Breitbart urges boycott of Kellogg’s after cereal maker pulls ads
Breitbart News is blasting the decision by Kellogg’s to pull its advertising from the far-right conservative website and encouraging its readers to boycott the breakfast cereal maker.
“For Kellogg’s, an American brand, to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice,” Alex Marlow, Breitbart editor in chief, wrote in article published online Wednesday. “Boycotting Breitbart News for presenting mainstream American ideas is an act of discrimination and intense prejudice. If you serve Kellogg’s products to your family, you are serving up bigotry at your breakfast table.”
The top three stories leading Breitbart’s homepage on Thursday morning were about its declared war with Kellogg’s, including one entitled: “#DumpKelloggs: Far-Left Cereal Giant Kellogg’s Warns of ‘Racial Privilege.’”
Another was a link to a petition boycotting Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, which Breitbart says has been signed by more than 100,000 readers.
“To be clear, our decision had nothing to do with politics,” Kellogg Company spokeswoman Kris Charles said in a statement to Yahoo News. “We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values.”
She added that the company “learned from consumers” that its ads had been placed on Breitbart.com “and decided to discontinue advertising there.”
The move comes amid growing concern over the site’s role in elevating the so-called alt-right after President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial appointment of Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as his chief White House strategist.
During Bannon’s tenure at the news website, Breitbart published a number of incendiary articles, including one (“Hoist It High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage“) encouraging readers to display the Confederate flag after Dylann Roof allegedly killed nine African-Americans at a Charleston, S.C., church.
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Bannon said the controversy is merely an attempt by liberal critics to smear both him and Trump after losing the election.
“I’m not a white nationalist,” Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter. “I’m a nationalist.”
Breitbart views itself in a similar vein.
“Breitbart News is the largest platform for pro-family content anywhere on the Internet,” the site stated in its #DumpKelloggs petition. “We advocate for traditional American values, perhaps most important among them is freedom of speech.”
The Los Angeles-based website, which claims it has a readership of 45 million, said Kellogg’s decision to pull its ad “will make virtually no revenue impact.”
“It does, however, represent an escalation in the war by leftist companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House,” Breitbart said.
