Alt text:
Top image: The headline of a New York Times article, “How greenwashing fools us”.
Bottom image: Screenshot of an ad article in the New York Times titled “How can aviation fly towards net zero?”. There’s a small BP logo and a disclaimer: “This content was paid for by BP”.
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I will say; it’s nice they state who paid for it. That’s better than just the generic ‘sponsored’ label.
“How does greenwashing work? Let the NYT show you with direct, practical examples.”
Y’all I get that the news has to get paid for somehow but all the scummy shit they do to be able to make ends meet makes me not want to give them any money ever
I feel like news has the same problem that art does, in that organizations are always required to pander at least somewhat to their funding sources. If NYT didn’t have to get money from corporate sources and could instead truly be powered by the people, the optimist in me would like to believe that they wouldn’t have to publish articles like that…but maybe that’s naive. As someone who has actively worked in the arts, I know that many arts organizations are much more free with their words and frank in their critiques when they don’t have to bite the hand that feeds them.
So, all of that to say, please give to the news (…and arts) organizations that you feel most passionately about. NYT has done plenty of shitty things in their past, so maybe them, maybe not. But someone deserves to make money for their journalism.
I hear the arguments about “how sad, but they did note it is a paid piece” but this should absolutely be in the advertisement section, not a post with NYT heading.
Because now, this can be cited as “NYT said XYZ, see?” and because it’s presented like an article or opinion piece, it’s treated as such - disclosure or no. This is exactly the same astroturfing the oil and tobacco industries did with scientists and ‘research’ mills that churned out sympathetic studies for marketing to distort.
Disgusting to see “the paper or record” nakedly shilling - again.
Nothing the NYT publishes holds integrity. If they want to be paid by the oil industry, a genocidal country, you name it, fine, but don’t expect an increase in readers as younger generations become adults.
The NYT is a crypto-fascist rag. Corporate masters are putting their weight on the mainstream media to promote fascism beyond what even most liberals can put up with. They need to realize how much the rich want fascism yesterday. They cannot be won over anymore. They’ve made up their mind.
As someone who likes planes, trains and other forms of transport. It’s really hard to carry heavy batteries on planes, and until they make light batteries, that won’t change
Reuters has something like that too, called Reuters Plus. It’s less blatant, and isn’t pushed in with their proper content, but I find paid articles by purportedly quality outlets extremely questionable in anyway.
Neoliberalism.webp
