Imagine listening to a news podcast where a climate scientist is being interviewed, then hearing an ad from a fossil fuel company during the break. What are listeners to make of this contradictory messaging?
Media companies have long insisted that advertiser funding does not influence their journalistic independence, and that the difference between reporting by their own journalists and advertorials – advertisement editorials – which are printed alongside those stories is abundantly clear to readers, but several studies over the past decade have found that up to 80% of people struggle to tell the difference between stories by reporters and ads.
In her recent story in The Nation, investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt points out that this confusion is especially damaging when it comes to climate reporting: a story by a staff writer may air in one segment, only to be followed by an ad from a fossil fuel company that seemingly contradicts the facts in the reporting.
This lack of distinction seems to lend credibility to the ads, and in turn undermine the credibility of the reporting. Research from our colleagues Lu Liu, Thijs Bouman, Goda Perlaviciute and Linda Steg in 2020 found that in the context of renewable energy projects, distrust or mistrust in the integrity of an organization strongly influences social acceptance and support, even more so than trust in that organization’s knowledge and expertise.
More recently, Thijs co-authored an advisory report about the benefits of phasing out advertising for fossil fuels, air travel and meat. The report concluded that fossil fuel ads are holding back the transition to a more sustainable society, and that banning them would promote a transition to healthier and safer conditions (along with policies that facilitate sustainable choices and behaviour).
Advertising influences public opinion and benefits from the confusion caused by its placement alongside critical climate reporting, which is an important lesson for governments and publishers alike to bear in mind.
