Formation August 2016 Type Social Media | Founder Richard Wilson Location United Kingdom | |
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Website www.stopfundinghate.org.uk | ||
Stop Funding Hate is a campaign which aims to stop companies from advertising in and thus providing funds for certain UK newspapers that it argues use "fear and division to sell more papers".
Contents
Launch
The Stop Funding Hate campaign was set up in August 2016 by Richard Wilson, gaining over 70,000 likes on its Facebook page in the first three days of activity. The campaign's launch video was viewed over 6 million times. In February 2017 Stop Funding Hate launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds, finishing with £102,721 raised.
Campaigns
The campaign has called on companies including Aldi, Asda, Barclays, British Airways, Co-op UK, Gillette, Iceland, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Lego, Virgin Media and Waitrose to stop advertising in newspapers such as The Sun, the Daily Mail and Daily Express.
Stop Funding Hate's first campaign, targeting Virgin Media, claimed that their values were "totally at odds with the Sun’s track record of misleading reporting", and was signed by over 40,000 people. Another campaign, targeting The Co-operative Group, led to their chief executive Richard Pennycook saying that they would be "looking at our advertising for next year to see whether we can align it more closely with our natural sources of support rather than more generic media advertising". Following their coverage of the high court's November ruling on Brexit, advertisers in the Daily Mail were targeted by the campaign and its supporters using the hashtag #StopFundingHate. In a Christmas campaign by Stop Funding Hate, the group released a mock advert in the style of John Lewis' Christmas adverts, calling on the department store to stop advertising in certain newspapers.
Results
In September 2016 Specsavers withdrew an advert from the Daily Express after hundreds, including Stop Funding Hate, complained that it was funding "fear and division".
Gary Lineker showed support for the campaign, saying that he had spoken to Walkers about their advertisements in The Sun. Following calls from the campaign and its supporters, Lego announced in November 2016 that it was ending its advertising with the Daily Mail, stating they were "not planning any future promotional activity with the newspaper", making it the first company to end its advertising in one of the targeted newspapers since the campaign's inception. In February 2017 the internet service provider Plusnet withdrew adverts from The Sun and The Body Shop announced they had no future plans to advertise in The Daily Mail after social media criticism.
Criticism
Writing for the Press Gazette, Dominic Ponsford criticised Stop Funding Hate and its campaigners for encouraging people to influence the content of newspapers they don't read themselves, and raised concerns about advertisers influencing the content of newspapers. In a response to Ponsford's article, Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff argued that Ponsford did not consider the "total vacuum of responsibility within the journalism world when it comes to how our content is going to affect our audience". In Spiked, Naomi Firsht described the campaign as "entirely about censorship", arguing that consumers should simply not buy newspapers if they disagree with their content. Stop Funding Hate responded to criticisms of censorship by saying that they "fully support freedom of choice & are not calling for any publication to be removed from sale".