Over the past two years, Fox News has become more and more right-wing politically, and now it looks like the news channel may suffer the consequences because a campaign has been launched to prevent the news channel’s Foxnews.com website from receiving advertising revenue, reports.
The campaign, launched by Check My Ads, an organization headed by two former marketers, began in early June by alleging that the news channel and its website of “working overtime to fuel the next insurrection.”
And in the early days of the campaign (just five days), a whopping 40,000 people joined, and that’s made for a particularly powerful lobbying group whose goal is to get ad exchanges to drop Foxnews.com.
Well, I say go team!
This campaign could not come at a better time, with prominent Fox News hosts downplaying the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building as “a forgettably minor outbreak,” of “mob violence.” Then there’s the fact that these people spreading election conspiracy theories and are now accusing school teachers and drag performers of “grooming” children.
Check My Ads founders Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi, know only too well how advertising works on websites. And even though Fox News has a reputation for spreading misinformation, companies like Walgreens and Optimum still advertise on Foxnews.com. Atkin notes that the advertisements are generally placed there by ad exchanges, which sort out the distribution of ads for advertising agencies.
“Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredibly legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable,” Atkins said.
Over the years, Fox News has been hemorrhaging large companies after numerous infractions committed by its TV hosts over the years. But incredibly ads for Walgreens and others are still showing up on Fox News’ website, which to me, is kind of incredible when you consider the dubious nature of Fox News. While there’s also ads for lesser-known companies like Nutrisystem and Balance of Nature when people hop on the website they see the larger companies and that gives them the idea that this is a respected website.
“When Fox is plugged into that ads supply chain, it gives them the legitimacy of a real news outlet, when in fact they are publishing disinformation regularly to real-world violence,” Atkin said.
Nowhere is that clearer than the two weeks following the 2020 election, when Fox News either cast doubt or pushed conspiracy theories about the election results more than 774 times, according to Media Matters for America. This proved to be the catalyst that fired up anger in many of Donald Trump’s supporters, and that rage boiled over on January 6, when a surging mob of hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building.
Since that terrible day, Fox News hosts have downplayed the attempted insurrection, in which the goal was to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Instead, what Fox News viewers hear is that this was a minor skirmish that may have even been conducted by the government.
And, says Atkin, this is why Check My Ads is doing what it’s doing.
“Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence,” she said. “And we all saw what happened on January 6. It’s not just violence, it was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence.
Yes, it was. I hope Check My Ads is successful in its goals. Fox News was and still is brown-nosing a selfish, egomaniacal man who was willing to encourage violence all because he lost. All because he didn’t get his way. So I say Kudos to these two women and their thousands of supporters and I hope they are successful.
I’ve included this clip below.
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