Boycott of The Ingraham Angle

On February 14, 2018, Hogg, age 17, survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in which a mass shooter killed 17 people and wounded 17 more. A few days later, he and other shooting survivors founded Never Again MSD, a student group advocating for safety in school. On March 24, Never Again MSD was a lead organizer of March for Our Lives, a global student-led demonstration with some demands to change gun law in the United States. More than a million protestors attended more than 800 events around the world.

On March 28, The Daily Wire wrote an article listing the colleges which were and were not offering admission to Hogg.[16] Later that day Fox News personality Laura Ingraham ridiculed Hogg, tweeting: "David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)"[17][18][19] Hogg responded with a tweet that listed her advertisers and suggested those advertised be boycotted.[20][21]

Within two days, fifteen companies had ceased advertising on Ingraham's show, including AT&T, Office Depot and TripAdvisor. Other companies such as Ace Hardware dropped the show in the ensuing days.[22][23][24] A few days later, Allstate stopped advertising on Ingraham's show, circulating a memo to employees citing the company's values being at odds with Ingraham's comments.[25][26]

Ingraham publicly apologized for her remark within 25-1/2 hours of her initial criticism,[27][28] but Hogg rejected it as insincere, saying she had only apologized because advertisers had left her show, and that he would accept an apology in the future if she denounced the way her network treated him and his friends.[29] Republican strategist Steve Schmidt speculated why Ingraham's advertisers pulled their support: "...this kid’s not scared. He’s not scared of the NRA. He’s not intimidated and scared by Laura Ingraham."[30]

Ingraham returned to her show in April after a pre-planned week-long Easter break, with the support of Rupert Murdoch.[31] According to the Washington Post, the advertising time dropped by half following the spat, but there was speculation that it might "blow over" with some advertisers returning to the show after the interest died down.[31] Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy said that the network "cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts".[31]

A total of 24 sponsors have stopped advertising on The Ingraham Angle as of mid-April 2018[32] Polling by YouGov BrandIndex in the days following the announcement of the boycott showed that the Fox News brand had sustained significantly more consumer perception damage than any of the advertisers.[4] The positive consumer perception of Ingraham dropped from 53 percent to 33 percent, according to the celebrity data and research firm Spotted.[33] Rates for advertising during the show dropped since the start of the boycott. Prices for a 30-second spot dropped from an average range of $12,310-$14,732 to an average range of $11,305-$13,405, according to analysts. Advertising time during the show dropped by as much as 52 percent.[6]

As of her first three nights back after the Easter break, primetime ratings of cable news viewership shows The Ingraham Angle remains second or third among cable news viewership on Fox News, and fourth or fifth overall in viewership across all cable news networks. [34] [35] [36]

A 2020 review by S&P Global remarked that Ingraham's views continued to be a deterrent to advertisers and contribute to the decline in advertising revenue of parent Fox News.[15] Forbes also reflected on the boycott in 2020.[37]

Following Ingraham's comments about Hogg, the following sponsors made announcements that they would no longer advertise on The Ingraham Angle.[38][23][24][39][5][32]

At the end of her Friday, March 30 show, Ingraham announced she was taking a week-long absence from the show for Easter. This week-long break was already planned in advance prior to the controversy and advertiser loss, according to Ingraham and Fox News.[40][41][42]

My Pillow creator Mike Lindell became a target of the boycott, refusing to join the other advertisers in pulling out of The Ingraham Angle.[43][44]

Fox News, Ingraham's media organization, responded to the boycott stating, "We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts".[7][45]

According to Hamilton 68, hundreds of Russian bots came to Ingraham's defense on Twitter during the weekend following the boycott. Posts under the hashtag #IStandWithLaura jumped 2800 percent and was the top trending hashtag for Russian Twitter accounts.[9][10]

Talk show host Bill Maher came to the defense of Ingraham, saying that the boycott was wrong, and that her show should be continued on the grounds of advocating free speech, and saying that he, himself, had been the victim of a boycott, and he felt that he had been unfairly treated in the past.[11]

Back in February 2018, professional athletes complained about Ingraham's admonishment to LeBron James in which she advised the basketball star to avoid political commentary and simply "shut up and dribble."[46] Her comment was in response to Lebron's statement that President Donald Trump "doesn’t understand the people, and really don’t give a f--- about the people." On this occasion, she was simply referring to her book entitled Shut Up & Sing of which she has used derivitives in previous retorts to personalities such as Jimmy Kimmel and Gregg Popovich.[47] No boycotts were attempted and no apologies were offered.[48]

• Top Laura Ingraham Advertisers, a tweet that established the boycott