Progressive activists are targeting companies across the country for advertising on “alt-right” leader Breitbart News.
Even academia is getting caught up in the blowback against one of President Donald Trump’s favorite news sources, with the University of Oregon on the receiving end of the effort in the past week — including a tweet from Portland band Blitzen Trapper. (A UO ad for its master’s in Strategic Communication program — “Communicate with Impact,” it proclaims — recently appeared on Breitbart.) Many advertisers, UO apparently among them, don’t realize their ads are being placed on the site via third-party algorithms.
@Univ_Of_Oregon You might want to rethink who you’re advertising with. pic.twitter.com/5snZAJOFae
— Jessica (@jmaederr) February 1, 2017
One company that surely is aware its advertising messages are appearing on Breitbart is retailing behemoth Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post. The corporate watchdog group SumOfUs is leading the charge against Amazon’s advertising practices, with a petition that has been signed by more than 300,000 people.
Emma Pullman, SumOfUs campaign strategist, said in a statement Monday: “With a long-standing company policy that values diversity and inclusion, it’s shocking to see that Amazon.com is still supporting Breitbart’s brand of violence, bigotry and hate with paid advertisements.” SumOfUs calls Breitbart, which used to be led by Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, a “dangerous white supremacist website.”
The grassroots effort appears to be working. Hundreds of companies have pledged to block their advertising from Breitbart’s site. And Amazon management reportedly is being pressured by employees to do the same.
“[E]mployees have begun voicing concerns about the company’s advertising relationship with the provocative far-right website,” BuzzFeed reports. “Some piled on to a complaint ticket in Amazon’s internal issue escalation system urging the company to sever its relationship with Breitbart.”
Amazon says it is looking for a “longer-term solution” to its current ad-placement set-up.
— Douglas Perry
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