OPINION:
Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy who has seemingly been the largest paid presence on Fox News, recently announced he has been banned from the network for his political beliefs. Newsweek reported it was due to a failure to pay for ads that had already run (the specifics are in dispute).
The squabble caught my attention as a board member of the RAM Veterans Foundation. Fox News has also banned us — and not for a refusal to pay our bills.
This past Memorial Day, RAM was scheduled for an on-air interview that was canceled hours before the agreed-upon time. We were not offered a reason for the cancellation or a substitute time. For Veterans Day, our foundation requested to run a 30-second ad promoting our website, CharitiesforVets.org. We were denied again. It all seemed strange, given that Fox News is known to run lots of ads for veterans charities.
The research on our website is valuable to donors. For example, if you are interested in housing for veterans, you can easily find several highly recommended organizations on our site. We make donors comfortable by suggesting which groups deploy donations responsibly and which ones waste funds on excessive overhead or are otherwise poorly managed.
RAM’s mission is to divert much of the billions of dollars given to poorly rated veterans charities to those worthy of support. Deciding which organizations are worthy (or not) appears to be the issue with Fox News. My advertising agency was told that a network lawyer dismissed our ratings as reflecting only our own opinions.
With more strict grading than other rating agencies, Charities for Veterans makes recommendations based on four simple tests: percentage of budget spent on overhead vs. programs, fundraising efficiency, amount of asset reserves, and the use of a deceptive (but not illegal) accounting method. Most of that raw information is publicly reported by the charity itself or state attorneys general.
It’s unlikely that Fox News is clamping down on opinion-based advertising. The many pillow commercials — replete with unsubstantiated claims of superior products — have been allowed to air. My guess is that a large veterans charity advertiser that we rated poorly complained to the TV network.
Admittedly, the network relies on advertising dollars from charities that we have rated as “not recommended.” RAM does not recommend one Fox News advertiser, Wounded Warrior Project, because the group spends nearly 40% of its roughly $334 million budget on overhead (among other issues). Disabled American Veterans — another Fox News advertiser — is also profiled on our site, failing three of our four core standards.
And yet Novo Nordisk has promoted the weight-loss injection Ozempic on Fox, which also gave competitor Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro a platform. Mr. Lindell has often used Fox News to sell bedding, while the network allowed Red Land Cotton to promote a competitive bedsheet.
Why no ban? Perhaps no one complained.
RAM’s ad doesn’t specifically call out Wounded Warrior Project or any other charity; it simply encourages viewers to visit the Charities for Vets website to get facts beyond emotional promotions. Our website also rewards many other groups, including a Fox News advertiser — Tunnel to Towers — with a “highly recommended” rating. We are calling balls and strikes based on public information. When we offer a grade, it is based on evidence and evenly applied. We are transparent in every case.
In its own guidelines, Fox Corp. claims it considers ads on a “viewpoint-neutral basis,” accepting ads that “express divergent points of view.” Yet Fox News is apparently picking winners and losers with a resultant loss of information for donors.
RAM has no issue with any legitimate charity; there are scams profiled on our site. We should all want donors to make informed decisions on organizations asking for their money.
So before you donate to a veterans charity, don’t just take Fox News’ implied support as a stamp of approval. It may not care if you give wisely, but we do.
• Rick Berman is president of RBB Strategies and serves on the board of the RAM Veterans Foundation.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.