Last month Glenn Beck appeared on Fox & Friends and accused President Obama of being a racist. He said...
"This President has, I think, exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don’t know what it is [...] I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. He has a...This guy is, I believe, a racist."
Fox News released a timid statement intended to put some distance between the network and Beck, but it simultaneously gave Beck more leeway to spew his repulsive views.
Well, Media Matters is now reporting that members of the advertising community are beginning to regard Beck's Acute Paranoia Revue to be an unacceptable platform for their ads. (Continued...)
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The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.
Media Matters: Three companies who run ads during Glenn Beck -- NexisLexis-owned Lawyers.com, Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance -- today distanced themselves from Beck. LexisNexis has pulled its advertising from Beck and says it has no plans to advertise on the program in the future. Both Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance called the Beck advertising placements an error that they would correct.
It's about time.
It should be noted that Procter and Gamble is the biggest advertiser in the world. Now, we don't know where these ad dollars are going. They may just be shifted to other programs on Fox. But over time the network will not be able to remove itself from the taint that people like Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Cavuto, and the phalanx of obnoxious "contributors" stain the airwaves with.
Color of Change had taken the lead in protesting Beck's remarks with a petition that delivered 45,000 signatures.
Update: Color of Change commented below with a link to their own diary. It has some more pertinent data, including a call for further action and another advertiser bailing out:
Since we released our statement announcing the news this morning, another company, S.C. Johnson (Pledge, Ziplock, Off!) told us that it was a mistake for their ads to be running on Beck's show, and that they'd make sure it wouldn't happen again in the future.