Action Playbook:

Get Fossil Fuel Ads Out of Journalism

The Goal: Stop trusted media outlets from publishing misleading paid fossil fuel content.

➡️ Action Overview

  1. Choose a media outlet to contact

  2. Craft and send your message

  3. Tag them on social media to amplify

  • Trusted news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post are running greenwashed ads from oil and gas companies, undermining their own rigorous climate journalism. This lets the worst emitters downplay their culpability and carry on business as usual. It's time for media companies to ban fossil fuel ads, just like they banned cigarette ads a generation ago.

    How long does it take? In less time than it takes to read one of their articles, you can tell these execs that it's time to dump fossil fuel ads.

Let’s take action.

Step 1. Choose an outlet to contact

Below, you’ll find contact information for top marketing and brand executives at some of the most prolific media organizations. If you only have time to contact one or two, prioritize the ones whose content you consume the most, especially if you pay for a subscription.

If your favorite outlet isn’t on this list but you know they run fossil fuel ads, feel free to do your own internet sleuthing. Just make sure you contact a real person at the company rather than using a generic contact form.

Step 2. Send an email or direct message on LinkedIn/Twitter

Send a message urging the company to stop running fossil fuel ads. Use your leverage as a paid subscriber or an avid reader and appeal to the company’s ethical obligation to their readers.

Include a brief personal climate “why” to help build a connection with the person. If you’ve never written a sentence or two about your own relationship to the climate crisis, try checking out our Write Your Climate “Why” playbook.

Here’s a suggested framework for your email:

  • Identify yourself as a paid subscriber, or else frequent reader.

  • State your ask early on: I’d like for your company to publicly commit to banning fossil fuel ads on your site (and in print).

  • Point out the often misleading and contradictory nature of the ads, highlighting the disconnect between climate reporting in the newsroom and greenwashed sponsored content. Talk about how this does a disservice to readers when they depend on the company for reliable information about the climate crisis.

    ➡️ Here’s where you can insert a sentence with your own personal climate narrative.

    ➡️ Borrow generously from the learn more section below and link to any of the existing reporting or sponsored ad examples.

    ➡️ Call special attention to the embedded ads that masquerade as articles or authentic opinion pieces if your chosen outlet runs that content.

  • Mention how this might affect climate policy and the decisions of lawmakers, including evidence like the API-branded draft legislation detailed in the learn more section. You want them to feel the urgency of this ethical obligation.

  • Remind them that there’s precedent for what you’re asking them to do, since cigarette ads were banned by major media outlets decades ago and outlawed from TV and radio all the way back in the Nixon administration. Companies like The Guardian and Vox Media have already pledged to stop running fossil fuel ads.

  • Close with something vaguely ominous, like “I don’t take your decision to run fossil fuel ads lightly. I hope you reconsider, so that I can continue supporting your company’s fantastic journalism and recommending it to my friends.” Make them sweat, but always keep it cordial.

  • Don’t neglect the subject line, which is critical for catching their eye. Use a punchy statement.

  • Optional: When you send your email, bcc info@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our impact!

Step 3. Amplify on socials

Write a condensed version of your message and post it on social media. Opening multiple channels of communication will increase your chances of a response, so tag them publicly in addition to sending them a direct message. If you can’t find their personal handle, tag the company or department.

To maximize your impact, share what you did with your own network. Posting on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. about your experience taking this action can help inspire others to start their own climate advocacy journey.

Congrats, you just took productive climate action!

Or maybe you haven’t yet, and you just skipped down to this section. In any case, here’s some additional info to LEARN MORE about the problem we’ve got on our hands.

Learn by watching
(25 minutes)

Our friends at Climate Town create incredible (and very funny) videos about climate change and we provide specific actions to go with them! The Action Playbook you’re reading right now was made specifically for this Climate Town episode. Watch it to learn all about fossil fuel propaganda in journalism, then come back here to take action.

Learn by reading
(5 minutes)

Media outlets draw a distinction between their newsrooms’ reporting and paid content from their marketing divisions. Those entities are indeed separate, but that distinction isn’t always obvious to readers. Almost every mainstream media outlet has run ads for fossil fuel companies that use misleading language or omit critical data points, including within legitimate reporting on climate and energy (POLITICO’s “Morning Energy” newsletter is a great example). Sometimes these ads even manage to fool the media organizations themselves, like when the New York Times ran a factually inaccurate Exxon ad on its “The Daily” podcast.

Worse yet, sponsored content is often deliberately disguised as reporting. Trusted media outlets whose newsrooms are busy investigating the climate emergency are simultaneously generating disinformation via their creative brand studios. While they’re labeled “paid,” neither this New York Times ad nor this sponsored content by The Washington Post are immediately identifiable as propaganda to an untrained reader. Even executives at the public broadcasting corporation that oversees NPR and PBS have been accused of greenwashing.

Consequences for climate policy

Fossil fuel companies are already aggressively lobbying lawmakers and using superPACs to fund political campaigns through perfectly legal channels (thanks, Citizens United!). But when otherwise reputable media organizations blur the lines between reporting and fossil-funded propaganda, they sow distrust in an already confusing political landscape. We’re in a climate emergency, and we can’t afford for scientific messages to be muddled by the news sources we depend on for trusted information. Not only are lawmakers blatantly influenced by the oil and gas industry (here’s a bill draft circulating Congress with an “American Petroleum Institute” watermark); the key stakeholders who influence them are also subject to media manipulation. The New York Times’ marketing arm T Brand Studio basically admits as much in its slogan, “influencing the influential.”

To help limit the effect of distorted facts on policymaking, media companies must stop selling ads to fossil fuel companies, as was the case with tobacco companies in 1999. That’s where we come in.

Thank you for taking action!

Questions? Concerns? Email info@climatechangemakers.org

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