At least 10 companies announced Thursday that they were pulling the plug on advertising during Laura Ingraham’s show after the Fox News host bashed a teen survivor of the Parkland school shooting.
Nutrish, the pet food line owned by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, was the first to tweet that it would no longer advertise during Ingraham’s show.
“We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program, as the comments she has made are not consistent with how we feel people should be treated,” a spokesman for Nutrish told HuffPost in a statement.
Hours later, travel site TripAdvisor and home goods retailer Wayfair followed suit.
In a statement to HuffPost, TripAdvisor said Ingraham’s comments crossed “the line of decency”:
We believe strongly in the values of our company, especially the one that says, “We are better together.”
We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy.
We do not, however, condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.
Ingraham did not address the controversy on her Fox show, “The Ingraham Angle,” on Thursday evening. Several national retailers still ran ads during the commercial breaks, including Gillette and Progressive Insurance, although ThinkProgress’ Judd Legum noted that the Ad Council was also featured, possibly as filler material.
A spokeswoman for Wayfair, which pulled its ads, told HuffPost that Ingraham’s comments were “not consistent with our values.”
“As a company, we support open dialogue and debate on issues,” the Wayfair spokeswoman said. “However, the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values. We do not plan to continue advertising on this particular program.”
The announcements from those three companies and others came a day after Ingraham mocked David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for not getting accepted into a few of the colleges he’d applied to.
In response, Hogg called on people to pressure a dozen companies to remove their ads from Ingraham’s programs, which include “The Ingraham Angle” and a morning radio show on Talk 1370 AM of Austin, Texas. The companies pulling ads have focused on the Fox program. Hogg also tweeted out a list of advertisers compiled by Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog.
Ingraham apologized Thursday afternoon on Twitter for “any upset or hurt my tweet caused [Hogg] or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”
Hogg dismissed Ingraham’s apology in an interview Thursday with The New York Times.
“She only apologized after we went after her advertisers,” Hogg said. “It kind of speaks for itself. ... I’m not going to stoop to her level and go after her on a personal level. I’m going to go after her advertisers.”
Ingraham’s apology also did not stem the tide of advertisers pulling back from her show on Thursday.
Expedia and Nestlé told HuffPost that they would no longer advertise on her program but did not immediately specify when this decision was made or whether her remarks about Hogg played a role in it.
“We have no plans to buy ads on the show in the future,” the Nestlé spokesman said.
Johnson & Johnson told HuffPost that it “will pull advertising from Ms. Ingraham’s show.” Stitch Fix also confirmed that it would stop purchasing ads on her program. A representative for Jenny Craig said, “We have decided to take steps to discontinue advertising on this show.”
Hulu tweeted Thursday evening in reply to Hogg, saying it would similarly cease such advertising.
Jos. A. Bank told The Daily Beast that it had no plans to buy ads on her program in the future.
HuffPost reached out to every company on the advertiser lists from Hogg and Media Matters. A representative of Fox News declined to comment beyond Ingraham’s apology on Twitter.
This article has been updated as additional companies have spoken out.