Liberal news outlet BuzzFeed has announced that it will end its advertisement deal with the Republican National Committee over the party’s nomination of Donald Trump as its presidential candidate.
Employees were reportedly told of the news by the company’s CEO, Jonah Peretti, who said that Trump’s policies would make it impossible for company’s Muslim employees to do their jobs if they could not travel to the US.
“Earlier today, BuzzFeed informed the RNC that we would not accept Trump for President ads and that we would be terminating our agreement with them,” he said.
“The Trump campaign is directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world and in some cases, such as his proposed ban on international travel for Muslims, would make it impossible for our employees to do their jobs,” he argued.
The announcement comes at a time when Buzzfeed and other left-wing sites are struggling financially, with BuzzFeed specifically slashing its 2016 revenue forecast in half after missing its 2015 target by more than $80 million.
“We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” Peretti said. “However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.”
BuzzFeed have also claimed their coverage of Trump’s campaign will go unchanged, with editor-in-chief Ben Smith saying the decision was not an editorial call.
The site is generally seen to be critical of the GOP and has a strong liberal editorial bias, uploading anti-Trump propaganda on their YouTube channel.
You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at ben@yiannopoulos.net
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