Breitbart Launches #DumpKelloggs Boycott after Company Pulls Ads

Cereal giant Kellogg's announced this week it's pulling ads from conservative media outlet Breitbart.com, and now the news organization is firing back.

Breitbart has launched a #DumpKelloggs campaign, calling for a boycott of the cereal company.

"We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren't aligned with our values as a company," Kellogg's spokeswoman Kris Charles, said, according to Bloomberg.com. 

"We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com," she continued. "We are working to remove our ads from that site."

Charles said Kellogg's made the decision to "blacklist" Breitbart after customers contacted the food manufacturer when they saw cereal ads on the site, Bloomberg reports.

Liberal activists accuse Breitbart of promoting anti-Semitic and racist views, and companies that advertise on the news organization's website have been criticized in recent weeks. 

Alexander Marlow, Breitbart News editor-in-chief, supports the boycott of Kellogg's.

"Breitbart News is the largest platform for pro-family content anywhere on the Internet," he said. "We are fearless advocates for traditional American values, perhaps most important among them is freedom of speech, or our motto 'more voices, not less.'"

"For Kellogg's, an American brand, to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice," he continued. "They insult our incredibly diverse staff and spit in the face of our 45,000,000 highly engaged, highly perceptive, highly loyal readers, many of whom are Kellogg's customers."

"Boycotting Breitbart News for presenting mainstream American ideas is an act of discrimination and intense prejudice," Marlow added.

So far, more than 150,000 people have signed the #DumpKelloggs petition, pledging "to never buy Kellogg's again!"

Kellogg's is one of several major brands to yank online ads from Breitbart. Other companies include Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker, and SoFi, according to Digiday.

In an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg, Larry Solov, CEO of Breitbart News Network, said the news organization "has always and continues to condemn racism and bigotry in any form."

Not all companies are distancing themselves from Breitbart, however. The automaker, Nissan, said in a statement that it "places ads in a variety of sites to reach as many consumers as possible."

"The placement of Nissan advertising is not intended to be a political commentary and there are no plans to change the advertising mix at this time," the auto company said.

Nissan made the statement after a screenshot surfaced featuring a Nissan ad on Breitbart. According to Bloomberg, the creator of the Twitter account Sleeping Giants is trying to get brands to remove their ads by taking screen shots of ads that show up on Breitbart.

The conservative news organization also found itself in the public spotlight recently after President-elect Donald Trump selected Breitbart's former chairman Steve Bannon last month to be White House chief strategist.