Fox News host Tucker Carlson has lost advertisers in the past, but the latest company to boycott his show insulted the news anchor on its way out.
Babbel, which sells subscription-based language-learning software, wrote that Tucker Carlson Tonight is “so repugnant and at odds with our mission and values” that it would be “blacklisting the show going forward.”
Corporate virtue signaling
Using Twitter, the company apologized for ever sponsoring the hit Fox News show in the first place, calling it an oversight.
If you saw our ad on Tucker Carlson’s show, you’re right to be upset. We are too. While we did place our ad with Fox, we did not know it would air on a show so repugnant and at odds with our mission and values. We are blacklisting the show going forward. We are deeply sorry.
— Babbel USA (@BabbelUSA) April 30, 2019
In a follow-on tweet, Babbel tagged the Sleeping Giants, a liberal watchdog group with more than 230,000 Twitter followers that targets conservative news programming for advertiser boycotts. The grassroots organization claims “to make bigotry and sexism less profitable.”
A spokeswoman for Fox News responded by pointing to Carlson’s loyal audience, who have refused to stop watching the program in the face of organized advertiser boycotts.
“We will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson’s to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the intolerant partisan activists Media Matters, Sleeping Giants and Moveon.org whose only goal is to silence conservative thought they don’t agree with,” she said.
Not the first time
Carlson has been targeted by similar campaigns in the past. Most recently, more than 30 sponsors pulled their spots from his 8 p.m. program after audio recordings from a years-old “shock jock” radio program were resurrected that featured Carlson making remarks that many have labeled misogynistic and offensive.
Carlson refused to apologize for his remarks, which were made between 2006 and 2011, and he praised Fox News for standing behind him.
In December, companies like SanDisk, Samsung, SodaStream, and Pfizer Inc. ditched the cable news icon after he argued that accepting undocumented immigrants into America would make the country “poorer” and “dirtier.” Carlson made the controversial comments moments after showing the trail of trash and human waste in Mexico that a migrant train left behind in its wake.
“It’s a tactic, a well-worn one. Nobody thinks it’s real. And it won’t work with this show,” Carlson said at the time. “We’re not intimidated. We plan to try to say what’s true until the last day.”
Impervious
Despite liberal outrage, Fox News programming generally dominates the cable news cycle, and Carlson’s show is the second highest-rated program on the network, which has so far been impervious to left-wing efforts to stifle legitimate political debate.
Meanwhile, an unrelenting base of advertisers has refused to succumb to pressure from corporate virtue signalers. Companies like Mitsubishi, Bayer, John Deere, AstraZeneca and Farmers Insurance aren’t going anywhere — and neither are Carlson’s legions of fans.
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