Three leading gay groups have banded
together to urge advertisers to walk away from advertising on Fox
News.
The group Equality Matters for America
kicked off its Drop Fox campaign by appealing to gay-friendly travel
site Orbitz.
“Orbitz risks alienating gay and
lesbian customers by giving ad dollars to Fox News, a network that
blatantly promotes an anti-gay political agenda,” Llyse Hogue,
senior adviser at Media Matters for America, said in a statement.
“Orbitz customers who value equality can and will take their
business elsewhere, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Any
company whose customer base values the diversity, civil rights, and
journalist standards should recognize that doing business with Fox
will only cost them in the long run.”
Gay media watchdog GLAAD and the
California-based Courage Campaign are also backing the campaign.
At the website DropFox.com,
the groups argue that Fox News has compromised its journalistic
integrity to promote an anti-gay agenda.
Some of the examples given are the
promotion of anti-gay Fox hosts Mike Huckabee and Bill O'Reilly, the
network's claim that gay servicemembers represent a threat to troop
morale, and providing a platform for anti-LGBT extremists.