Why is NYT ignoring these bombshell findings about its Big Oil advertisers?
Pretending your fossil fuel clients are acting in good faith is easier if you ignore the glaring evidence to the contrary.
On April 30, the findings of a nearly three-year long investigation by congressional staff into Big Oil’s “denial, disinformation and doublespeak” was published. The Senate budget committee held a hearing the next day to discuss these findings.
If you relied on the New York Times as your primary source of “all the news that’s fit to print,” the bombshell report and subsequent hearings are not things you would have read about—as the Gray Lady covered neither.
Things in the report that the New York Times didn’t deem newsworthy enough to report on:
Decades of Deception: New evidence confirms that fossil fuel companies (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP) “do not dispute that they have known for more than 60 years that burning fossil fuels causes climate change—yet have worked for decades to undermine public understanding and to deny the underlying science”1.
Shifting Tactics: The industry's approach went from outright denial to spreading misinformation and doublespeak. This includes:
Promoting natural gas as a clean "bridge fuel" while acknowledging its high emissions internally.
Making public pledges to fight climate change while lobbying against regulations and lacking a real plan.
Loudly supporting carbon capture and biofuels — but spending very little on them.
Trade Associations and Lobbying: Fossil fuel companies use industry groups (including the American Petroleum Institute and Chamber of Commerce) to spread confusing messages and lobby against climate action.
Funding Academia: They partner with universities (such as Princeton) to appear credible, influence research, and silence critical voices. This includes funding research favorable to fossil fuels and tracking critics.
Obstruction: The companies hampered the congressional investigation by refusing to fully comply with subpoenas and withholding documents.
It is very much within the public’s interest to know about this.
These findings show that far from being a part of the solution to the climate crisis (as they like to pretend), fossil fuel firms are continuing to make the crisis worse.
The full 65-page congressional report is downloadable as a PDF. Read a summary here.
You can also dive into gripping testimony delivered at the May 1 hearing by climate disinformation expert Geoffrey Supran that is “based on thousands of pages of documented evidence uncovered and analyzed by scholars, investigative journalists, and advocacy researchers.” His testimony starts with:
Big oil is the new big tobacco. Investigative journalism, white paper reports, and peer-reviewed research, including my own, clearly demonstrate that the fossil fuel regime has deliberately denied Americans and Congress their right to be accurately informed about the climate crisis, just as tobacco companies misled Americans about the harms of smoking. From strategy to networks to personnel to rhetoric, the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to deny and delay come straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook, always following the same four key steps:
Learn about the dangers of their products.
Scheme.
Deny the science and scaremonger about the economy.
Delay action with other forms of propaganda.
Supran’s testimony unpacks these four steps in clear, cogent detail. Read the rest of what he had to say here (because it’s not like you’ll find it in the New York Times!)
Why the silence, NYT?
The Guardian—which refuses to accept funding from fossil fuel advertisers—had not one but TWO articles covering the report and hearings.
If The Guardian thought this merited two stories, why did The New York Times not both to produce even one?
Does it have anything to do with The New York Times earning an estimated $20.3 million from fossil fuel advertisers between October 2020 and 20232?
NYT’s advertising clients over that period include Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and the American Petroleum Institute—the organizations at the heart of this congressional investigation.
Perhaps it’s easier to maintain the delusion that your high-paying fossil fuel clients are good faith actors if you elect to ignore the glaring evidence to the contrary.
Greenwashing must go!
While the lack of coverage of these latest revelations is hugely concerning, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the New York Times—along with a number of other major mainstream publications—has produced some excellent, rigorous reporting on climate.
But the insistence of NYT, and many others, to continue to showcase (and, in many instances, produce in-house) fossil fuel greenwashing means that Big Oil’s “denial, deception and doublespeak” can continue to sow confusion among readers.
A report by Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green for The Nation (in December 2023) on media greenwashing illustrates this (emphasis our own):
Spokespeople for Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Reuters told us that advertorial content is created by staff that are separated from the newsroom and their journalists are independent from their ad sales efforts. (The Economist and Politico did not respond to requests for comment). But the independence of these outlets’ journalists is not the point; what’s important is whether readers understand the difference between reporting and advertising. And according to a growing body of peer-reviewed research, they do not. A 2016 Georgetown University study, for example, found that about two-thirds of people confused advertorials—also known as native advertising—for “real” content. A 2018 Boston University study found that only one in 10 people recognized native advertising as advertising, rather than reporting. A 2016 study conducted by Stanford University researchers found that 80 percent of students mistook native ads for reported stories. That’s particularly important in the context of climate, where the sponsored content often contradicts the news articles.
Some asks for the Times
The Condor’s editor,
, writes:As a concerned New York Times reader, I’m calling on the paper to do two things:
When a congressional investigation and hearing uncovers important new information about corporate misbehavior, please cover it
Please stop creating and showcasing content (whether adverts, native advertising or advertorials) paid for by fossil fuel interests. Scientific research shows that many people can’t tell the difference between news reporting and greenwashing BS.
I hope you’ll join me in demanding that the New York Times does a better job—for its readers, and for the planet.
Elsewhere
In a recent edition of his must-read Hill Heat newsletter, Brad Johnson featured a list of articles about the hearing. They include the following:
The Guardian’s Dharna Noor noted that Sen. John Kennedy (R-Oil), who “has accepted more than $1.5m from the oil industry,” challenged Dr. Geoffrey Supranto call him a “sick fuck,” which is how a Climate Defiance protester confronted Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Coal).
At DeSmog, Adam Lowenstein wrote a comprehensive analysis of Exxon’s algae biofuel greenwashing campaign and of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) mocking Exxon’s claim that the First Amendment allowed it to defy a Congressional subpoena.
Common Dreams’ Jessica Corbett reported on the “scathing indictment” of Big Oil lies.
Arielle Samuelson at Heated highlighted the exchange between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former tobacco prosecutor Sharon Eubanks (whose steel-trap mind is dressed in velvet), in which she called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the oil industry for racketeering.
The report’s executive summary notes: ‘Documents [provided to the investigators] demonstrate for the first time that fossil fuel companies internally do not dispute that they have understood since at least the 1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying science. In fall 2015, blockbuster reporting by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Big Oil companies such as Exxon knew that burning fossil fuels was a major contributor to climate change. Companies publicly rejected the reporting at the time, but new documents corroborate the reporting and show that fossil fuel companies internally did not dispute the findings but tried to dismiss them as “hyperbolic” and “journalistic malpractice.”’ This is a big deal!
According to an investigation produced by DeSmog and Drilled, two fantastic climate accountability newsrooms. Their findings were the subject of stories in The Intercept and The Nation.