This video is sponsored by Brilliant.
[Fossil Fuel Advertisements]
In a world full of advertising, fossil fuel
companies are king. Despite overwhelming scientific
and public outcry, the oil and gas industry
continues to pour climate change-inducing
gases into the atmosphere, and they can get
away with it in part because these companies
have inundated the public with pro-fossil
fuel messaging for decades. Through this propaganda,
dirty oil & gas giants like Exxon rebrand
themselves as clean energy innovators on the
frontlines of finding some miracle solution
to our climate change problem. But these public
relations campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum,
they’ve been crafted for and at times are
created by our information sources: newspapers.
The Washington Post and the New York Times
among others are all publishing fossil fuel
ads that seem to contradict their climate
reporting. A contrast that baffles me. So
today, I’m going to dive deep into the long
history of fossil fuel advertising in our
news sources to understand not only what influence
this industry has over our news, but also
why this continues to happen in a time where
scientific evidence clearly shows that the
fossil fuel industry is destroying our present
and our future.
In 1972, the oil and gas company, Mobil, bought
some advertising space in the New York Times,
which, at first glance, is a relatively typical
course to take for a company looking to brighten
its public image. The New York Times was widely
read across the U.S. and so the logic went
that an advertisement could piggyback on that
exposure. Except this wasn’t your typical
ad. It didn’t have the usual trappings of
images, big text, and prices. No, Mobil was
trying to wage a different kind of war. The
ad space they bought sat directly across from
the New York Times editorial pages and the
advertisement they ran was a wall of text
made to mirror the opinion pieces. Essentially,
Mobil was trying to hide its fossil fuel propaganda
by transforming an advertisement into an editorial.
A marketing technique that would come to be
known as the advertorial. For over 30 years,
Mobil, and then ExxonMobil, published hundreds
of advertorials in the New York Times. They
used that space to spread doubt about the
validity of climate science and confuse the
public about the best path forward for climate
action. In one ExxonMobil advertorial from
2000, the company writes, “Some argue that
the science debate is settled and governments
should focus only on near-term policies--that
is empty rhetoric,” while in another from
1997, they claim “there is no consensus
on what constitutes ‘dangerous levels’
of emissions nor is there agreement on when,
where, and how best to reduce their impact.”
This anti-climate action rhetoric ran despite
the fact that ExxonMobil’s internal documents
and research understood that fossil fuels
were overwhelmingly to blame for the global
warming trend. In an assessment of ExxonMobil’s
internal and external climate communications
from 1977-2014, one study found that 80% of
Exxon’s internal documents admitted that
climate change was real and human-caused,
while only 12% of their public-facing advertorials
did, with 81% of the advertorials actively
expressing doubt. So, as early as 1972, the
New York Times acted as a bullhorn for ExxonMobil
to complicate and delay public action on climate
change. But things have started to change.
In the age of social media and websites, the
game has transformed. Those advertorials that
ran alongside the New York Times’ op-eds
are a thing of the past for Exxon. But The
New York Times hasn’t cut ties with ExxonMobil’s
propaganda machine. They’ve done the opposite.
The Times is now making Exxon’s ads themselves.
More specifically, the New York Times marketing
studio, T Brand is. It’s important to note
here that according to the New York Times,
there is a large wall between what its brand
studio creates and what its journalists write.
Indeed, The New York Times has published some
brilliant climate reporting in the past couple
of years. But as a company, the Times are
still aiding and abetting a fossil fuel agenda
by creating and running these ads. These campaigns
take many forms, like ExxonMobil’s algae
and biofuel research videos that use stop-motion
animation, and a millennial-sounding narrator
to seem relatable, or a slick scrolling infographic
about how Chevron is fueling prosperity in
the U.S. In most cases, like ExxonMobil’s
algae campaign, these curated ads greenwash
oil companies by painting them as clean energy
and technological innovators, when in reality
these operations are just a minuscule part
of their whole business. This is akin to cigarette
companies claiming that filters are the solution
to smoking-related health issues. It’s just
another way for fossil fuel companies like
ExxonMobil to continue business as usual without
having to own up to the consequences. And
yet, as Amy Westervelt from the podcast Drilled
discovered, The New York Times brand studio
will pretty much bend over backward to do
what a company wants: “Ad sales people start
offering all kinds of other things. You could
place content they write for you in the climate
section, you can peg it to key words like
climate change, and make sure it’s a suggested
next read on any related news story.”
So, while there is a firewall between the
Times’ journalists and its brand studio,
the problem is there isn’t one for the reader.
Not only is The New York Times perpetuating
the narrative of ExxonMobil as an energy innovator,
but they are also blurring the lines between
advertisement and journalism. Again, Westervelt
puts it best in her podcast: “In 2020, influence
doesn’t look like an oil tycoon in a top
hat showing up at your desk to twirl his mustache
and tell you to spike a story. It looks like
readers being fed a bunch of oil propaganda
before, after and right next to your legit
climate reporting.” And more and more, readers
struggle to find the difference between this
kind of native advertising and actual reporting.
One 2018 study found that fewer than 1 in
10 readers recognized the test article as
advertising, while another 2014 study revealed
that “even when native advertising is labeled,
a significant number of audience members may
not perceive it as such.” In short, The
New York Times is disseminating this kind
of native advertising throughout their brand,
which when it comes to fossil fuel companies
interested in shaping the narrative around
climate change, could hinder much needed climate
action.
But it’s important to note that this isn’t
happening because the New York Times is a
sinister entity hoping to throw the world
into chaos. The Times built a brand studio
and created these ads because it needs money,
and the unfortunate truth is that fossil fuel
companies enjoy the enormous amount of wealth
and power to supply that money. Ideally, large
news sources like The New York Times and The
Washington Post will stop running and making
ads for such a destructive industry, but a
chunk of their annual revenue is reliant on
integrated advertisements. In 2017, 20 percent
of all advertising income for news media organizations
came from native ads. That being said there
are similar sized news organizations that
are doing the work to purge fossil fuel influence
from their pages. The Guardian announced this
January that it would no longer advertise
or take money from fossil fuel companies.
showing that it is possible to continue to
pursue essential journalism without the yolk
of the oil and gas industry on their back.
This is the type of action that we need to
see from our news sources. The Guardian’s
blockade of fossil fuel advertising stymies
the massive ideological efforts of the fossil
fuel industry. Essentially, they’re muzzling
a dangerous narrative at its source. But the
unfortunate truth is that we live in an economy
that pours much more of its money into a polluting
industry than it does an investigative, truth
seeking one. An economy where to have long-form
investigative pieces you also need to have
oil & gas ads running alongside it. But finding
ways forward in journalism without the influence
of fossil fuels is essential if we are to
truely tackle climate change. Because, at
the end of the day, the stories we tell and
the ideas we seek not only inform our present,
but also they shape our future.
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Hey everyone, Charlie here. This video, as
always, was made possible by my patreon supporters.
They donate a couple of dollars each month
to help me grow and build this channel so
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you so much to my patreon supporters and thank
you for watching! I’ll see you in two weeks!
