After The New York Times investigation into the millions of dollars Fox News poured into protecting Bill O’Reilly from sexual harassment suits, the dominoes are beginning to fall.
New York Times reports:
Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai said they were withdrawing their ads from Mr. O’Reilly’s prime-time show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” after The New York Times published an investigation this weekend that found five women who made allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior against him. Those five women received settlements totaling about $13 million, The Times reported.
This is a powerful move because if more advertisers follow suit (and I think it is possible that they will), O’Reilly and his sexual harassment will no longer be worth fighting tooth and nail to keep him on the network.
If more advertisers abandon Mr. O’Reilly’s show, it will be a blow to Fox News, which provides billions of dollars in revenue each year to its parent company, 21st Century Fox. Mr. O’Reilly has long been the pugnacious face of a prime-time lineup that sets the tone for conservative commentary. His show attracts almost four million viewers a night, and from 2014 through 2016 it generated more than $446 million in advertising revenue, according to the research firm Kantar Media.
If advertisers really want to make a statement about sexual harassment, they would withdraw their advertising dollars from Fox completely. It isn’t just O’Reilly’s behavior that is deplorable; it’s the company’s willingness to spend so much money to shame and case out innocent victims from jobs to protect an awful lowlife.