10 TV Shows Boycotted For Ridiculous Reasons
6. The View Dissed Nurses
The View is an American morning talk show on ABC that follows the same format as most morning talk shows. That is, a panel of people yell over each other about something in the news, someone makes a joke about something, another person is totally ill-informed, more yelling ensues, and the episode is over. Unfortunately for The View, this format brought about boycotts when the topic of the day was nurses and host Joy Behar made a remark that nurses didn’t like.
During the episode in question, Behar wondered aloud why nurses wear “a doctor’s stethoscope on (their) neck,” a fact that caused many to think Behar was talking down to nurses and dismissing their contributions to medicine.
This led to a widespread boycott of the show under the hashtag #NursesUnite, in which nurses and other supporters called out the show's disrespect for the profession and launched a campaign to get people to stop watching. Once the boycott got started and spread on Twitter, The View did damage control, offered apologies, and even had a special nurse’s appreciation episode a few days later.
This was all too little too late, however, as several big sponsors ended up pulling their ads from the show and throwing their support behind the nurses of America instead.