NEW YORK — The George Soros-financed Media Matters for America progressive activist group has been helping to fuel an advertising boycott targeting Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show following Twitter comments the media star made about Parkland shooting survivor and antigun activist David Hogg.
Think Progress, the media project of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, has also been using its platform to hype the boycott.
On Thursday, Ingraham tweeted an apology to Hogg, expressing her regret “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”
The “Ingraham Angle” host had earlier tweeted a Daily Wire story titled, “Gun Rights Provocateur David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied.” Ingraham adder her own comment: “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it.”
Hogg immediately sprung to action, tweeting a list of Ingraham’s top 12 advertisers and promoting the hashtag #BoycottIngramAdverts.
Media Matters on Thursday jumped into the anti-Ingraham campaign, promoting a list of over 130 recent advertisers on the Fox News show.
Hogg himself retweeted the larger Media Matters list of Ingraham’s television advertisers.
On Twitter, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone highlighted two of Ingraham’s biggest advertisers, Liberty Mutual and Bayer:
Carusone further commented, “You can expect more advertisers to leave … Fox News is reckless propaganda machine. It’s bad for business.”
Media Matters is known for its opposition to conservative and independent media outlets. A Media Matters briefing book obtained by the Washington Free Beacon last year at a retreat for donors listed a core budget goal for 2017 of $13.4 million, which the booklet says would pay for a staff of 81, ostensibly to wage war on independent news media outlets like Breitbart News.
Media Matters, founded by Hillary Clinton ally David Brock, is financed in part by Soros. The billionaire provided a $1 million donation in 2010 “to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast.”
Brock once described Media Matters as aiming to wage an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against Fox News.
Think Progress has also been spotlighting the boycott with an article and numerous tweets about the subject by Judd Legum, the editor and founder of Think Progress.
Sleeping Giants, the anonymous Twitter account that has spearheaded attempts to boycotts Breitbart News, has been promoting the campaign against Ingraham, as have scores of Democratic Party operatives and liberal media personalities.
Shannon Coulter, co-founder of the #GrabYourWallet, which promotes boycotts against businesses associated with Donald Trump, has been feverishly supporting the anti-Ingraham campaign on Twitter.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.