BECK - WILL SPONSORS SPURN CONTROVERSIAL TALK SHOWS?

WILL SPONSORS SPURN CONTROVERSIAL TALK SHOWS?

The apparently successful boycott campaign against Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who accused President Obama of being a racist and having a "deep-seated hatred for white people," could have implications for other programs featuring political commentaries -- right and left. According to an Associated Press report, which cited the group that spearheaded the Beck protest, 33 companies yanked their commercials from Beck's Fox News program. (For the most part, they were moved to other programs on the cable news network.) It quoted a spokesperson for Clorox as saying that it doesn't want to be "associated with inflammatory speech used by either liberal or conservative talk show hosts." However, a spokesperson for MSNBC told Advertising Age that Clorox had not pulled any of its spots from the channel, and a spokesperson for CNN said that "no advertiser has requested to withdraw any dollars from CNN." Such protests are not new. Witness similar boycott campaigns against talk show hosts Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Don Imus.

24/08/2009