A group of advertisers say they are pulling their commercials from Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” after remarks he made last week about immigration.
The passel of sponsors includes SmileDirectClub, Nautilus Inc’s Bowflex, Ancestry.com, NerdWallet, Indeed.com and Pacific Life Insurance.
Carlson sparked the controversy during last Thursday’s broadcast, noting that he felt immigration was responsible for making the United States “dirtier.” On his broadcast Monday, Carlson said he would not be threatened by the threat of sponsors backing out of his show. “The enforcers scream ‘Racist!’ on Twitter until everybody gets intimidated and changes the subject to the Russia investigation or some other distraction. It’s a tactic, a well-worn one. Nobody thinks it’s real. And it won’t work with this show,” he said. “We’re not intimidated. We plan to try to say what’s true until the last day.”
“It is a shame that left wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed ‘media watchdogs’ weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech. We continue to stand by and work with our advertisers through these unfortunate and unnecessary distractions,” Fox News said in a statement. A spokesperson for the network, owned by 21st Century Fox, said advertisers who pulled commercials from Carlson’s show continued to run spots on the network which had not lost any advertising revenue.
Some other sponsors have issued statements indicated they will stay with their current schedules on Fox that include “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Mitsubishi, Bayer, John Deere, AstraZeneca and Sanofi have all said they won’t make changes to the way their commercials appear on Fox News.
More to come…