Advertisers keep up pressure on Laura Ingraham
Laura Ingraham returned to Fox News this week, but the bad news for her continued.
The exodus of advertisers from Ingraham’s show resumed following her weeklong hiatus, meant to stem the loss of sponsors unwilling to associate their brands with her program.
Allstate Insurance and SlimFast diet drink announced that they would no longer run ads on the program in the wake of the host’s attack on Parkland, Fla., high school student David Hogg.
“We have stopped advertising on the Laura Ingraham show and have no plans to resume in the near future,” SlimFast tweeted on Tuesday. “We are also monitoring all ad placements carefully.”
An Allstate memo obtained by the Wrap detailed the company’s decision to pull its ads from Ingraham’s show.
“Laura Ingraham’s comments about David Hogg were inconsistent with our values,” the memo stated. “Allstate believes in youth empowerment and last year helped 5 million youth find their voices and take action to make the world better. We have not advertised on ‘The Ingraham Angle’ since Wednesday. We hope our youth can help us find a path to a less divisive future.”
In a March 28 tweet that has not been removed from her Twitter feed, Ingraham mocked Hogg — whose views on gun control she disagrees with — for not being accepted by some colleges.
“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.),” Ingraham wrote.
Amid withering criticism, Ingraham issued a qualified apology to Hogg a day later.
“Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” Ingraham wrote on Twitter.
So far, 22 companies have pulled their ads from the show, including TripAdvisor, Expedia, Nestlé, Stich Fix, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Office Depot, Honda, Miracle-Ear, Liberty Mutual, Principal Financial Group, Ruby Tuesday, Entertainment Studios, Nutrish, Johnson & Johnson and Wayfair.
In her return to her program on Monday, Ingraham blasted the effort to target her advertisers.
“Their efforts are Stalinist, pure and simple,” the embattled host said. “Their objective is a total transformation of American society, not through rational discourse and open debate but through personal demonization and silencing.”
Ingraham’s argument didn’t resonate with at least one advertiser that, until last night, was still a sponsor.
“We were unaware that our ad would be running on The Laura Ingraham Angle last night,” Blue Apron, a home delivery meal service, wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “We will no longer be advertising on the show, and will be working with our media buying partners to more closely monitor where our ads appear going forward.”
Read more from Yahoo News: