MoveOn, DailyKos Pressure advertisers on Fox News

Update 7/31/07:
According to AmericaBlog, Home Depot has stated that they will not advertise on the O'Reilly show. They also stated that their advertising is a "run of network" so their commericals are generally played throughout any show on Fox News.

Of course, AmericaBlog is pressing for full suspension of ads which I believe Home Depot won't agree to.

Update 7/29/07:
It would seem comments and calls to Lowe's about their advertising during the O'Reilly show on Fox News were enough to intimidate the warehouse chain to remove them. Yet, they did not say if they were going to remove all their ads from the Fox News channel.

Yet, is there a significant impact on ads that are shown on controversial or offensive shows? If Walgreens was doing an ad during Big Brother, would they see a drop in sales if a bad incident occurred on the show?

News Hounds actually has compiled a list of advertisers that show their ads during the O'Reilly show. What's the difference if other folks start listing advertisers being shown on the Rosie O'Donnell show, or during MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews?

I even bet these will the same folks that would protest against the Simpsons Movie because the arnold-accented President mocks foreign citizens and Homer being fat is offensive to obese people.

I bet there will no impact on BMW, Dell, Lincon-Mercury, Chevrolet, OnStar. They can just set up a comment rule and forward all those complaint crap to the rubbish bin.

On the Democrats.com web site, they drawn up a nice and sweet msg for those Fox advertisers:

Dear FOX News Advertiser,

I am writing to inform you that I will not purchase your products as long as you advertise on FOX News.

FOX News does not broadcast news, it broadcasts Republican Party and conservative propaganda.

If you want my business, you need to advertise in the media I rely on, especially the Liberal Blog Advertising Network.

Thank you.

Obviously, a liberal response.

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It just never stops. Inspired by their success in pressuring all the Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, they are now focusing on advertisers that are shown on the conservative news channel.

The liberal groups, MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future, DailyKos.com, and others are asking supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Click here to see MoveOn.org's Civic Action on Fox's alleged anti-environment position by robertgreenwald. Their plan would be to organize a phone-calling campaign after they get enough data. They will first concentrate on businesses running local ads, but it seems they got a national target, Home Depot.

The home improvement chain will not change its advertising strategy. Its reasoning is that it needs to reach their customer base through all available mediums.

One of the group's reasoning is that Fox News' statement of being a fair news network contradicts its conservative-leaning point of view. How about the liberal-leaning New York Times? LA Times? MSNBC? NPR?

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In any case, this smells like discreet censorship. How can these groups truly prove that businesses that sponsor ads on the Fox News Channel are conservative? They are trying to tell everyone that if a business is sponsoring an advertisement on Fox News, they are considered to be racist, warmongering, against immigrants, against minorities, against civil rights, and so on and so forth.

I would think they are hoping that their phone calls would intimidate these businesses into dropping their ads from the network. I hope that these businesses would thumb their noses at them. Clearly, they have every right to protest, but these businesses have the right to advertise on any medium that gets to their customer base.