"Mistake" lands New York Times ads on Fox News primetime shows

The spots appeared on shows hosted this week by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dan Bongino and Mark Levin

Published December 4, 2021 2:34PM (EST)

Laura Ingraham; Sean Hannity (Getty/Salon)
Laura Ingraham; Sean Hannity (Getty/Salon)

Something didn't seem quite right this week — The New York Times was running an ad campaign called "The Truth Takes a Journalist" during some of the most hyper-partisan shows on Fox News.

The spots appeared on shows hosted by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dan Bongino and Mark Levin, among others — and even ran just minutes after Fox commentator Lara Logan compared chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

According to CNN's Brian Stelter, who reached out to the paper of record to figure out what exactly was going on, the entire thing was one big "mistake."


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Apparently the ads were part of an deal the newspaper had made with satellite television company DirecTV, which had placed the spots on Fox News without their knowledge.

"There was a mistake with an ad buy through DirecTV. Fox News was not intended to be part of this buy," a representative for the Times told Stelter, noting that the paper immediately pulled its ads after discovering they had aired on the network. 

"We are not currently running ads on Fox News," they added.

More on Fox News:


By Brett Bachman

Brett Bachman was the Nights/Weekend Editor at Salon.

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Ads Advertising Brief Dan Bongino Fox News Laura Ingraham Mark Levin Media New York Times Politics Sean Hannity