‘Stop Funding Hate’ campaign leads to MUBI, other brands, dropping ads from OpIndia

News: Popular movie streaming service MUBI announced via a tweet on May 29 that it has started taking steps to make sure that its advertisements do not appear on OpIndia after being alerted through the Stop Funding Hate online campaign that the site propagates hate and fake news against Muslims and a strong Hindutva narrative.

Here are five components of the story:

• Several brands announced after being alerted by the Stop Funding hate campaign that they were going to stop advertising with OpIndia. The campaign brought attention to an article by OpIndia that justified and defended establishments that stated publicly that they did not want to hire Muslims.

• In an email to Scroll.in, Sophie Rhatigan, Director of Communications for MUBI confirmed this. “We can confirm that we immediately added OpIndia to our list of blocked sites for all advertising activities.”
• Richard Wilson, the Director of Stop Funding Hate said that because of the way online advertising works, brands might be unaware of where their advertisement appears, but they might want to take action once they find out. Brands do have the option of putting certain websites on a blacklist to ensure that their advertisements do not appear there.
• Nupur Sharma, editor of OpIndia said in an email to Scroll.in, “We stand by our article and our content 100% and the bullying tactic employed by some unknown faces sitting in the UK and running a Twitter handle is certainly not going to change that.”
• Wilson said that “More and more global advertisers are becoming aware of the brand risks of being associated with hateful and extremist media content such as this article from OpIndia.” He added that Stop Funding Hate aims to make hate unprofitable.