Advertisers are abandoning Tucker Carlson

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Several major companies that have advertised on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show publicly distanced themselves from Carlson over the past two days by either removing their ads, pausing their advertisements, or indicating that they do not plan to advertise on his show in the future.

These actions -- from Pacific Life Insurance Co., Indeed, Smile Direct Club, Bowflex, NerdWallet, Ancestry, Jaguar Land Rover, Voya Financial, Minted, Zenni Optical, Just for Men, IHOP, SCOTTeVEST, Pfizer, SodaStream, Takeda Pharmaceiticals, the United Explorer credit card, Career Builder, and TD Ameritrade -- come in the wake of Carlson’s December 13 suggestion that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.”

After changing his tone the next night and claiming that he actually “like[s]” immigrants and immigration, Carlson returned to form Monday night, saying that his statement had been “obviously true.”

His despicable comments are in keeping with the themes that have made his show extremely popular among white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Carlson constantly stokes fears about the cultural displacement of white Americans and the ongoing threat to the national culture purportedly posed by immigration and diversity.

The flood of advertisers fleeing Carlson’s show comes just a few months after Fox News admitted that host Laura Ingraham’s blue-chip advertiser base had abandoned her, in part because she had compared facilities at which immigrant children were being held to “summer camps.” And as Media Matters President Angelo Carusone pointed out at the time, “Dozens of companies have removed their ads from Sean Hannity’s program, and even more have told me that they block Hannity and other more extreme Fox News programs so their ads never appear in the first place.”

The extremism and volatility of Fox hosts are scaring away their advertisers, leaving the network at risk of being unable to monetize some of the most-watched shows on cable.

Here are the statements from companies distancing themselves from Carlson:

Update (12/19/18):