News & Analysis
November 12, 2020
A front page story in today’s New York Times delves deep into how Big Oil and websites that attack climate accountability lawsuits have employed the public relations firm FTI Consulting to attack climate activists and mislead the public.
Based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, Hiroko Tabuchi reports that the firm has played a role in “at least 15 current current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.”
Those projects included creating fake online personas and online front groups in order to surveil climate activists and create a false impression of “grassroots” support for Big Oil interests.
Other FTI projects targeted the growing number of lawsuits that states and localities have filed against Big Oil companies like Exxon, Shell, and Chevron, to hold them accountable for lying to the public about climate damages they knowingly caused. In fact, a website that routinely publishes misleading attacks on climate accountability lawsuits was not only staffed by FTI employees, but was being guided by none other than… ExxonMobil. According to the Times:
FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns. [...]
Both sites, staffed by FTI writers, have pushed back against the #ExxonKnew campaign waged by environmental activists, which claims that the company knew about climate change for decades yet blocked action to confront it.
The #ExxonKnew campaign, of course, is not based only on “claims,” but rather the extensive cache of internal Exxon documents that was first reported by InsideClimate News and earned the outlet a finalist mention for the Pulitzer Prize in public service.
The Center for Climate Integrity and our Pay Up Climate Polluters campaign have also been frequent targets of both industry sites because we advocate for the rights of communities seeking to hold Exxon and other Big Oil groups accountable for their climate deception and destruction.
Now we know that Exxon itself was working behind the scenes to direct those attacks. It’s just another example of the industry’s campaigns to deceive the public about climate change — the very thing that Exxon and others are being sued for in courts across the country.
