Laura Ingraham Loses 18 Sponsors After Parkland Survivor David Hogg Calls for Boycott

Liberty Mutual CEO David Long says Fox News host’s “comments are inconsistent with our values as a company”

laura ingraham
Getty Images
Jennifer Maas
and

At least 18 major companies have now announced that they are pulling their sponsorship of Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program because of a Wednesday tweet by the anchor widely seen as mocking Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor David Hogg.

On Saturday, Claritin manufacturer Bayer announced that it was joining other recent sponsors of “The Ingraham Angle” in stopping its advertising on the show after Hogg’s Wesdnesday night call for a boycott of corporate advertisers.

On Friday, Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios — whose upcoming Teddy Kennedy film “Chappaquiddick” had been promoted frequently during “The Ingraham Angle” in recent weeks — was one of nine companies announcing that it “had pulled all Chappaquiddick ads” from the show.

Other Friday walkouts included Liberty Mutual, Office Depot, Miracle-Ear, Jenny Craig, Principal investment group, Honda, Ruby Tuesday and Atlantis resort.

In a statement, Liberty Mutual CEO David Long said the Fox News host’s “comments are inconsistent with our values as a company.”

The flight of sponsors is a major threat to Ingraham, who launched her show last October to strong ratings and announced Friday that she would take a two-week vacation she said was pre-planned.

The advertiser exodus began on Thursday when Hulu, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Nutrish, Expedia, Stitch Fix, Johnson & Johnson and Nestle bowed to public pressure to cut ties with the show.

In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for TripAdvisor said the company did not “condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.”

Home furnishing site Wayfair said in its statement: “As a company, we support open dialogue and debate on issues. However, the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values. We do not plan to continue advertising on this particular program.”

Nestle, Expedia, Johnson & Johnson, Stitch Fix, and the pet-food company Nutrish issued their own statements that they would stop advertising on Ingraham’s show.

Men’s clothing retailer Jos. A Bank, told TheWrap that it does not consider itself a sponsor of Ingraham’s show and that the two ads that aired during Wednesday’s broadcast were most likely bonus ads from the network.

A rep for Fox News did not response to a request for comment, but Ingraham on Thursday tweeted an apology “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”

Ingraham had come under fire on Wednesday after tweeting about how Hogg, a senior at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, “whines about” his rejection by UCLA and several other colleges to which he had applied.

“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.),” she tweeted.

Hogg responded Wednesday evening by naming 12 of Ingraham’s top advertisers  and suggesting a boycott of them in a tweet (though one that actually misspelled the network host’s name).

Jennifer Maas

Jennifer Maas

TV Reporter • jennifer.maas@thewrap.com • Twitter: @jmaasaronson

Comments