TNR and BP
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding The New Republic’s new Environment and Energy blog, which is “powered by BP.” The basic argument for why it’s bad for TNR to have an entire “channel” devoted to environmental, and especially climate change and energy, issues that is sponsored by an oil company is twofold. The first, and most obvious concern, is that British Petroleum’s sponsorship will influence TNR’s coverage of climate change issues. After all, oil companies are some of the chief villains, and even if you don’t want to cast it in such stark terms, some of the most important players in the climate change debate, and so any honest journalism surrounding climate changehave to keep a keen eye on oil companies. I don’t think this will be much of a worry for TNR’s environment writers, especially because one of them is Brad Plumer, whose honesty and commitment to quality journalism is something that no one needs to worry about.
The second concern is both more subtle and more worrisome. The concern is that, in the words of Sam Boyd, “BP will have an easier time lobbying against climate change legislation if it is perceived as supporting environmental causes — a perception that will only be increased by sponsorships like this. Making a company with such a checkered history look good is in and of itself a bad thing.” So the question becomes, in the struggle to get a. accurate information and good analysis about environmental issues out in the general public and b. to actually effect public attitudes and even legislation about climate change, is BP’s very obvious sponsorship of TNR a net positive or a net negative?
On the first count, I think we can say that it’s a net positive. I have no reason to believe that TNR’s environmental coverage will be meaningfully affected by BP’s endorsement; after all, plenty of companies with an interest in their own media coverage sponsor and advertise all over the place and yet there’s still plenty of critical journalism about those very companies. There’s generally a pretty strong divide between the business and production side of magazines, and I don’t feel comfortable impugning the honesty of the TNR crew without good reason. Whether the blog, due to the BP sponsorship, can actually achieve the second goal is more debatable. Is the marginal effect on BP’s reputation by sponsoring TNR (and thus their ability to either lobby legislation their way or avoid negative scrutiny) overwhelm the marginal increase in good journalism that TNR will produce that could lead more people to, say, endorse alternative energy investments or a carbon tax? I think at least that more good journalism, and more coverage in general, of climate change issues can only help, but clearly BP wouldn’t so aggressively be greenwashing themselves if they didn’t think it was good for their bottom line.
In defense of TNR, it’s worth pointing out that any public pressure against fossil fuel producers would be directed against all of them, not just BP or any individual company, so it’s unclear what BP gains by trying to brand itself as the green oil company. A carbon tax would be applied to all of them.
