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NYT has T brand studio

https://www.criticalfrequency.org/drilled

exxonknewS 12 23

...“Oil and gas companies are under pressure, desperately trying to preserve their social license through recycled pledges,” said David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, which last year published a report finding that Exxon’s climate commitments are “grossly insufficient” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Woods and his fellow oil company representatives are also using COP to push for unproven technologies that will prolong the lifespan of climate-wrecking fossil fuels. In an interview with Bloomberg at COP, Woods said the energy transition would require an assortment of “solutions” — including hydrogen and carbon capture — and “we need big companies to help with that.”

Woods rejected the IEA’s recent assessment of carbon capture as an “illusion,” telling Reuters that “you could say that about electric vehicles, about wind, about solar.” But according to the IEA, “The key actions required to bend the emissions curve sharply downwards by 2030 are well understood, most often cost effective and are taking place at an accelerating rate. The scaling up of clean energy is the main factor behind a decline of fossil fuel demand of over 25% this decade.”

Yet unlike the billions it invests in carbon capture, Exxon is spending almost nothing on renewable sources of energy, while lobbying against the transition away from its core products.

“It’s no surprise that Exxon is pushing for the continued use of fossil fuels,” said Jessica Green, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. “Exxon is in a fight for its life. Real progress on climate change isn’t about more carbon markets or net zero pledges, it’s about putting the oil and gas industry out of business.”

A larger strategy

Woods’ deflections at COP are part of a larger strategy of “corporate issues management,” said Supran, which “the fossil fuel industry has been pioneering for decades.”

“It means having your fingers in all the pies, anticipating future threats to your business and neutralizing them through decades of 360-degree public affairs strategies,” he said.

Exxon has been working to shift the narrative outside of COP, too. “On November 30, the first day of COP 28, The New York Times included a full-page greenwashing ad from ExxonMobil,” Brad Johnson documented in Hill Heat on Monday. “Reuters coverage of Al Gore’s criticism of ExxonMobil’s presence at COP 28 was smothered by greenwashing ads from ExxonMobil. The Punchbowl News political newsletter today is Presented by ExxonMobil.” Yesterday’s Power Switch newsletter from Politico was Presented by ExxonMobil, too.

While the oil giant’s greenwashing may have ramped up around COP, it’s also a years-long affair — aided in large part by many of the same media outlets interviewing Woods at the conference. A major analysis of Big Oil’s advertising between October 2020 and October 2023 found that “many of the world’s most trusted English-language news publications help fossil fuel companies mislead readers about topics like the promise of carbon capture, the potential of ‘renewable biogas,’ and how much the industry contributes to the energy transition,” according to Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green.

The analysis, published by Drilled and DeSmog this week, found that Bloomberg Media Studios last year created a video for Exxon promoting carbon capture and hydrogen; Politico organized 37 e-mail campaigns for Exxon; and Exxon sponsored more than 100 editions of Washington Post newsletters in 2022 alone, as just a few examples.:}:

Ultimately, it’s up to the media, policymakers, and other major institutions to determine whether the oil companies still responsible for fueling climate catastrophe are allowed to have a platform to stand on — or whether, like Big Tobacco, their time to influence the debate about their products’ harm is finally up.

see Brulle

dunno if native, no link, ref as ads

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/oil-industry-documents-disinformation.html

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Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

By Hiroko Tabuchi

Sept. 14, 2022

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

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Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

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At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

At a hearing last year, oil industry executives stressed their support for a transition to clean energy and denied that they have misled the public. They acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, although none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said that fossil fuels were here to stay.

The committee’s subpoena has sought documents related to companies’ role in contributing to climate change, their marketing and lobbying efforts on climate, and the funding of third parties accused of spreading climate disinformation. Several of the companies and organizations subpoenaed — which include Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — have yet to produce some of the key documents that have been requested, according to committee staff members.

According to the staff, a significant part of the material submitted so far includes news clippings and other materials that were already public. Still, the documents gathered so far show that the companies’ internal discussions in recent years haven’t always matched up with their public statements and marketing campaigns, and that some of the companies’ leading climate strategies rely on unproven technologies.

In the Exxon memo describing the edits it sought in the oil industry policy statement, which was drawn up ahead of the 2019 United Nations global climate talks, Peter Trelenberg, Exxon’s manager of environmental policy and planning, wrote: “Need to remove reference to Paris Agreement” from the statement because “Creating a tie between our advocacy/engagements and the Paris Agreement could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.”

[The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods

Election Fraud Claims: A new report says that major social media companies continue to fuel false conspiracies about election fraud despite promises to combat misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.

Russian Falsehoods: Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming the West for disrupting the global food supply have bled into right-wing chat rooms and mainstream conservative news media in the United States.

Media Literacy Efforts: As young people spend more time online, educators are increasingly trying to offer students tools and strategies to protect themselves from false narratives.

Global Threat: New research shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents across 19 countries with advanced economies are very concerned about false information online.]

The memo, addressed to Exxon chief executive, Darren Woods, and other top executives, went on to indicate that Chevron had “expressed that they are generally aligned with these edits.”

Exxon and Chevron did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative did not comment on the advocacy document but said that “advocacy for Paris goals underpins everything that O.G.C.I. does.”

Separate files from Exxon show the company grappling with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign promoting the potential for fuels made from algae. The campaign focused on the promise of the technology and featured images of vast pools of algae, along with a scientist looking forward to calling herself an “energy farmer.” (Versions of the ads have appeared in The New York Times.)

A set of presentation notes that had been prepared for a September 2018 engineering talk by one of its executives stated that the technology is “still decades away from the scale we need.” And in a November 2016 email, an Exxon employee said that an early draft for the ad, prepared by the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide, needed to “replace any lines that imply the technology is live today.”

BBDO did not respond to a request for comment.

The Shell internal documents discussing the company’s “net zero” pathway also included guidelines for employees that stated, “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

[Algae at a greenhouse in La Jolla, Calif., in 2010. The operation was sponsored by Exxon Mobil.Credit...Sunday Huffaker for The New York Times

Curtis Smith, a spokesman for Shell, said in a statement that the company had provided nearly a half-million pages of documents to the committee and that “the small handful they chose to highlight are evidence of Shell’s extensive efforts to set aggressive targets.” Included in those documents are “challenging internal and external discussions,” he said.

He added that it was widely understood that Shell’s net zero scenarios “are not prescriptions, predictions or meant to represent Shell’s current business plan” and instead represent “the scale of the challenge and levers policymakers might pull.”

The committee’s work comes as Democrats’ climate agenda has been re-energized by the passage of a climate and tax bill that includes nearly $370 billion in tax incentives and programs intended to speed up the nation’s transition from an economy based on oil, gas and coal to one powered by wind, solar and other renewable forms of energy.

A number of cities and states have sued oil companies, alleging that they misled the public about fossil fuels’ role in warming the planet, with detrimental effects on local communities. Last year, a Dutch court ruled that Shell must substantially accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Shell has appealed the ruling.

The House committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday to examine recent record-breaking oil industry profits, hear from industry experts and from people affected by recent extreme weather events. It had also requested board members from the oil companies to attend. The companies declined.

At Thursday’s hearing, members also plan to highlight emails that appear to show oil executives making light of climate extreme-heat records. In an August 2017 email exchange, for example, two BP executives found humor in the news at the time that scientists had reported Earth’s warmest year on record.

“I’ll buy the first round Monday night before we say our goodbyes,” Joe Ellis, then BP vice president and head of U.S. government affairs, wrote to colleagues.

“A ‘hot toddy’ maybe?” Bob Stout, then vice president and head of regulatory affairs, wrote back.

The former BP executives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

J.P. Fielder, head of U.S. communications at BP, described the exchange as “inartful attempts at humor that do not reflect the values of BP and should not distract from our actions.” He noted that BP has committed to a net zero emissions target across its sales, operations and production by 2050 or sooner.

Hiroko Tabuchi is an investigative reporter on the Climate desk. She was part of the Times team that received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. @HirokoTabuchi • Facebook

art'l --> pitch?!

Where Did Credit Reporting Come From, and Why is it So Powerful Today? | History News Network

hether you’re signing up for your first-ever credit card or applying for a mortgage, your credit score plays an important role in determining whether or not you’ll be able to reach many of your financial goals. Your credit report and that three-digit credit score number can also make a big difference in how much interest you’ll have to pay on loans as well as the types of loans or credit cards you’ll qualify for.

Credit reports and credit scores as we know them today are a part of a long history of merchants and lenders collecting information and using it to evaluate whether a potential borrower would be able to pay their loans back in full and on time.

Select spoke with Josh Lauer, associate professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire and author of “Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America,” to understand more about how credit scoring and credit reporting came to be, and how both eventually became such an important part of our lives.

Before there was credit scoring, there was commercial credit reporting. Unlike consumer credit reporting, where individuals are evaluated for their credit risk level, commercial credit reporting was originally used by merchants to evaluate the creditworthiness of potential business customers.

In 1841, the Mercantile Agency was founded as one of the first commercial credit reporting agencies, using people known as correspondents to collect information about lenders and borrowers across the country. In a way, it functioned a bit like a modern-day credit reporting agency, collecting information about a businessperson’s marital status, ethnic background, credit history and age, which was then entered into a ledger that was centralized in one location, New York City.

This type of credit reporting relied on subjective methods of evaluation — in other words, correspondents would provide evaluations of people based on their racial background, gender and moral character.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century, when department stores and mass retailers gained popularity, that consumer credit reporting really took off.

Some mass retailers were installment houses, which would sell items such as furniture and drugs to customers via installment loans. The retailers needed a way to attract consumers and ensure they would be paid back, so they collected information about their customers and submitted it to a local credit bureau.

While there are three major consumer credit bureaus today — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — it would in fact take hundreds of years to develop a national centralized credit bureau.

It wasn’t until credit reporting became computerized in the 1960s that the industry would become consolidated.

In the 1960s, there were more than 2,000 credit bureaus across the U.S.. Over the course of the next 20 years, that number would shrink to five and, eventually, to the three major credit bureaus that exist today, Lauer explains.

“Before [the 1960s], all the files were in filing cabinets, on papers and cards,” says Lauer. “So we have these bureaus that have lots of money. They come into a town and buy up all the local credit bureaus with all [of] their information and then computerize it.”

It would take longer for credit scoring to gain widespread popularity in the U.S., however, as lenders were hesitant to give up their use of character assessments in the evaluation of someone’s creditworthiness.

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would take longer for credit scoring to gain widespread popularity in the U.S., however, as lenders were hesitant to give up their use of character assessments in the evaluation of someone’s creditworthiness.

Today, FICO scores are considered to be the most widely used type of credit score.

According to Sally Taylor, vice president and general manager of FICO Scores, the company was founded in 1956 and would initially work with business clients to develop credit scoring models that were specific to that company.

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A company would hire FICO and then use its customer files to produce an individualized model, which would then be used to calculate the credit risk level of its customers, explains Lauer. 

In 1989, FICO worked with the national credit bureaus to create a credit scoring model that could be used to evaluate all consumers — this is when the first generalizable credit score was born.

“The idea that there’s a generic model means that lots of different companies can use a credit score for the first time and this makes credit scoring much more accessible and popular among lenders,” says Lauer.

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FICO scores were then cemented as a crucial part of the financial decision-making process when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started requiring mortgage applicants to submit them in the mid-1990s.

Credit scores today

Today, there are many different types of credit scoring models used by a variety of lenders. FICO, however, remains one of the most widely used — the company claims its scores are used by 90% of top lenders.

FICO’s credit scoring models have evolved since 1989 to account for ever-changing consumer behaviors. Today, the scores range from 300 to 850, with higher scores indicating a greater likelihood that a consumer will pay back their loans in full and on time.

Unlike credit reporting and credit scoring methods of the past, factors such as race, age, gender and marital status are no longer considered. Instead, the following five factors are used to calculate an individual’s FICO credit score:

Payment history (35%): Whether or not you’ve paid past credit accounts on time

Amounts owed (30%): The total amount of credit and loans you’re currently using compared to your total credit limit — this is also known as your utilization rate

Length of credit history (15%): The length of time you’ve had credit

New credit (10%): How often you apply for and open new accounts

Credit mix (10%): The variety of credit products you have, including credit cards, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans

In recent years, there’s also been an effort to include data that’s not typically used to calculate credit scores. *Experian Boost™ was launched in 2019, allowing users to include recurring payments such as utility bills and monthly subscription payments on their Experian credit report.

Experian Boost™

Experian Boost™

LEARN MORE

On Experian’s secure site

Cost

Free

Average credit score increase

13 points, though results vary

Credit report affected

Experian

Credit scoring model used

FICO®

Terms apply.

How to sign up for Experian Boost™:

Connect the bank account(s) you use to pay your bills

Choose and verify the positive payment data you want added to your Experian credit file

Receive an updated FICO® Score

Learn more about eligible payments and how Experian Boost™ works.

In the U.S., 26 million Americans are considered to be credit ‘invisible’ due to having a lack of credit history, with the issue affecting more Black, Hispanic and low-income individuals. Experian Boost can be a useful tool for those with poor credit scores — or no credit scores at all — as it allows information regarding on-time payments to be included on their credit reports, which can help bump it up a bit.

For those who want more in depth information on their credit score and to monitor changes to their credit file, consider a credit monitoring service. Both Experian free credit monitoring and Experian IdentityWorks℠ provide you with potential fraud warnings which can help protect against identity theft.

Other free options to view your credit score include CreditWise from Capital One which shows you your VantageScore from TransUnion or Discover Credit Scorecard which shows your FICO Score from Experian.

Experian Dark Web Scan + Credit Monitoring

Experian Dark Web Scan + Credit Monitoring

LEARN MORE

On Experian’s secure site

Cost

Free

Credit bureaus monitored

Experian

Credit scoring model used

FICO®

Dark web scan

Yes, one-time only

Identity insurance

No

Terms apply.

Experian IdentityWorks℠

Experian IdentityWorks℠

LEARN MORE

On Experian’s secure site

Cost

$9.99 to $29.99 per month

Credit bureaus monitored

Experian for Plus plan or Experian, Equifax and TransUnion for Premium plan

Credit scoring model used

FICO®

Dark web scan

Yes

Identity insurance

Yes, up to $500,000 for Plus plan and up to $1 million for Premium plan*

Terms apply.

*Identity Theft Insurance underwritten by insurance company subsidiaries or affiliates of American International Group, Inc. (AIG). The description herein is a summary and intended for informational purposes only and does not include all terms, conditions and exclusions of the policies described. Please refer to the actual policies for terms, conditions, and exclusions of coverage. Coverage may not be available in all jurisdictions.

Catch up on Select’s in-depth coverage of personal finance, tech and tools, wellness and more, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up to date.

Read more

What is a FICO Score and why is it important?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t98nfoexa2fglji/SchmertzAMBspeech.jpeg?dl=0

speech meh

mobil op ed orig 1970, mgmt thot oil wd be in short supply, so boost mass transit?!  nyt widely read (and repected?] has op eds from editors an guests; run of paper" ad cheaper than specifc spot and corner of op ed page is among highest; p 24  1st try controv w/ other oil co b/c mass transit, but proved worked; by q972 every wk;  ow in wapo, LAT wsj boston globe...obsrvations kinda watered down op ed in 400 sunday supplements; other msg taylor to aud eg biz

https://www.drillednews.com/post/the-mobil-oil-flack-who-brought-us-false-equivalence-advertorials-and-corporate-free-speech

ep 4 and 5

In episodes four and five of Drilled, we tell the story of Herb Schmertz, former VP of Public Affairs for Mobil Oil. Schmertz brought many new PR tactics to the oil industry; he invented the advertorial, bullied journalists into false equivalence (what he called "creative confrontation"), and pushed for the first big corporate personhood case—long before Citizens United—back in the 1970s. He also coined the term "affinity of purpose" marketing to describe Mobil's longtime funding of Masterpiece Theatre and various other PBS programming, which helped to establish Mobil as "the thinking man's oil company."

Collected below are examples of the advertorials Schmertz distributed (in numerous interviews he refers to them as "pamphlets" and to The New York Timesas an excellent distribution system for the company's pamphlets), as well as some of the documents we referred to in the episode (speeches Schmertz gave, transcripts of interviews with him, and a Mobil doc explaining its advertorial strategy and the success of it). You can also listen to the episodes wherever you get your podcasts, or via the embedded players below.

Documents:

• 1978 briefing for the American Management Association, _{"Corporations and the First Amendment"}_

• _{1982 internal Mobil progress report on its advertorial program}_, uncovered by the Climate Investigations Center

• 1984 article by Schmertz in the journal Communications and Law, entitled _{"The Press and The Public"}_

• 1987 Herb Schmertz speech_{ "Patronage, Creativity, and American Culture: Patronage that Pays"}_given at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT

• 1991 _{transcript of interview }_with Laurence Jarvik for the book Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality

Advertorials

sum

Fossil fuel companies have been lying to the public for decades; it's well-documented that almost as soon as climate change became a scientific reality, they actively downplayed the crisis. But to keep Americans unaware of the growing urgency of our environmental problem, those same companies needed a way to paint themselves as heroes. Advertising allowed fossil fuel companies to sell themselves, not their products, as the good guys. The depictions of billion-dollar companies were often folksy, innovative, innocent, and brazenly, stereotypically American. The strategy was genius. It’s also now the subject of congressional scrutiny. This week, the House Oversight Committee officially launched an investigation into the fossil fuel industry's disinformation efforts and their impact on the climate crisis. Journalist and podcast host Amy Westervelt wanted to go back to the beginning — to find out how advertising, the media, and the fossil fuel industry became so intertwined. Her podcast Drilled profiled several of the men who invented the public relations business we know today — starting with a man named Herb Schmertz.

This is a segment from our September 17th, 2021 program, :{:{Fire and Brimstone:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}::(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:.

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The Birth of Climate Disinformation

Photograph of Herb Schmertz in his office, circa mid 1980s.

TRANSCRIPT

SACHA PFEIFFER We heard Hertsgaard say that fossil fuel companies have been lying to the public for decades. In fact, it's well documented that almost as soon as climate change became a scientific reality, they actively downplayed the crisis. But to keep Americans unaware of the growing urgency of our environmental problem, those same companies needed a way to paint themselves as heroes. Advertising allowed fossil fuel companies to sell themselves, not their products, as the good guys. The depictions of billion dollar companies were often folksy, innovative, innocent and brazenly, stereotypically American. The strategy was genius. It's also now the subject of congressional scrutiny. This week, the House Oversight Committee officially launched an investigation into the fossil fuel industry's disinformation efforts and their impact on the climate crisis. Journalist and podcast host Amy Westervelt wanted to go back to the beginning to find out how advertising the media and the fossil fuel industry became so intertwined. Her podcast Drilled, profiled several of the men who invented the public relations business we know today. The following is an excerpt from one of those episodes.

[CLIP]

HERB SCHMERTZIf you're going to do the job properly, you have to find unconventional ways to communicate to the public. And it's not a question of convincing the press of anything. It's a question of convincing the public [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT That’s Mobil Oil's legendary PR guy, Herb Schmertz. Schmertz was VP of public affairs for Mobil for decades. Slick and handsome, always with an expensive suit, he was the smartest guy in the room and mostly thought that both journalists and other PR guys were idiots. He ran PR for Mobil Oil from 1969 to 1988 and became a master of media manipulation. Schmertz didn't just focus on placing particular stories he set about fundamentally changing the relationship between corporations and the media. To Schmertz, the press was more of an obstacle between him and the public or Mobil and policy makers.

[CLIP]

HERB SCHMERTZ And to do the job properly, you have to really go around the press or beyond the press or against the press to get a story out so that the public focuses on it, not the press. If you're just going to limit yourself to getting the press to focus on it, you're not doing the entire job. [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT Schmertz is the guy who really turned media into another propaganda tool for the fossil fuel industry. He invented the advertorial for a start. He also invented issue advertising, which is now the only type of advertising the oil industry does. You'd think all they do is farm algae and research carbon capture and worry about climate change if you only paid attention to their ads.

[CLIP]

EXXON MOBIL ADVERT Energy is a complex challenge. People want power and power plants have more than a third of energy related carbon emissions. The challenge is to capture the emissions before they're released into the atmosphere. Exxon Mobil.... [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT Schmertz, also bullied journalists into covering big oil’s side of the story, and he encouraged his peers to do the same. Which, sadly, worked really well, and he lobbied for corporate First Amendment rights and against any media regulations that would make it harder for him to use the press as a tool. Known during his heyday for dapper suits, cigars and generally being something of a dandy. For the first half of his life, Herb Schmertz seemed more destined to be secretary of labor than a famous PR guy. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1955, Schmertz was drafted into the Army. The Vietnam War was just beginning, given his law background, Schmertz was sent straight to work in counterintelligence in Washington, D.C. After 2 years there, it was back to law for Schmerts. Labor law, following in the footsteps of his older brother. In 1960, Schmertz signed on to work for JFK's campaign.

[CLIP OF JFK AD PLAYS, CHORUS SINGS "KENNEDY" REPEATEDLY]

AMY WESTERVELT He was a Democrat, an idealist, and he helped the campaign with voter registration and reaching out to special groups. Including labor and various ethnic communities in New York. When he went to work for Mobil, commerce is actually still working in labor. He handled the company's labor relations for 5 years, but his background in law and political campaigning, combined with his relationships with various labor unions, made Schmertz an even greater, if unexpected, fit for the company's public affairs office. By this point, 1969, Mobil's CEO was a man named Rawleigh Warner. Warner wanted Mobil, which always seemed to be playing catch up to Exxon, to be more of a visible player in the industry. Schmertz had a lot of ideas on that front, starting with humanizing Mobil. Giving the company a personality, complete with ideas that needed to be shared. Here's Schmertz much later in life, describing that strategy.

[CLIP]

HERB SCHMERTZ As a personality where we believe very strongly about the importance of public policy. We believe fervently that as custodians of vast resources and one that we were not doing our job if we did not participate in the marketplace of ideas [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT To get all the facets of the corporation's personality across to the public, Schmertz used the tools he's come to be known for. The issue ad and the advertorial. The latter was born in 1970, when the New York Times opened up its op-ed pages to advertising for the first time. Schmertz wanted Mobil's ad to be just as smart and provocative as any editorial that might appear in the section otherwise. He hired legit writers to write them and eventually ran them every week for decades. They ran the gamut from squawking about taxes, to complaining about the media,to unexpected takes in favor of public transit. Schmertz talked about one of his advertorials on the PBS show The Open Mind in 1980.

[CLIP]

DAVE Herb, thanks for joining me today.

HERB SCHMERTZ A great pleasure to be here Dave.

DAVE I want to turn as quickly as possible to a new fairy tale, the Mobil ad or op ed piece or editorial, call it what you will ...

HERB SCHMERTZ We call them, pamphlets,.

DAVE Pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers.

HERB SCHMERTZ Yes. [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT A new kind of fairy tale was the title of Schmertz's latest advertorial, and it criticized PBS for running a film that stereotyped Saudi Arabians. It was, of course, in Mobil's interest to be seen as a friend and staunch defender of Saudi Arabia.At this point in time in particular, the company was increasing its profits mainly by expanding its development and production in Saudi Arabia.

[CLIP]

DAVE At the end, your conclusion in the ad, we hope that the management of the Public Broadcasting Service will review its decision to run this film. Meaning you hoped they wouldn't run it.

HERB SCHMERTZ Well not necessarily [OVERTALK]

DAVE ...and exercise responsible judgment in the light of what is in the best interest of the United States.

HERB SCHMERTZ Right

DAVE Do you think they did exercise responsible judgment?

HERB SCHMERTZ I think they did a better job after this ad period than they otherwise would have, but they could have done substantially more [END CLIP]

SACHA PFEIFFER Driven, at least in part by this advertorial, PBS aired a panel discussion following that film where Mobil's position was represented alongside other voices.

AMY WESTERVELT In various documents and speeches, Schmertz referred to how they helped shape the discourse on key issues to the company and established mobile as the thinking man's oil company. In a long buried briefing that we found called the Corporations and the First Amendment that Schmertz wrote for the American Management Association in 1978, he explains why he chose The New York Times for these ads. He writes, quote, The Times was chosen because it is published in the nation's leading population communications and business center. Because it has a highly intelligent, vocal, sophisticated readership and because it reaches legislators and other government officials. In short, it was the paper most likely to reach the largest number of opinion leaders and decision makers. Schmertz also talks about the program as a great success, in this briefing. "Mobil found that the medium worked," he writes. "The messages stimulated discussion among influentials on both sides of the issue. Exactly what the company had set out to do." But it turns out that the result of placing all those ads was quite different from simply stimulating discussion, not just in terms of reaching a large audience of readers, but also in shaping the Times his own coverage of these issues.

KERT DAVIES They talk about having influence The New York Times editorial viewpoints.

SACHA PFEIFFER Kert Davies is the founder and director of the Climate Investigation Center, a nonprofit watchdog group that focuses on influence around energy and environmental policy. They uncovered an internal marketing report from 1982 in which Mobil's marketing and PR team was reporting to the company's leadership about how these advertorials had done.

KERT DAVIES The document says, quote, our analysis shows that the Times has altered or significantly softened its viewpoints on conservation, moving from a total reliance on conservation to advocating increased production incentives to solve the supply shortage on monopoly and divestiture. Moving from approving the breakup of the oil companies to opposing divestiture.Moving from advocating strict environmental safeguards to suggesting more relaxed controls on offshore drilling. Moving from valuing environmental concerns at the expense of exploration and development, to urging accelerated offshore drilling. So they are tallying how they have affected the viewpoints of The New York Times on conservation, monopoly and divestiture. Decontrol, natural gas, coal, offshore drilling, all things that they had written op eds on.

GEOFFREY SUPRAN And they've been open and forthright about this, even in some of the editorials themselves.

SACHA PFEIFFER Harvard science historian Geoffrey Supran has studied these advertorials at length.

GEOFFREY SUPRAN No doubt the fossil fuel industry has been very effective at embedding themselves into our culture and our society and our media in an increasingly insidious way that makes it hard to discern when you are being advertised to, versus simply being reprogrammed to see the world and society in a slightly different way.

AMY WESTERVELT Mobil was convinced enough that its advertorial strategy worked, to keep running them weekly in the Times for decades. It was even a program that Exxon kept going after it acquired Mobil.

GEOFFREY SUPRANThey've taken out about one in four of all the advertorials that have ever appeared on the op ed page of The New York Times.

AMY WESTERVELT He said one in four. So 25 percent of all advertorials that have ever run in the New York Times op ed pages were commissioned by Mobil or ExxonMobil.

GEOFFREY SUPRAN Political scientists studying these efforts have described this campaign as towering over all other competitors in its volume and expense.

AMY WESTERVELT ExxonMobil doesn't run its advertorials anymore, but it's moved on to the latest iteration. Campaigns made by The New York Times itself. It's not the newsroom, it's the brand studio that The New York Times created, but still, it's the same company that puts out The New York Times newspaper – making oil companies ads for them. See if you can spot a bit of the Schmertz magic here. In 1978, he said the goal of Mobil's advertorial campaigns was to, quote, stimulate discussion among influentials. In 2020, The New York Times brand studio website's tagline is, quote, stories that influenced the influential. Here's a campaign they did for ExxonMobil last year. Highlighting the company's algae biofuel program.

[CLIP]

ALGAE BIOFUEL ADVERT These vibrant green dots, microscopic living organisms are algae. Look closely, algae grows almost everywhere from murky ponds. [END CLIP]

AMY WESTERVELT Again, the brand studio is separate from the newsroom. There's a definite firewall between advertising and editorial. And every time I talk about these campaigns, New York Times reporters bristle at the idea that they are being accused of being manipulated or influenced by industry. Whether they are or aren't influenced is not really the point. It's not even the goal of these campaigns. The goal is to reach and influence certain types of readers and to wrap the industry's messages in the cloak of credibility provided by The New York Times or The Washington Post, which also does this. 

Last year, The Post ran a series of stories that its brand studio created for the American Petroleum Institute, all about how, quote, natural gas and oil are helping to deliver a sustainable fuel mix. These campaigns are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for newspapers at a time when the business model for journalism has never been more strained. And when you ask for proposals on them, as I did, ad sales, people start offering all kinds of things. You could place content they write for you in the climate section. You can peg it two key words like climate change and make sure it's a suggested next read on any related news story. 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. We have Herb Schmertz to thank for that.

SACHA PFEIFFER That was an excerpt from the Mad Men season of Drilled, an Investigated podcast about climate change hosted by Amy Westervelt.

In March, a report by the Climate Investigations Center tallied $1.4 billion worth of public relations, advertising, and communications contracts signed by energy and business trade associations from 2008 to 2017. One organization, the American Petroleum Institute (API), accounted for nearly half of that sum.

The Evolution of Fossil Fuel Messaging — and Climate Science Denial

Amid the investigations into their communications on climate change, many fossil fuel companies have been slowly re-tooling their messaging.

Some have acknowledged a need to transition away from fossil fuels — but at what critics respond would be a very slow pace.

Others have continued to push natural gas as a climate-friendly fossil fuel, despite the industry’s severe climate-changing methane problems. API,for example, hasplaced adsclaiming natural gas can “help meet the growing global demand for sustainable energy” under the Washington Post’s “branded content platform,” as The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner reported in April.

Other campaigns ditch mention of climate change and pollution all together, instead focusing on the benefits of products made from fossil fuels.

During the Super Bowl in 2017, the American Petroleum Institute released an ad campaign called Power Past Impossible, touting the many uses of oil and natural gas and highlighting how dependent modern life is on the byproducts of these fossil fuels.

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins of the UK-based think tank InfluenceMap said in a March statement accompanying a report he authored on public relations campaigns by oil and gas giants. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

The shift doesn’t spell the end of climate science denial — DeSmog’s database of individuals and organizations that seek to cast doubt on climate science or oppose action to prevent some of the worst effects of warming the world includes roughly 225 organizations — and that list continues to grow.

omfg

https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/41282-Report-Shows-Chevron-Lawyers-at-Gibson-Dunn-Falsified-Evidence-to-Target-Steven-Donziger-in-Ecuador-Pollution-Case

NEW YORK, Aug. 15 /CSRwire/ - The New York bar’s unprecedented attempt to suspend prominent corporate accountability attorney Steven Donziger without a hearing after he helped Ecuadorian Indigenous peoples win a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against Chevron is based on false testimony from a paid company witness coached 53 days by lawyers at the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, according to a bombshell report produced by one of the world’s leading forensic computer investigators.

Donziger still maintains his law license and is helping his clients in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest enforce their judgment by trying to seize Chevron’s substantial assets in Canada, where three appellate courts have issued unanimous rulings in their favor. (See here.) But behind the scenes,Chevron’s batallion-sized U.S. legal team – it has included 2,000 lawyers from at least 60 firms at a cost of at least $2 billion – has trained its sites on demonizing Donziger as part of a new corporate “playbook” invented by the company’s attorneys at the Gibson Dunn firm and marketed to scandal-plagued clients facing major liabilities.

(See this article for background on Chevron’s intimidation campaign and here for an article in the Huffington Post about how Chevron’s defense has unraveled.)

According to multiple sources, the Gibson Dunn marketing playbook involves what the firm calls the “kill step” to defeat the enforcement in the U.S. of civil money judgements obtained from foreign courts. The “kill step” usually involves accusing opposing counsel of “fraud” and other misconduct to try to intimidate them into withdrawing, thereby leaving the corporation’s victims defenseless and unable to continue with their cases. If actual evidence of fraud does not exist, as in the Ecuador matter, the Gibson Dunn lawyers will hire investigators to bribe foreign witnesses to concoct false stories of “fraud” about opposing counsel to be presented in U.S. courts; the firm’s lawyers are theoretically protected from any downside risk by the general inability of U.S. courts to force foreigners to appear or be deposed.

The Gibson Dunn “kill step” is now being deployed against Donziger, who faces an interim suspension by the New York bar after staff attorneys designated him as an “immediate threat to the public order” based on highly disputed testimony from a Chevron-paid witness who has admitted under oath that he repeatedly lied to the company. Prominent members of the legal community, including First Amendment lawyer Marty Garbus and Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, expressed “shock” and “dismay” at the bar’s decision to suspend Donziger without a hearing. Donziger is fighting the allegations in a post-suspension hearing that likely will take place in September and be open to the public.

Gibson Dunn used the same “kill step” strategy roughly ten years ago on behalf of the Dole Food Company, which faced major liability in Nicaraguan courts for causing infertility in banana workers after it used an illegal pesticide that had been banned in the United States. According to multiple sources, evidence emerged in the Dole case that Gibson Dunn’s lawyers and investigators engaged in perjury, witness bribery, and fabrication of evidence to have the company’s liability thrown out of a California state court, according to legal documents. A key part of the strategy was an attack campaign leveled against the U.S. lawyer for the Nicaraguan victims, Jorge Dominguez, that included an attempt to have him disbarred, according to lawyers and others who worked on the matter.

Among other violations in the Dole case, Gibson Dunn’s lawyers hired an investigations firm in Mexico (called Investigative Research and headed by ex-CIA agent, Douglas Beard) to recruit and pay a Nicaraguan man, Jamie Gonzalez, to provide a false affidavit that fabricated a meeting attended by the Nicaraguan trial judge where the case supposedly was “fixed” against Dole. Although the meeting never took place, lawyers at the Gibson Dunn firm – including Scott Edelman, Ted Boutrous, and Andrea Neumann, all of whom orchestrated the scheme -- used the fabricated “evidence” of the meeting to have an ethics complaint filed against California lawyer Dominguez, much as the firm is now doing to Donziger with  testimony from an admittedly corrupt witness from Ecuador bribed with at least $2 million from Chevron to concoct his story. (The attempt to disbar Dominguez failed; the attempt to disbar Donziger in New York is pending but he still maintains his law license in another jurisdiction.)

Donziger, a Harvard Law graduate who has not received even a single client complaint in 25 years of legal practice, is fighting back against what he called a “wide-ranging conspiracy” hatched in Chevron’s executive suits and Gibson Dunn’s New York offices to try to taint him with “fraud” by using false or distorted evidence as a way to evade the liability to the Indigenous groups in Ecuador. Those involved in the conspiracy, he said, include Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate, Gibson Dunn’s chief of litigation Randy Mastro, as well as several Gibson Dunn lawyers who had previously been involved in corrupting the Dole cases, including Neumann and Boutrous. In a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, Donziger laid out evidence that the Gibson Dunn firm and Chevron have carried out a conspiracy to falsify evidence as part of its “kill step” strategy to attack the Ecuador pollution judgment, now worth $12 billion with statutory interest.

“What Chevron and Gibson Dunn are doing to Steven is lawless and the kind of thing one normally sees in North Korea or Saudi Arabia, not in New York,” said Rex Weyler, the co-founder of Greenpeace and a supporter of the Ecuadorian communities. “It is shocking to witness how the New York judiciary has allowed itself to be used by Chevron and Gibson Dunn as a key arm of the company’s unethical litigation strategy that ultimately is designed to screw over some of the most vulnerable people on the planet who trust and rely on Steven to advocate for them. The Department of Justice needs to open an investigation of this law firm for its pattern of engaging in unethical and even criminal acts in the Ecuador case and others.”

The Gibson Dunn “kill step” in the Ecuador case resulted in a highly controversial civil “racketeering” judgment in 2014 from New York trial judge Lewis A. Kaplan against Donziger and his Ecuadorian clients that was based largely on the false testimony of Chevron’s paid witness, Alberto Guerra. Guerra’s payments have included an enormous monthly salary at least 20 times higher than his prior salary in Ecuador, health care, and the reimbursement of all income tax payments as well as expenses to move his entire family from Ecuador to the United States. Guerra admitted to taking bribes in Ecuador and has been on the Chevron payroll for several years at an undisclosed location in the United States without doing any work other than serving as a witness. (See this summary of Guerra’s perjury and this legal brief documenting Chevron’s and Gibson Dunn’s corrupt conduct.)

Guerra also has admitted under oath that he was coached for 53 days by Gibson Dunn’s lawyers, including Mastro and Avi Weitzman, before he went into Kaplan’s court and accused Donziger of approving a bribe to an Ecuador trial judge so the plaintiffs could “ghostwrite” the judgment against the oil major. Later, Guerra recanted key parts of his testimony under oath in a private arbitration proceeding while a forensic report proved he lied about both the bribe and the allegation that Donziger orchestrated the “ghostwriting” of the judge. Donziger has consistently denied Guerra’s allegations.

Despite what appear to be the many deep-seated and even fatal problems with Guerra’s testimony, two staff attorneys at the New York bar grievance committee – who oversee attorney conduct – relied on his story about judicial bribery in Ecuador to suspend Donziger from the practice of law without a hearing by designating the New York lawyer an “immediate threat to the public order”. Yet Kaplan’s findings, used by the New York bar in its decision, have been rejected by at least 17 appellate judges in Ecuador and by Canada’s entire Supreme Court when it ruled unanimously in favor of the Ecuadorians in a judgment enforcement action in that country. Four layers of courts in Ecuador – including the country’s Constitutional Court – have affirmed voluminous evidence that the oil major dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancer that has killed or threatens to kill thousands of people.

(See here and here for comments by prominent lawyers, including Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and trial attorney Richard Friedman, in support of Donziger. See this article on how Ecuador’s Constitutional Court recently ruled 8-0 to affirm the judgment against Chevron. Here is a summary of the evidence against Chevron.) 

Donziger, who has been widely lauded for his public service work, criticized the New York bar for refusing to consider the extensive evidence that emerged after Kaplan’s trial that renders his findings erroneous or at least highly problematic. Donziger maintains wide support in the legal and environmental communities; several prominent environmental groups and lawyers, including Amazon Watch and Earth Rights International, have weighed in against Chevron with amicus briefs while Greenpeace Founder Weyler calls him a “hero” of the environmental movement. Musician Roger Waters even released a video on behalf of the Ecuadorians criticizing Kaplan.

Among the evidence ignored by the two staff attorneys of the bar grievance committee who are handling the matter – Jorge Dopico and Naomi Goldstein -- is a critical report from noted forensics expert J. Christopher Racich submitted in a parallel private arbitration proceeding initiated by Chevron against Ecuador’s government. The Racich report completely undermines Chevron’s defense strategy and renders Kaplan’s findings that the Ecuador judgment was “ghostwritten” as false, according to Aaron Page, a human rights lawyer who represents the Ecuadorians. (See here for the Racich report proving Chevron’s witness lied and here for a summary of that report.)

Racich’s investigation undermines Kaplan’s core findings that were then used by the bar grievance committee to suspend Donziger as follows:

**The report demonstrates that increasing amounts of the Ecuador judgment against Chevron were added to Word documents on the office computers of the Ecuador trial judge and that those documents were edited and saved in painstaking fashion more than 400 times. This corroborates the sworn testimony of the Ecuador trial judge, Nicolas Zambrano, that he wrote the judgment in his office and debunks the testimony of paid Chevron witness Guerra that it was given to the judge on a flash drive just prior to its issuance, after being written by the plaintiffs.

**There is no evidence from the Ecuador trial judge’s computers that any document was copied from a flash drive to create any part of the trial court judgment, as Chevron paid witness Guerra had claimed in testimony relied on by the New York bar staff attorneys to suspend Donziger. 

**Chevron’s paid expert, Spencer Lynch, independently examined the same computers and presented no evidence suggesting that any part of the Ecuador trial court judgment was received by trial judge Zambrano via email or from a flash drive – again debunking Guerra’s testimony.

**There is no document on the computer of Chevron witness Guerra that became the trial court judgment, directly undermining Guerra’s sworn testimony that he edited the judgment on his computer at the behest of the plaintiffs just before it was issued. 

According to the Racich report, the text and metadata of the documents on the computers of Ecuador trial judge Zambrano that contain the trial court judgment show that “these computers were used to create a document, add text to it, edit text within it, and save the document repeatedly over a four-month period of time.” “Furthermore, there is no evidence in the metadata that the versions of the [judgment documents] were provided in any way by Mr. Guerra, Pablo Fajardo [the lead Ecuadorian lawyer for the villagers], or anybody else,” Racich concluded.

Donziger criticized the bar grievance committee for relying on Kaplan’s findings and ignoring the Racich report and other critical evidence, while demanding that his designation as an “immediate threat to the public order” be lifted. He also demanded to be allowed a fact hearing to present the Racich report and other critical evidence that will demonstrate that Kaplan’s findings are erroneous and therefore cannot be used by the bar grievance committee as a basis for attorney discipline, although he believes they could be used as a basis for discipline against the Gibson Dunn lawyers who falsified evidence. Further underscoring the problems with the decision of the New York grievance committee is that the District of Columbia bar has decided to not move against Donziger based on the Kaplan decision given that the many problems with his findings and the fact that several issues involved are still being litigated in Canadian courts.

(For a detailed rebuttal of Kaplan’s erroneous findings, see Chevron’s RICO Fraud.)

“The bar grievance committee needs to demonstrate independence from Judge Kaplan and Chevron’s powerful and unethical law firm and really look hard at the evidence,” said Donziger. “In my opinion, it is a dereliction of duty for the New York grievance committee to assume that obviously flawed findings from a federal judge cannot be questioned when the judge never reviewed the Racich report or other critical evidence before coming to his conclusions, and when his findings have been contradicted by 17 appellate judges in another jurisdiction.

“Further, in my view there is indisputable evidence that Chevron’s lawyers at Gibson Dunn engaged in unethical and criminal activity to frame me with false witness testimony to please their most lucrative client, and that they have done this in other cases as part of a playbook marketed to high-paying corporations,” he added. “This begs the question: why is the New York bar grievance committee not investigating Chevron’s lawyers at Gibson Dunn for their patently unethical conduct, and instead focusing on me, a sole practitioner and human rights advocate?”

Gibson Dunn’s aggressive approach and willingness to cross the ethical line for its clients has frequently backfired against the law firm.

In a case eerily similar to Donziger’s experience, Gibson Dunn recently was sanctioned by the High Court of London for fabricating evidence to try to frame a political opponent of its client, then the President of the African nation of Djoubati. The Montana Supreme Court fined the firm $9.9 million for engaging in “legal thuggery” while a New York federal judge sanctioned Gibson Dunn for engaging in “unacceptable shenanigans” including hiding documents and outright lies. In the Ecuador case, the firm threatened the Ecuador trial judge with prison time unless he ruled in Chevron’s favor. (See this article by Greenpeace’s Weyler for a summary of Gibson Dunn’s many problems.)

Some of Donziger’s defenders, including human rights lawyer Page (see here), say he has been targeted with what is probably the most well-financed corporate retaliation campaign in history. Chevron in 2011 sued Donziger for $60 billion – thought to be the largest potential personal liability ever – before dropping the entire damages claim on the eve of Kaplan’s “racketeering” trial to avoid a jury of impartial fact-finders. Under the U.S. Constitution, a claim not involving money damages can be heard by a judge alone – a fact understood by Chevron that Donziger said guaranteed he would not be able to mount a meaningful defense given Kaplan’s obvious bias in favor of the company. (See this press release and this report for the many procedural and ethical problems with the Kaplan trial.)

The Racich report also corroborates :{the sworn testimony of Donziger:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:, who repeatedly has said under oath he engaged in no wrongdoing and that Guerra's testimony was false. For Donziger’s main appellate brief challenging Kaplan’s factual findings, see :{here:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:.

For purposes of protecting his due process rights and bearing witness to a flawed process, Donziger said he  plans to invite the public to his post-suspension hearing where he will try to reverse the bar’s decision to designate him as an “immediate threat to the public order.” However, the first “referee” appointed to oversee that hearing, corporate defense attorney Paul Doyle, resigned after several prominent lawyers backed Donziger and criticized the lack of due process afforded by the grievance committee. It also turns out that Doyle had represented Union Carbide in the Bhopal disaster in India.

==

==

punked by api

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-fuel-companies/

lerner

there  IT WAS in black and white ­— or black, white, and a palette of gentle greens and blues. With a headline predicting that natural gas “will thrive in the age of renewables,” the article made the case that there are limitations on solar and wind power and that — as a subhead spelled out in aquamarine type — natural gas “is part of the solution.” Why was the Washington Post weighing in on the need for continued production of this fossil fuel in the face of climate change?

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Or was it? On closer inspection, the report wasn’t coming from the D.C. paper’s newsroom. Though the link takes you to a page published by WashingtonPost.com, the story is actually a publication of WP BrandStudio, the paper’s branded content platform. In other words, the article is really an advertisement, and the copy was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The tagline — “Content from American Petroleum Institute” — is plain to see if you’re looking for it, though easy to miss if you’re not.

It’s not surprising that the trade group representing the oil and gas industry would want to leap to the defense of natural gas now. The notion that the energy source is a “bridge fuel” that will somehow safely deliver us to wind and solar — and past the threat of climate change — has been vaporized by recent science.

The combustion of natural gas does in fact create less carbon dioxide than the burning of coal, as the API “article” notes, pointing out that “new natural gas plants emit 50 to 60 percent less carbon into the atmosphere than new coal facilities.”

But what the piece doesn’t mention is that the drilling, extraction, and transport of natural gas also releases methane. And though carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere longer than methane, methane traps at least 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide before it degrades.

Nor does it reference the fact that the amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased sharply in the past few years and, scientists warn, threatens to derail efforts to limit warming. While there are questions as to which of several global sources of methane — including cows, wetlands, and coal mines — is driving the recent spike in emissions, evidence has tied it to the boom of natural gas production. And that in turn has led many scientists to assail the idea that natural gas is a “greener” fuel. In fact, depending on the leakage rate during production, natural gas may be even worse for the climate than coal.

“This idea that natural gas is better than coal is just a distraction,” said Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell whose has tied the particular type of methane newly found in the atmosphere to shale gas production. “If you’re serious about keeping the planet below 2 degrees of warming, you can’t do that without cutting down on methane. We need to move away from all fossil fuels as quickly as we can.”

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post piece — or rather, the American Petroleum Institute piece in the Washington Post — doesn’t include any comments from independent scientists like Howarth. Instead, it quotes Wayne Winegarden, a businessperson affiliated with climate-denying organizations such as the Heartland Institute and the Pacific Research Institute.

Fossil fuel companies aren’t the only ones using stories that appear to be part of a journalistic publication, but are actually paid for by advertisers in attempt to improve an image suffering in the coverage done by actual journalists. Native advertising, as it’s called, has spread misinformation on everything from the “superfood” moringa to Thai seafood slavery, and has raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

And WP BrandStudio, which has also produced spots for BP and Lockheed Martin, is hardly the only example of a branded content shop associated with a mainstream newspaper helping fossil fuel companies spin their message. T Brand Studio, a brand marketing unit within the New York Times, has produced pieces for Chevron,, and.:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"/maxresdefault.jpg).

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sponsored  content by the American Petroleum Institute, published on the Washington Post’s website.

Screenshot: The Intercept]

At a time when many publications are struggling to stay afloat — and cover the costs of environmental reporting — native advertising is an increasingly important piece of the financial puzzle. The paid features that mimic actual reporting brought in 20 percent of all advertising income for news media organizations in 2017,according to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and the Native Advertising Institute.

But the issue of fossil fuel companies’ massive spending to greenwash their image is quickly heating up as scientific evidence — and unbiased reporting on it — is pointing to the need to phase out fossil fuels as soon as possible. Industry trade groups spent almost $1.4 billion on PR, advertising and communications contractors over the past decade, according to the Climate Investigations Center, almost half of which came from the American Petroleum Institute.

The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies have spent some $1 billion on “narrative capture” and lobbying since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2016, according to a report published this month by Influence Map. That spending includes $195 million on “often misleading branding campaigns.”

Even before they kicked into high gear to counter the growing public awareness of climate change, some oil and gas companies were engaged in sly, aggressive, and destructive media efforts to counter their opponents.

In 2014, Chevron launched a publication that appears to exist for the sole purpose of defending its refinery in Richmond, California. The refinery had a long history of chemical leaks, fires, dangerous emissions, and unsafe conditions before a leak led to a massive explosion in 2012. The incident sent a “toxic fireball of smoke” over Richmond and prompted 15,000 residents to seek medical help, as the East Bay Express reported after the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board issued its final report on the incident in 2015.

But the Richmond Standard, a local publication Chevron launched in 2013, didn’t cover the report that way — and doesn’t appear to have covered it at all. The Standard “produces news about what is going on in the surrounding community,” according to Braden Reddall, an external affairs advisor for Chevron. And a recent edition of the site, which included an article on the announcement of a date for the coming Little League parade and a review of the local hot dog joint, bears that out.

Despite appearing to be an unbiased news source, the Standard also includes a section of feel-good news about the refinery that includes no mention of the health and safety issues other publications have reported as linked to the refinery. Chevron’s Reddall pointed out in an email that the section on the refinery is “clearly marked as editorial under the ‘Chevron Speaks’ heading.” His email also noted that “The West Contra Costa County region has embraced the publication.”

But not all locals have a positive view of the Standard. “They created it so they could control the narrative,” said Greg Karras, senior scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, a group that has been calling attention to health impacts of the refinery for decades. “When there’s something they want or don’t want and is really important to the business, they want their story about it to get out, rather than rely on independent reporting.”

Chevron seems to have had an even darker purpose in mind when it created the Amazon Post. The website, which has a “breaking news” column and “most read” section, identifies itself in small type as “Chevron’s Views and Opinions on the Ecuador Lawsuit.” But the Post’s real purpose appears to be the targeting of Steven Donziger — an attorney with whom the company has been engaged in a pitched legal battle over massive pollution in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador for more than two decades.

Chevron’s Reddall says that the company maintains the Amazon Post “to express the company’s views and opinions on a fraudulent lawsuit against the company in Ecuador” and that “the information about Steven Donziger chronicles his long history of illegal activity.”

For his part, Donziger, who was part of a legal team that won a $9.5 billion judgment in the Ecuadorian courts against Chevron over the pollution, says that the Post is just one of the tools the giant energy company hasused to personally and professionally destroy him. While three Ecuadorian courts, including the highest court in the land, upheld the judgment, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that it should not be enforced because parts of it were “corruptly ghostwritten” in return for the promise of a bribe.

Chevron, which has employed at least 2,000 lawyers and legal personnel from more than 60 firms to work on litigation around the pollution in Ecuador, also filed a lawsuit against Donziger in 2011 alleging that he won the judgment in Ecuador through fraud and racketeering. Kaplan decided the case in Chevron’s favor in a trial held without a jury. And recently that decision was the basis for Donziger having his legal license suspended without a hearing and his bank account frozen. While Donziger has denied that he committed misconduct and contested his suspension in court, the company has delighted over his suffering in the Amazon Post.

There may soon be more fossil fuel company publications entirely devoted to smearing the reputation of individuals, according to Robert Brulle. “They’re likely going to attack Alexandria Ocasio Cortez personally and demonize her. They’ve already begun that,” said Brulle, a sociologist and visiting professor of environment and society at Brown University. “It’s an old strategy — to delegitimize your opponents.”

Brulle also thinks that there will soon be more native advertising from oil and gas companies, which he classifies as “classic propaganda.” “We’re going to see a lot more from API, Exxon Mobil, and other companies,” said Brulle, who notes that the share of oil and gas industry spending on think tanks, such as Heartland, is about a tenth of its expenditures on communications. “As the threat of possible change to the fossil fuel industry increases, they ramp up their resources.”

And of course, change to our energy system is not just possible — it’s necessary.

“Nations have barely a decade to take ‘unprecedented’ actions and cut their emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst consequences of climate change,” as a December article about the climate talks in Poland explained. That article appeared in the Washington Post — the real one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio

T Brand Studio is a custom content studio that is a unit of The New York Times and produces paid native advertising for the newspaper.^[1] Notable campaigns have included a feature called "Woman Inmates: Why The Male Model Doesn't Work" to promote the Netflix program Orange Is The New Black,^[2] and a feature on the New York City Ballet for footwear company Cole Haan entitled "Grit and Grace".^[3][4]

The studio is a unit of The New York Times and is based in New York City.

• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{History:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Operations:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:

History

T Brand Studio was founded in early 2014.^[1] In 2015, the studio opened an office in London, with plans to use that office for expansion into the rest of the world, including Asia.^[4]

In March 2016, The New York Times bought Santa Monica, California-based Pinterest marketing company HelloSociety for an undisclosed amount, and it was announced that the company would be integrated with T Brand Studio.^[5]

In June 2017, T Brand Studio opened its Asian branch in Hong Kong.^[6]

Operations

The studio staff consists of journalists, video producers, technologists, strategists and social media experts.^[7] As of October 2015, the group had developed over 100 campaigns for more than 50 different brands.^[4] It was reported that almost 20% of The New York Times' digital advertising revenue came from T Brand Studio projects. That was estimated to be $35.7 million in 2014.^[4]

References

1. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio#cite_ref-naa_1-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio#cite_ref-naa_1-2) "How The New York Times T Brand Studio is evolving". naa.org. 2015-04-24. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
2. ^ "Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn't Work". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2016-03-13.
3. ^ "Grit and Grace". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2016-03-13.
4. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio#cite_ref-business_4-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio#cite_ref-business_4-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Brand_Studio#cite_ref-business_4-3) "We spoke to the two New York Times execs whose job is to double digital revenue to $800 million". businessinsider.com. 2015-10-13. Retrieved 2016-03-12.
5. ^ "New York Times Buys HelloSociety, A Social Media Agency". labusinessjournal.com. 2016-03-11. Retrieved 2016-03-11.
6. ^ "The New York Times opens branded content agency in Asia". Retrieved 2017-06-22.
7. ^ "Inside T Brand Studio, The New York Times' native ad unit". Digiday. 2014-12-02. Retrieved 2016-03-12.

External links

• Official website

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People	Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Mark Thompson (President and CEO) Dean Baquet James Bennet Meredith Kopit Levien Arthur Gregg Sulzberger Joseph Kahn
Newspapers	The New York Times The New York Times International Edition The New York Times International Weekly	The New York Times The New York Times International Edition The New York Times International Weekly
Magazines	The New York Times Magazine The New York Times Book Review T: The New York Times Style Magazine	The New York Times Magazine The New York Times Book Review T: The New York Times Style Magazine
Other assets	The Daily Donohue Malbaie Inc. The New York Times Syndicate & News Service The Takeaway Times Books The Wirecutter Full list	The Daily Donohue Malbaie Inc. The New York Times Syndicate & News Service The Takeaway Times Books The Wirecutter Full list
Publishers	Adolph Ochs Arthur Hays Sulzberger Orvil Dryfoos Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.	Adolph Ochs Arthur Hays Sulzberger Orvil Dryfoos Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.
Headquarters	New York Times Building (41 Park Row) (1889–1903) One Times Square (1903–1913) The Times Square Building (1913–2007) The New York Times Building (2007–present)	New York Times Building (41 Park Row) (1889–1903) One Times Square (1903–1913) The Times Square Building (1913–2007) The New York Times Building (2007–present)
Related articles	Pulitzer Prizes awarded to *The New York Times* staff *The New York Times* Best Seller list List of employees Controversies Carlos Slim (largest shareholder)	Pulitzer Prizes awarded to *The New York Times* staff *The New York Times* Best Seller list List of employees Controversies Carlos Slim (largest shareholder)

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• Advertising industry
• Online advertising methods
• Online advertising

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