.
—
Editor’s note: An early version of this article said Oshin “located” the Hollywood Reporter story that served as the foundation of his article on TMTG’s financial loss. Oshin contends that a link to the Hollywood Reporter article was circulated to the breaking news team by an editor, and that he agreed to pick up the story. A second source confirmed Oshin’s account.
