Thread by @EndClimtSilence

Last week brought a "crushing day for Big Oil"👇 but you wouldn't know it from the TV news.

Coverage of 👇was almost nonexistent on the prime-time network & cable programs. But @ABC @CBSNews @NBCNews @CNN did, however, run Chevron ads over a dozen times in those slots.🤔🤔🤔

🧵

https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1397635499611889664

.@LesterHoltNBC @NBCNightlyNews was the outsize winner of last week's broadcasts. He covered all three stories—shareholder climate revolts at Chevron and Exxon as well as the Dutch court case ordering Shell to halve its emissions.

Bravo, Mr. Holt! #EndClimateSilence

2/n

.@chrislhayes covered the Dutch court case on @MSNBC @allinwithchris. He understood that this was a "landmark ruling."

Thank you for your excellent reporting, Mr. Hayes! #EndClimateSilence

3/n

Aaaand ... that was it. No one else even mentioned the historic story. Not @ABCWorldNews @CBSEveningNews @TheLeadCNN @andersoncooper and so on.

But those programs did mention climate in their slots—as part of a misleading Chevron ad repeatedly aired in the prime-time slots from Wednesday on.

5/n

The ad claimed: "The world needs to reduce global emissions. At Chevron, we're taking action tying our executives pay to lowering the carbon emissions intensity of our operations."

This might make the company seem like a partner in the climate fight, but it's lying spin.

6/

The world does not need to just "reduce" emissions.

It needs to zero them out by 2050 in order to have a 50/50 chance of halting warming well below 2°C—or face the irreversible destruction of the foundations of our civilization.

7/

And you don't zero out emissions by reducing the "carbon...intensity" of your "operations," when your operations are literally the business taking fossil fuels out of the ground and selling them.

8/

So the ad is disinformation. It implies something fake. Yet it ran twice on @OutFrontCNN, 5 times on @TheLeadCNN, 9 times on @AC360 (!), and even twice on @NBCNightlyNews and @allinwithchris (!!).

9/

It seems that the broadcast news has a conflict of interest that keeps getting resolved by their ongoing #ClimateSilence in their reporting and their shilling for fossil fuels by giving them an ad platform.

Fossil fuel advertising is as fraudulent as tobacco PR—and as deadly.

Perhaps journalists feel that their work is not really influenced by the business decisions of their bosses, and that may well be so.

11/

But looking at broadcast news coverage of the #ClimateCrisis systemically, it's hard not to see a connection betwn climate silence and the way these shows, which pretend the climate crisis is not happening, give a platform to oil and gas propaganda.

#EndClimateSilence

/fin