One of Fox News’ advertisers announced that it is “blacklisting” Tucker Carlson’s nightly show.
Babbel, a subscription-based company that provides language learning software, said in a Tuesday tweet it did not intend its ad to run during Carlson’s show and issued an apology.
“If you saw our ad on Tucker Carlson’s show, you’re right to be upset. We are too. While we did place our ad with Fox, we did not know it would air on a show so repugnant and at odds with our mission and values. We are blacklisting the show going forward. We are deeply sorry,” the company said.
If you saw our ad on Tucker Carlson’s show, you’re right to be upset. We are too. While we did place our ad with Fox, we did not know it would air on a show so repugnant and at odds with our mission and values. We are blacklisting the show going forward. We are deeply sorry.
— Babbel USA (@BabbelUSA) April 30, 2019
After its tweet, Babbel tagged the Sleeping Giants, a group with more than 230,000 followers that promotes cutting off ad revenue to certain right-wing websites and shows. It began by focusing its attention on the website Breitbart around the time President Trump was elected but has since targeted advertisers.
A Fox News spokeswoman pushed back on the move, saying Carlson’s audience are loyal to the show and valuable to advertisers.
“The millions of unduplicated viewers watching Tucker Carlson Tonight are extremely valuable to our advertisers. Our audience is not only deeply loyal to the brand, but to our top tier partners as well, of which Babbel is not one. We will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson’s to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the intolerant partisan activists Media Matters, Sleeping Giants and Moveon.org whose only goal is to silence conservative thought they don’t agree with,” the spokeswoman said.
Carlson came under fire last month after liberal media watchdog group Media Matters published excerpts from a shock jock radio show that Carlson appeared on between 2006 and 2011. Carlson could be heard making perverse comments about young girls and women, questioning the blackness of former President Barack Obama, and calling Iraq a country filled with “semiliterate primitive monkeys.”
Despite backlash and a loss of advertisers, Carlson said he wouldn’t formally apologize and praised Fox News for having his back.
