'Fake news' drives advertisers to reputable brands: Time CEO
Time Inc. President Rich Battista on Tuesday said President Trump’s ‘fake news’ claims have actually helped their business draw in more advertisers.
“One of the things that’s helping us right now in the market place is with a lot of this challenge of fake news and with environments that aren’t necessarily safe for advertisers, we’re seeing a real move back to flight to quality. We have premiums environments and safe environments and advertisers want to be around content that has that premium,” Battista told FOX Business’ Connell McShane.
He also acknowledged that some of their magazine covers have been very ‘provocative,’ with some of the covers themed around the Trump administration’s alleged ties with the Kremlin.
On Friday, Newsweek put out another controversial cover, titled ‘Lazy Boy’ featuring President Trump in a recliner with junk food, his phone and a remote.
“Today it’s about creating debate and helping create insights and giving the people the tools to be able to debate and if that means we have to be provocative sometimes or are provocative—I think that’s good because that insights debate,” he said.
Additionally, he believes that Trump’s ‘fake news’ claims have also helped drive public interest in the news industry.
“I think the fake news push is detrimental. We obviously think we create incredibly important journalism that’s of high quality. What’s been good for us is the news cycle has been so important that it’s been making a lot of people now go to news that never did. We’re seeing audiences [that] we’ve never seen. Time.com had the highest audience in their history in the first quarter,” he said.