The groundbreaking Stop Funding Hate campaign was launched back in the summer of 2016. Its aim was to tackle the appallingly racist headlines directed at Muslims and refugees which were appearing in the tabloid press on a depressingly regular basis.
“The campaign’s core focus was on the Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Sun, as there was widespread concern that the hate in our media was fuelling hate on our streets,” explains Richard Wilson one of the campaign’s founders.
The group’s key tactic was simple: by persuading companies to pull their advertising from the likes of The Sun, the campaign wanted to put the financial squeeze on the tabloids’ bottom-line, something that had never been attempted before.
“Our aim was to persuade these newspapers that it no longer made good business sense to use anti-Muslim and anti-migrant rhetoric on their front pages as a way of selling their newspapers,” explains Wilson.