THE AMERICAN WEBSITE BuzzFeed says Donald Trump’s rhetoric caused it to cancel a deal with the Republican party to run political ads on the site this autumn.
In an email sent to BuzzFeed employees, CEO Jonah Peretti wrote that BuzzFeed told the Republican National Committee this morning that it wouldn’t accept Trump ads.
Peretti says the Republican presidential frontrunner’s campaign is “directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world.”
In the email, published in full by BuzzFeed itself, he added that Trump’s proposed ban of Muslims entering the US would “make it impossible” for some employees to do their jobs.
We don’t need to and do not expect to agree with the positions or values of all our advertisers. And as you know, there is a wall between our business and editorial operations. This decision to cancel this ad buy will have no influence on our continuing coverage of the campaign.
We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company.
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.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to TheJournal.ie‘s request for comment, but Republican party spokesperson Sean Spicer earlier told CNN:
Space was reserved on many platforms, but we never intended to use BuzzFeed.
Contains reporting by the Associated Press.
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