Following a report in the New York Times about allegations of sexual harassment against Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, at least two advertisers pulled ad buys from the show.
Mercedes-Benz said Monday that it had pulled ads from “The O’Reilly Factor,” and Hyundai followed suit early Tuesday morning.
“Yes, we had advertising running on The O’Reilly Factor (we run on most major cable news shows) and it has been reassigned in the midst of this controversy,” Donna Boland, a spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz, told CNN in a statement on Monday. “The allegations are disturbing and, given the importance of women in every aspect of our business, we don’t feel this is a good environment in which to advertise our products right now.”
Hyundai said in a statement that it had not been running ads on the Fox News show but that it had pulled a planned ad buy.
“As a company we seek to partner with companies and programming that share our values of inclusion and diversity. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the situation as we plan future advertising decisions,” the company said in a statement, per CNN.
The New York Times on Saturday published a report revealing that five women have received payouts from O’Reilly or 21st Century Fox after allegations of sexual harassment and other behavior. Two of the settlements came after Roger Ailes left the network over sexual harassment allegations last year, according to the New York Times. The women “have complained about a wide range of behavior, including verbal abuse, lewd comments, unwanted advances and phone calls in which it sounded as if Mr. O’Reilly was masturbating,” the New York Times reported.
Sadly, he’ll never be poor. But the day will come when he’s a has-been, and the only thing he can look forward to is following his audience into the grave. And I think he’ll know, on some very deep level nearly imperceptible to himself, that his was a wasted life. I wish I could wish him worse but that’s actually pretty bad. And I do hope it comes soon.
Next up O’Reilly’s new book
Killing O’Reilly
How a serial perv came to be a star at the all perv network.
It’ll sell a million I tell ya
Fox is the wrong animal; this is the Bonobo Network.
1st amendment rights trampled!! Need a Presidential Investigation, or at least a Presidential Tweet-out!
Bonobos are fun, they enjoy life. Fox and its viewers don’t have much else going on in theirs.