Dear MoveOn member,
Last week, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news host, was fired from Fox News.1 It’s reported that Fox executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch claim their choice was a “business decision,” which is short for Tucker Carlson was seen as a threat to their future profits.2
As a corporation, Fox News is driven by its profits, and that’s what we are coming for. With Fox's reputation on the line, now is an unmatched opportunity to break its stranglehold on our politics by fundamentally challenging Fox News' whole business model to really damage its bottom line.
While Carlson’s ouster is good news, it doesn’t change the fact that Fox News is rotten to the core. Will you challenge Fox's destructive power by demanding corporate advertisers boycott Fox News?
AT&T, General Motors, and Subway are among the dwindling list of companies who are still running major advertising campaigns on Fox News. In fact, AT&T recently resumed advertising on Fox News, even while the company's dirty laundry was being aired in public. 3 In just a couple of weeks, these corporate advertisers will likely be deciding how much money they want to spend advertising their products on Fox News for the next year.4 AT&T, General Motors, and Subway have the choice: to either stop future advertising deals with Fox News or to continue funding the hate and lies that undermine our democracy.
By settling in their record case with Dominion, Fox managed to avoid admitting wrongdoing— and if they don't publicly acknowledge that they promote lies about the election, we can bet they'll just keep doing it and spreading other dangerous disinformation. They need to know that advertisers won't stand for that and Fox will pay a price.
MoveOn members have a long history of confronting Fox's lies and pernicious partisan impact—from forcing advertisers to drop Bill O'Reilly to getting the Democratic Party to stop hosting presidential primary debates on this right-wing network. We'll continue this work— calling out the network's white-supremacism-fueled appeal—and part of it is challenging the very funding model that allows Fox to prop up this disinformation.
Thanks for all you do.
–Kelsey, Manny, Alexis, Erica, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "Tucker Carlson’s vulgar language in texts contributed to Fox News firing – report," The Guardian, April 26, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/172177?t=7&akid=350869%2E40999114%2ESAK2rB
2. "On Eve of Trial, Discovery of Carlson Texts Set Off Crisis Atop Fox," The New York Times, April 26, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/172178?t=9&akid=350869%2E40999114%2ESAK2rB
3. "AT&T starts running ads on Fox News amid Dominion mess and DirecTV-Newsmax feud," Media Matters, March 16, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/171707?t=11&akid=350869%2E40999114%2ESAK2rB
4. "2023 Upfronts Schedule Set as Fox Plans In-Person Presentation at the Manhattan Center," February 23, 2023, The Hollywood Reporter
https://act.moveon.org/go/172179?t=13&akid=350869%2E40999114%2ESAK2rB
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