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Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Favorite Media Partners
This story was co-reported with DeSmog and co-published by The Intercept and The Nation.
As she begins a recent episode of the podcast “Powered By How,” award-winning journalist Nisha Pillai talks about the difficulty of scaling innovation, then introduces her guests: a business psychologist, a renewable energy investor, and the head of an innovation lab. The guests go on to describe the complexities of climate change, the challenges to scaling any sort of technology, and what’s needed to engineer real solutions.
It sounds like any other business or energy podcast, but each episode in this eight-part series is actually an ad. The casual listener could easily miss the first 5 seconds, set to jangly, stereotypically podcast-y music, when Pillai, a former BBC World News presenter whose voice instills instant confidence, announces that this is a podcast from Reuters Plus in partnership with Saudi Aramco.
Pillai never explains that Reuters Plus is the internal ad studio at Reuters, not part of the newsroom. Nor does she remind listeners of the show’s sponsor when the head of the innovation lab, an Aramco executive, trots out the fossil fuel industry’s favorite line on climate: “We need to have collective action from all: government, industry, the developer of the technologies and the end consumer.”
Reuters is one of at least seven major news outlets whose internal brand studio creates and publishes misleading promotional content for fossil fuel companies, according to a new report released today. Known as advertorials or native advertising, the sponsored material is created to look like a publication’s authentic editorial work, lending a veneer of journalistic credibility to the fossil fuel industry’s key climate talking points.
In collaboration with The Intercept and The Nation, Drilled and DeSmog analyzed hundreds of advertorials and events, as well as ad data from Media Radar. Our analysis focused on the three years spanning October 2020 to October 2023, when the public ramped up calls for media, public relations, and advertising companies to cut their commercial ties with fossil fuel clients amid growing awareness that the industry’s deceptive messaging was slowing climate action.
All of the media companies reviewed — Bloomberg, The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Politico, Reuters, and The Washington Post — consistently top lists of “most-trusted” news outlets. They also all have internal brand studios that create advertising content for major oil and gas companies, furnishing the industry with an air of legitimacy as it pushes misleading climate claims to trusting readers. In addition to podcasts, newsletters, and videos, some of these outlets allow fossil fuel companies to sponsor their events. Reuters goes even further; its events staff creates custom summits for the industry explicitly designed to remove the “pain points” holding back faster production of oil and gas.[Disclosure: Matthew Green previously worked as a climate reporter for Reuters]
With United Nations climate talks underway in the United Arab Emirates, oil and gas companies have been sponsoring even more advertorials and events with media partners than usual, primarily designed to portray the industry as a climate leader.
“It's really outrageous that outlets like The New York Times or Bloomberg or Reuters would lend their imprimatur to content that is misleading at best and in some cases outright false,” said Naomi Oreskes, a climate disinformation expert and professor at Harvard University. “They’re manufacturing content that at best is completely one-sided, and at worst is disinformation, and pushing that to their readers.”
Spokespeople for Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Washington Post told us that advertorial content is created by staff that are separate from the newsroom, and their journalists are independent from their ad sales efforts. (Politico and The Economist did not respond to requests for comment). But the independence of these outlets’ journalists is not in question; what’s important is whether readers understand the difference between reporting and advertising. According to a growing body of peer-reviewed research, they do not.
A 2016 Georgetown University study, for example, found that advertorials are confused for “real” content by about two thirds of people. Another study, conducted in 2018 by Boston University researchers, found that only one in 10 people recognized native advertising as advertising, rather than reporting. In the context of climate change, the sponsored content often directly contradicts the news articles.
Michelle Amazeen, the lead author on the Boston University study, found that those who did recognize sponsored content for what it was thought less of the outlet they were reading. “It tarnishes the reputation of that news outlet,” Amazeen said. “So it’s baffling to me why newsrooms are continuing to pursue this.”
“Crafting Your Climate Narrative”
This year’s 28th annual UN climate negotiations, known as the Conference of the Parties or COP28, is currently being held in Dubai, the largest city in one of the world’s top oil-producing countries. Presided over by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the head of the UAE’s state-owned oil company, Adnoc, it is the most industry-influenced COP yet.
Fossil fuel companies, including Adnoc, are seeking to preserve their business models by promoting carbon capture and storage, hydrogen power, and carbon offsets as viable climate solutions, despite the fact that these technologies are on track to do little more than extend the life of the fossil fuel industry. As COP28 president, Al Jaber has backed these technologies in the leadup to the summit.
The enormous influence oil and gas executives are wielding at COP28 has thrown commercial partnerships between media outlets and the fossil fuel industry into sharper focus. Climate reporters at every outlet we analyzed have diligently covered the challenges that the industry’s so-called solutions face, but when that reporting is placed alongside corporate-sponsored content touting the technology’s benefits, it leaves readers confused.
In addition to the Reuters Plus podcast produced this year for Aramco, which touts the benefits of industry-backed “innovations” like synthetic fuels and “non-metallic” drilling materials—both of which have the added benefit of creating new revenue streams for the company’s petrochemical business—The New York Times’ T Brand Studio also created “The Energy Trilemma,” a 2022 podcast for BP about how high-emitting industries are decarbonizing, mostly through technology and not by reducing the development or use of fossil fuels. Bloomberg Media Studios, meanwhile, created a video for ExxonMobil touting hydrogen power, as well as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. In the video, Exxon CEO Darren Woods says the company is “ready to deploy CCS to reduce the world’s emissions,” but leaves out the fact that the company also plans to increase annual carbon dioxide emissions by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece — news Bloomberg’s own climate reporters broke.
Reuters Events also offered to help corporations hone their “climate narrative” at COP28, via opportunities to secure “exclusive interviews,” seats at high-level roundtables, coverage on the Reuters website, exclusive dinner invites, and a Reuters presence in corporate pavilions at the Dubai expo center where negotiations are held.
The media plays a fundamental role in shaping both policymakers’ and the public’s understanding of climate issues. According to communications agency BCW’s annual survey of media brands in Europe, Politico, Reuters, the Financial Times, and The Economist top the list of most influential media for European Union decision-makers. No surprise, then, that they are also amongst the fossil fuel industry’s favorite media partners.
“The considerations around what is the role of carbon-based industry in partnering with media organizations is not too dissimilar to the debates and discussions around what kind of role the carbon-based industry interests have in the climate talks themselves,” said Max Boykoff, who contributed research and analysis to the most recent climate mitigation report from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
“People aren't picking up the IPCC report or peer-reviewed research to understand climate change,” he added. “People are reading about it in the news. That’s what shapes their understanding.”
“Gross, Undermining, and Dangerous”
News outlets’ in-house ad agencies haven’t just helped greenwash the fossil fuel industry’s preferred climate solutions in the leadup to COP28. Over the past three years, the Financial Times’ FT Commercial team has created dedicated web pages for various fossil majors, including Equinor and Aramco, along with native content and videos, all focused on promoting oil and gas as a key component of the energy transition. FT’s recent Energy Transition Summit platformed talking points from executives at BP, Chevron, Eni, and Essar. At The Economist’s 2020 Sustainability Week event, BP featured as a platinum sponsor, while Petronas and Chevron sponsored the magazine’s Future of Energy Week in 2022.
Politico is one of the most consistent publishing partners for the fossil fuel industry. Over the past three years, it has run native ads more than 50 times for the American Petroleum Institute, the most powerful fossil fuel lobby in the U.S.; organized 37 email campaigns for ExxonMobil; and sent dozens of newsletters sponsored by BP and Chevron, the latter of which also sponsors Politico’s annual “Women Rule” summit. Since 2017, Shell has sponsored every one of Politico’s Energy Visions events (and companion web series), which examines “the politics and issues driving the energy transition conversation.”
According to data from Media Radar, The New York Times took in more than $20 million in revenue from fossil fuel advertisers from October 2020 to October 2023 — twice what any other outlet earned from the industry. That number is due largely to the paper’s relationship with Saudi Aramco, which brought in $13 million in ad revenue during that three-year period, via a combination of print, mobile, and video ads, as well as sponsored newsletters.
The revenue figure does not include creative services fees paid to the Times’s internal brand studio. New York Times spokesperson Alexis Mortenson said that the T Brand Studio creates custom content for fossil fuel advertisers in print, video, and digital, including podcasts, and promotes it to the New York Times audience via “dark social posts” — advertisements that cannot be found organically and do not appear on a brand's timeline. “We no longer allow organic social posts,” Mortenson noted. “Additionally, we allow fossil fuel advertisers to sponsor some newsletters. Fossil fuel advertisers, however, cannot sponsor any climate-related newsletter.”
Climate reporters at these outlets, who requested anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, described the practice as “gross,” “undermining,” and “dangerous.”
“Not only does it undermine the climate journalism these outlets are producing, but it actually signals to readers that climate change is not a serious issue,” one climate reporter said.
Another journalist at a major media organization said the outlet had undermined its credibility by striking commercial deals with oil and gas companies with a long history of hiring public relations agencies to cast doubt on climate science.
“Where is our integrity?” they said. “How can we expect people to take our climate coverage seriously after everything these oil companies have done to hide the truth?”
“Vast Sums of Money”
The fossil fuel industry’s attempts to extend its social license by buying friendly advertorials and other sponsored content date back to 1970, when Mobil Oil vice president of public affairs Herb Schmertz worked with the New York Times to create the first advertorial. The company proceeded to run these pieces, which Schmertz described as “political pamphlets,” in the Times every week for decades — a program that Mobil Oil extended to dozens of other outlets. The rest of the industry followed suit, and the practice has continued ever since. A peer-reviewed 2017 study of Mobil and then ExxonMobil’s New York Times advertorials found that 81 percent of the ones that mentioned climate change emphasized doubt in the science.
The advent of “brand studios” inside most major media outlets over the past decade has super-charged such content programs. Now many publications have staff dedicated to creating content for advertisers, and the outlets market their ability to tailor content to their readership. These offerings come at a higher cost than traditional ad buys, making them increasingly important to for-profit newsrooms facing a crisis in the traditional revenue models. And fossil fuel companies have been happy to pay.
“They wouldn't be spending vast sums of money on these campaigns if they didn't have a payoff, and it’s well-documented that for decades the fossil fuel industry has leveraged and weaponized and innovated the media technology of the day to its advantage,” said University of Miami researcher Geoffrey Supran, a co-author of the 2017 advertorial study with Oreskes. “It’s sometimes treated as a historical phenomenon, but in reality we’re living today with the digital descendants of the editorial campaigns pioneered by the fossil-fuel industry — the old strategy is very much alive and well.”
Taking a page from Schmertz’s book, The Washington Post Creative Group — the paper’s internal brand studio — describes on its website how it goes about “influencing the influencers.”
In 2022 alone, ExxonMobil sponsored more than 300 editions of Washington Post newsletters. Throughout 2020 and 2021, it also ran a series of editorials for the American Petroleum Institute on its website, including a multimedia piece that argued fossil gas is a complement to renewable energy and repeated claims that renewable energy is unreliable — talking points that the paper’s news reporters often debunk. During this time, the Washington Post editorial team published Pulitzer prize-winning climate reporting and expanded its climate coverage.
Reuters tops the list
Of all the outlets we reviewed, only Reuters offers fossil fuel advertisers every possible avenue to reach its audience. Its event arm even produces custom events for the industry, despite counting “freedom from bias” as a core pillar of its “Trust Principles,” which were adopted to protect the publication’s independence during World War II.
Since Reuters News, a subsidiary of Canadian media conglomerate Thomson Reuters, acquired an events business in 2019, the distinction between the company’s newsroom and its commercial ventures has become increasingly blurred. Reuters’ in-house creative studio produces native print, audio, video, and newsletter content for multiple oil majors, including Shell, Saudi Aramco, and BP, while Reuters journalists routinely take part as moderators and interviewers and propose guest speakers for Reuters Events.
In a media kit for “content opportunities in the upstream industry,” Reuters Events staff offers to produce webinars, whitepapers, and live-event interviews for those hoping to get in front of its “unrivalled audience reach of decision makers in the oil & gas industry.” For its Hydrogen 2023 event, Reuters Events produced a companion whitepaper on the top 100 hydrogen innovators, which it then used to market the event in various other outlets. Topping the list of innovators were key event sponsors, Chevron and Shell.
Reuters Events also stages fossil fuel industry trade shows aimed at maximizing production of oil and gas, and it creates digital events and webinars for vendors in the fossil fuel supply chain looking to connect with oil and gas companies. In June 2023, Reuters Events convened hundreds of oil, gas, and tech executives in Houston for “Reuters Events Data-driven Oil & Gas USA 2023,” a conference held under the banner “Scaling Digital to Maximize Profit.”
“Time is money, which is why our agenda gets straight to key pain points holding back drilling and production maximization,” the conference website said.
Reuters has also partnered with Chevron, the “diamond” sponsor of both its flagship Reuters Impact climate event in London in September 2023 and its Global Energy Transition Summit in New York this coming June 2024.
In December 2022, Reuters ran an event sponsored by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a lobby group which includes many of the world’s largest oil companies, to discuss the “major part” fossil fuel companies “play in ensuring a sustainable energy transition.” During the event, industry talking points were tweeted directly from the Reuters Events Twitter account.
A Reuters spokesperson said its Reuters Plus studio allows companies to connect with audiences attending Reuters Events via clearly labelled sponsored content.
"Reuters Events serves multiple professional audiences involved in the most important discussions of our day; facilitating these discussions is an important part of the Reuters Events business," the spokesperson said.
“Business-to-business publishers always had an events revenue stream, but consumer-facing news publications didn’t really get into the events business until digital advertising became commodified,” media analyst Ken Doctor said. Now, events represent 20 to 30 percent of revenue for some publications. Doctor called them a “thought-leader exercise” for the advertisers. “There are only a few top media brands out there, and if you are associated with any of them, there is a lot of tangential brand building benefit to that.”
The additional revenue may come at a reputational cost for news outlets. After seeing the scope of Reuters’ involvement with the fossil fuel industry, we wondered how an outlet that’s producing events for fossil fuel companies, aimed at increasing oil and gas development, could qualify for membership in Covering Climate Now, an organization that offers newsrooms the opportunity to “demonstrate leadership among their peers — and to show readers, listeners and viewers that they’re committed to telling the climate story with the rigor, focus, and urgency it deserves.”
“Covering Climate Now has had no communication with Reuters about any activities backing faster development of fossil fuels,” Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now, said in a written statement. [Disclosure: Amy Westervelt is a member of the steering committee of Covering Climate Now, of which both Drilled and DeSmog are members.]
“Covering Climate Now has always taken a big-tent approach to our partnership with news organizations. This story raises serious questions about news media responsibility in climate reporting, and Covering Climate Now plans to think more deeply about these questions and how we might adjust our policies going forward.”
Journalism is facing a crisis, and in the midst of declining revenues, trailing subscriptions, and shuttering newsrooms, outlets should be considering new ways to fund their work. But experts say that the seemingly wholesale embrace of powerful industries that we’re seeing from some of the world’s most trusted names in news requires a much more rigorous conversation than these outlets seem interested in having.
“In theory, these complaints [around advertorials] could possibly be addressed with better labeling and smarter design,” Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University, said. “But if you're saying that even when they are properly labeled and carefully set off from the real journalism, these advertorials weaken trust and miscommunicate about climate change, that is a problem that cannot be solved within the industry consensus around sponsored content. It’s implicitly calling for a new consensus.”
As their content marketing about the journey to net zero continues to get bigger and better, oil majors’ investments in fossil fuel development have only increased. A peer-reviewed study comparing oil majors’ advertising claims and actions, published in the journal Plos One in 2022, found that while the companies are talking more than ever about energy transition and decarbonization, they are not actually investing in either. “The companies are pledging a transition to clean energy and setting targets more than they are making concrete actions,” the study’s authors wrote.
Reporters at the publications we reviewed often cover this disconnect between advertising and action, challenging fossil fuel companies’ claims. Their employers, however, then sell the space next to those stories for industry-sponsored takes that research shows many readers take equally as seriously.
“I feel like it's really important not to beat around the bush and to just recognize these activities for what they are, which is literally Big Oil and mainstream media collaborating in PR campaigns for the industry,” said Supran, the University of Miami researcher. “It’s nothing short of that.”
Joey Grostern also contributed reporting to this story.
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