Can advertisers get a “journalist” off the air?

December 2, 2009 – 2:28 pm – No Comment

If it is possible for advertisers to get yellow journalist (you could call him an entertainer as there is no journalistic ethic in his broadcast) Glenn Beck off the air, it will happen soon. It all started when he uttered the following sentence on his show:

“This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people … this guy is, I believe, a racist.”

And that was that. The website ColorofChange.org decided to launch an assault against the television personality directed directly at the show’s wallet. The organization began going after the show’s advertisers and so far it has successfully gotten 20 advertisers to stop advertising on the show after the comment was made. The most recent in the list of advertisers to quit the show are Wal-Mart, Best Buy, CVS, Travelocity, Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank, Broadview Security, and Re-Bath.

A move like this could bring production of a show like this to a stand still. Cable news programs (as well as all programs) depend heavily on advertisers to keep the lights on, and without the big advertisers Fox News may end up canceling the show or replacing it with some other personality.

The companies that have pulled out of the program are some of the companies that have the biggest marketing budgets in the business and this program will really hurt unless it can, somehow, make it up to everyone. However, I don’t see anything Glenn Beck doing to either help the situation or any of the boycotters out there planning on letting up anytime soon.

While people like Glenn Beck are allowed a right to what they say, he needs to realize that every word that he says has a consequence and sometimes you have to apologize for saying things that are hurtful…If we all went around saying exactly what we thought all the time then half the population would be hiding under a rock crying.