Campaign Action
Fox News may have a hardcore audience that won’t tune to another other news source, but advertisers are far more discerning. Companies want to sell their products and services to the widest swath of people possible. Not to mention they have obligations to uphold their own ethical standards, including managing a diverse workforce and of course, delivering to shareholders. It’s hard to do that when your brand is associated with and sponsoring racism, bigotry, sexism or xenophobia.
That leads us to Laura Ingraham, the nighttime Fox News host of The Igraham Angle and longtime Republican advocate. After images and stories of thousands of immigrant children being taken from their parents along the Southern border, some as young as 8 months old, Fox News hosts were working overtime to try and change the mounting public relations nightmare for the Trump administration. They ended up with a day of programming that might have been the most embarrassing day in the network's history. From claiming the cages holding children are really just “walls from chain-link fencing” to slamming critics as people who hate this country, Laura Ingraham cheerily brushed off these detention centers, where toddlers and young children are reportedly left to fend for themselves with little care, crying endlessly and learning to change one another’s diapers as nothing more than summer camps or boarding schools. Hard to say what kind of summer camp she sends her kids to, but our kid is zip lining, taking care of gibbon monkeys, learning campfire songs and making s’mores at camp right now.
Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor David Hogg launched a boycott against Laura Ingraham after the segment and *at least* one major advertiser has pulled the plug. From Politico:
The media and internet company IAC will no longer be running ads for HomeAdvisor or Angie’s List on the show, an IAC spokesperson confirmed on Thursday. The day after Ingraham’s statements, David Hogg, a survivor of the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, called on advertisers, including IAC, to boycott Ingraham, a reprise of the highly successful boycott campaign he launched against her in April, after she insulted him on Twitter.
Politico notes that others may have bailed because there have been fewer spots offered. Fox News contends the boycott is not hurting them:
A Fox News spokesperson said the network was unaffected by any loss in advertising resulting from Ingraham’s latest comments.
“There’s been no impact on our business, and new advertisers continue to opt in for our powerful prime-time lineup,” the spokesperson said.
Gross. Here is the commentary that caused Angie’s List to walk.