Although I don’t share Tucker Carlson’s politics, I am not a fan of advertiser boycotts like the one organized by the liberal watchdog Media Matters For America of the Fox News broadcaster.
Media Matters For America (MMFA), a liberal advocacy group, began targeting the star of Tucker Carlson Tonight last year after he claimed that immigrants made the U.S. “poorer and dirtier,” remarks that critics denounced as racist and factually inaccurate. Nearly two dozen brands quit advertising on Carlson’s show in the wake of the controversy although they continued to buy commercials on other Fox News shows.
Earlier this week, MMFA struck again, releasing a recording of Carlson’s phone calls to shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge that was chock full of misogynist, homophobic and just plain creepy comments that I am not going to defend because they are indefensible. They are also ancient, some stretching back more than a decade ago, when Carlson worked for MSNBC. MMFA has since released a second group of clips featuring Carlson and Bubba the Love Sponge that was as offensive as the first, if not more so.
The timing of the MMFA releases isn’t coincidental. According to Variety, Fox News is holding a meeting with advertisers at its New York studios today to convince them that it appeals to more than just conservatives. To drive the point home, Fox has even trademarked the slogan "America Is Watching" and is talking up its hard-news anchors such as Chris Wallace, Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. That's not surprising since Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, the network's other opinion hosts, are also facing advertiser boycotts. Fox critics are planning to protest the advertisers' meeting.
"Today, more than 100 advertisers attended Fox News Channel’s first-ever upfront presentation, which showcased our best-in-class journalism and opinion programming," Marianne Gambelli, president for advertising sales at Fox News, said in a statement. "We were extremely proud to open our doors and introduce the media-buying community to our America’s Watching campaign, (an) incredible team of talent and new state-of-the-art studios."
I have several concerns about MMFA’s effort. First, there is no way that Fox would ever force Carlson off the air solely based on offensive remarks unearthed by one of the network’s staunchest critics. It would be bad for the Fox “brand,” which prides itself on standing up to the “mainstream media.” Carlson is also one of Fox’s biggest stars.
Tucker Carlson Tonight was the third-most-watched cable news show in 2018 both in terms of total viewers (2.8 million) and adults 25-54 (549,000), the demographic cable news advertisers are targeting. He continued to dominate the competition in 2019, averaging 2.93 million total viewers as of March 7, compared with about 2.08 million for rival MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes and 1.32 million for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. Carlson is also tops in the target demographic.
According to iSpot TV, Tucker Carlson Tonight generated advertising revenue of $193.9 million last year. Fox News will become even more important to corporate parent 21st Century Fox when its $71 billion asset sale to Walt Disney closes later this month. According to market researcher Kagan, the news channel earned more than $1 billion in net ad revenue in 2018.
As Politico’s Jack Shafer noted last year, advertiser boycotts are based on the faulty notion that buying a commercial on television or an ad on a website implies that the company endorses the adjacent content when that usually isn't the case.
“Without boarding the slippery slope, we can see the media wreckage that will follow such a viewpoint should it become ascendant. Advertisers tend to be timid, overreactive, running from controversy and conflict, and in times of perceived crisis, their timidity spreads to publishers, which is bad for journalism. It’s easy to imagine today’s boycotts turning into tomorrow’s blacklist.”
While Carlson’s comments were awful, are they any less problematic than the homophobic blog posts from MSNBC’s Joy Reid that surfaced last year and that she tried to claim were the work of computer hackers? Reid made an extraordinary public apology on the air, avoided any boycotts and kept her job. Carlson’s remarks were probably meant to be funny since they were discussions with someone whose legal name is “Bubba the Love Sponge,” but that doesn’t give the bow-tie-wearing TV host carte blanche to be offensive.
Finally, let’s say MMFA got its wish, and Fox gave Carlson the boot. Who's to say that the network wouldn’t hire another conservative with just as long of a track record for offending people, like Ann Coulter?
Updates story to add comments from Fox News.
