Former marketing executives launch campaign to keep Fox News from 'fueling next insurrection'

Kelly McClure Salon
June 26, 2022

Fox News personality Sean Hannity speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Photo by Gage Skidmore
An organization called Check My Ads has launched a campaign in an effort to restrict Fox News ad revenue to prevent them from "working overtime to fuel the next insurrection."

The organization, which is run by two former marketing executives, has already collected over 40,000 signatures from people backing their efforts in just five days, according to The Guardian, and the goal is to get ad exchanges to drop the news site.

"Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable," says Claire Atkin, a team member of Check My Ads.

The messaging included in the campaign reads:

HERE'S THE PROBLEM

Advertisers don't place ads on the internet themselves. They use ad exchanges — technology companies that run ads for them.

Ad exchanges don't work with just anyone. They choose which websites to work with and which ones to drop. They have standards to protect advertisers from funding violence. This is so important to advertisers that they have it written into their contracts.

When Fox News promoted the January 6th insurrection, it was violent. We all saw it — but ad exchange executives pretended it didn't happen.

Since then, Fox News has just gotten worse.

So here's the plan: we need to tell ad exchanges to block their ads from FoxNews.com now.

"Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It's not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence," Atkin said. "We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough."