TripAdvisor and Rachael Ray’s pet food brand Nutrish have become the first companies to announce that they will stop advertising on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, after the host taunted David Hogg, the 18-year-old high school senior who has become one of the most prominent voices in the student movement for gun control action, for getting rejected by a string of California colleges.
Ingraham has been under intense fire for reacting to a video interview with Hogg, in which he briefly discussed his disappointment with the rejections. But Hogg said that he wasn’t surprised: “I think there’s a lot of amazing people that don’t get into college, not only [who] do things that I do, but because their voices just aren’t heard in the tsunami of people that apply to colleges in such an impacted school system here in America.”
Somehow, Ingraham portrayed Hogg’s remarks as whining.
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
“In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency,” a spokesperson for the popular travel site told CNBC on Thursday. “As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.”
Nutrish on Thursday posted a tweet responding directly to a boycott list Hogg had created naming Ingraham’s top advertisers to announce its decision to pull advertising from Ingraham’s show.
We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.
— Nutrish (@Nutrish) March 29, 2018
Shortly after her loss of two sponsors, Ingraham issued an apology on Twitter and invited Hogg to return to her show to discuss the gun debate. The host attributed her contrition to “the spirit of Holy Week.”
Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David…(1/2)
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018
… immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how "poised" he was given the tragedy. As always, he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion. WATCH: https://t.co/5wcd00wWpd (2/2)
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018
