Fox News reportedly nixed a spot for Oscar-nominated, anti-fascism and anti-Nazi documentary A Night at the Garden.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, an ad for the seven-minute short, which features archival footage from a February 1939 Nazi rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, was intended for Sean Hannity’s audience on Monday but was preempted by coverage of Trump’s rally in El Paso. In the clip, we see a few stark images from the Nazi rally, then the caption: “It can happen here.”
After the film’s distributor Field of Vision tried to buy a national spot, it was reportedly rejected. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott is quoted as telling a Fox ad sales representative in an email that the spot was “not appropriate for our air.” The president of ad sales for Fox told the Daily Beast the ad was “full of disgraceful Nazi imagery regardless of the film’s message and did not meet our guidelines.”
In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, director Marshall Curry stated the importance of the film and said: “It’s amazing to me that the CEO of Fox News would personally inject herself into a small ad buy just to make sure that Hannity viewers weren’t exposed to this chapter of American history.”
The ad will now air during Thursday’s episode of Hannity in Los Angeles. The full film can be found on PBS and Vimeo.
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