18 companies pull ads from The O'Reilly Factor amid harassment scandal
The O'Reilly Factor is down 18 advertisers, with several luxury carmakers, pharmaceutical giants, insurance companies, and even a dog food manufacturer pulling their ads from the show after it was reported that host Bill O'Reilly and Fox News paid $13 million to settle complaints from five women who accused O'Reilly of sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW of North America, Mitsubishi Motors, Lexus, Constant Contact, Bayer, Orkin, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, Allstate, Esurance, T. Rowe Price, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Credit Karma, Wayfair, UNTUCKit, and TrueCar are all stopping their ads from running during The O'Reilly Factor, CNN reports. Most of those companies have released statements condemning harassment, including Mercedes-Benz, which called the allegations against O'Reilly "disturbing." Paul Rittenberg, executive vice president of advertising sales at Fox News, released a statement on Tuesday saying the network values "our partners and are working with them to address their current concerns about The O'Reilly Factor. At this time, the ad buys of those clients have been re-expressed into other FNC programs."
The O'Reilly Factor is the most popular news show on cable, and one advertiser, online directory Angie's List, told CNN it has "no plans to change our ad buy," adding, "just as we trust members to make their own hiring decisions, we trust them to make their own media consumption decisions."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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