Why did Bill O’Reilly get fired? It was all about the money.
Economic protest can be as effective as street protest
Bill O’Reilly’s Teflon days are over. Despite years of alleged bigoted comments and a 2004 sexual harassment scandal, O’Reilly thrived. “The O’Reilly Factor,” the highest rated primetime news program on cable television, generated more than $446 million in advertising revenues from 2014 to 2016. But after The New York Times revealed that Fox News paid $13 million in out-of-court settlements to women who accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment, advertisers pulled out en masse. Fifty companies, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Allstate stated that “The O’Reilly Factor” did not align with their beliefs of inclusion, diversity and equality.
How did O’Reilly survive the sexual harassment controversy of 2004 only to face the mass exodus of advertisers in 2017? The difference between 2004 and 2017 is the boom of social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread controversies like wildfire in a matter of minutes (Here’s looking at you, United Airlines). Corporations use social media as a barometer for controversies, which allows them to pull advertising dollars or release statements condemning actions in a matter of hours, not days (Hello, Pepsi). Hashtags like “Grab Your Wallet” were used by social media commentators to pressure companies to drop advertising on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
We have entered into a new age, an age when business image and association are just as important as profits. In this age, we are seeing big business pull out of anything that could cause a loss in profits. Corporations do not want to appear bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc., by associating with public figures or entities who have been labeled as such in the public eye.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to resign from Trump’s Economic Advisory Council after the company faced backlash on social media. The hashtag #DeleteUber was born after reports of Uber’s failure to take sexual harassment claims from females seriously. Lyft, Uber’s competitor, reportedly profited from this scandal.
This is a lesson for those who desire to become social activists: Economic protest can be just as powerful as traditional street protest.
Take North Carolina for example. In March 2016, House Bill 2 (a.k.a. “the bathroom bill”) was signed into law. HB2 required people to use the restroom corresponding to the gender identified on their birth certificate. National outcry against HB2 reverberated into big business. The National Basketball Association pulled its annual All-Star Game from Charlotte. The NCAA pulled its championship events out of North Carolina and threatened not to consider the state for its 2018-2022 events unless HB2 was repealed. PayPal announced that it had scrapped plans to build a new operations center in Char-
lotte. HB2 also may have led to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory losing the 2016 gubernatorial race despite Trump and other North Carolina Republicans winning their respective offices. Lost business of $3.76 billion and bad press forced state leaders to repeal HB2.
Those of us in the fight for equal rights must understand that the struggle doesn’t always have to come from the streets. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized Operation Breadbasket, a strategy to use the social network of black churches to inflict an economic boycott against businesses that profited from selling their products in black communities but did not employ African-Americans. Operation Breadbasket reportedly brought millions of dollars to black communities in Chicago and Atlanta through fairer hiring practices. King and the SCLC understood that to obtain justice, especially economic justice, marching alone would not cut it and that protest had to evolve.
The legacy of Operation Breadbasket and the influence of social media on big business highlight an important lesson: In today’s market-driven society, you can make social impact with your wallet.
When we speak with our dollars, corporations will listen and they will use their power to influence practices, behaviors, policies and laws. In a market-driven society, true change jingles in our pockets.