Kellogg Pulls Advertising From Breitbart Over Concerns About Hate Speech, Chairman’s Ties To Donald Trump
Kellogg, the Michigan-based cereal and grain products manufacturer, has pulled its advertising from right-wing news website Breitbart amid concerns that the site promotes hate speech, Bloomberg is reporting.
Kellogg spokesperson Kris Charles, in a statement, said that the company has been reviewing which websites advertise Kellogg products and has determined that Breitbart‘s values don’t match those of the manufacturer.
“We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as a company. We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site.”
Founded in 2007 by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, Breitbart News has, since the beginning, been unabashedly conservative in its reporting and commentary. Until this year, however, the site was considered just one of many partisan sites out there in the internet news landscape.
However, Breitbart came to national attention, and not in a good way, when President-elect Donald Trump named chairman Steve Bannon to his transition team.
More than 15,000 lawyers sign letter opposing Steve Bannon’s White House appointment https://t.co/1NCJoyfjgr pic.twitter.com/g6qN50Qn9e
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) November 24, 2016
Bannon has drawn criticism for espousing beliefs that can most charitably described as “controversial.” By other measures, some of his statements are outright racist, homophobic, and even seem to favor white supremacy. For example, according to a November 16 CBS News report, in a 2011 radio interview, Bannon referred to liberal women as “d***s” (a derogatory term for gay women).
“That’s why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn’t be a bunch of d***s that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that’s why they hate these women.”
Similarly, according to Mother Jones, Bannon’s ex-wife swore under oath that Bannon had said he didn’t like Jews and didn’t want his daughters going to school with Jews.
Bannon’s ex-wife swore in court in 2007 that he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews…He said he doesn’t like Jews…”
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 13, 2016
Similarly, with Bannon at the helm, Bretibart has run headlines such as “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive And Crazy” and “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”
That has proven to be more than enough for the Kellogg company, which will now no longer advertise on the site.
Kellogg is not the only company to jump ship from Breitbart in recent weeks. In fact, AppNexus Inc., a digital advertising service, refuses to do any further business with Breitbart over concerns the site promotes hate speech. Similarly, Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker, and SoFi, among others, have all pulled their own ads from Breitbart.
Other major advertisers, however, continue to advertise on Breitbart, for the time being. For example, one researcher noticed an ad for Nissan on the site, and sent an email to the company asking for clarification. The company responded that its advertising is not meant to be mixed with politics.
“The placement of Nissan advertising is not intended to be a political commentary and there are no plans to change the advertising mix at this time.”
Now it seems that some opponents of Breitbart‘s message are scouring the site daily, taking screenshots of advertisements and contacting the companies, and publicly “outing” them, in order to pressure them to pull their advertising.
[Featured Image by SUKIYASHI/Shutterstock]
