Laura Ingraham Boycott: Advertisers Leaving In Droves After Fox News Host Mocks School Shooting Survivor

Laura Ingraham is facing a growing boycott after the Fox News host mocked a school shooting survivor on Twitter, with a stream of advertisers cutting ties just hours after the controversial remarks.

Ingraham has frequently taken aim at the students survivors-turned-activists of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and this week the attacks turned personal. After student David Hogg shared that he had received a handful of rejection notices from colleges he had applied to, Ingraham took to Twitter to gloat about the rejection and accuse him of whining (in his initial post, Hogg says he understood why he was rejected and did not seem to harbor any hard feelings about it).

In the aftermath, Hogg asked Ingraham for a list of her advertisers, and a boycott quickly grew. Many reached out to the list of advertisers and called on them to break their affiliation with the controversial talk show host.

The response was immediate. By early on Thursday, a series of companies announced that they were severing ties with Laura Ingraham. As theHill reported, Rachel Ray’s brand was one of the first to announce it was pulling advertisements, and others joining in included TripAdvisor, CNBC noted.

While a stream of advertisers announced that they were cutting ties with Laura Ingraham, people across the internet continued to put pressure on others to follow suit and also called on Fox News to fire Ingraham.

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.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

The campaign in many ways resembled the student-led boycott of the National Rifle Association, which led to several major companies cutting ties with the gun lobby group and pulling special promotional programs for NRA members. It was again the student survivors of the Parkland school shooting leading this boycott.

Even before the calls to boycott her show, Laura Ingraham had been in the news for another controversial criticism. After the NBA star LeBron James criticized President Donald Trump, Ingraham responded that he should “shut up and dribble.” Many saw racial undertones to the remark and noted that James has frequently taken part in efforts to build his community in Northwestern Ohio, and Ingraham later told People magazine that there was no racial intent in her remarks.

While advertisers have responded to the campaign to boycott Laura Ingraham, Fox News has yet to speak out on the calls that the network fire their controversial anchor. Ingraham has since apologized for the remarks.