News and tech media mostly quiet after UN chief calls for ban on ads for

Major news and tech media that have run fossil-fuel ads were largely staying quiet after the UN’s secretary general called for governments and companies to place bans on advertisements for coal, oil and gas.

“Stop taking fossil-fuel advertising,” António Guterres implored in a major speech on Wednesday after railing against energy companies for “distorting the truth, deceiving the public, and sowing doubt” about the climate crisis.

“Many in the fossil-fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action with lobbying, legal threats and massive ad campaigns,” Guterres said.

The Guardian contacted 11 major news organizations and tech firms who run fossil-fuel ads in some form, seeking comment on Guterres’s call for media to stop running the ads. Most did not respond to requests, with only two choosing to comment.

Guterres’s admonishment came amid fierce debate in recent years about fossil-fuel dollars in media circles. Some publications, including the Guardian in 2020, Vox in 2021 and France’s Le Monde last year, have banned oil and gas advertisements.

“This also includes not partnering with lobbyist groups whose purpose is to support fossil-fuel companies,” a Vox Media spokesperson said in a statement.

But many major media outlets, including the Washington Post, Reuters, Politico and Axios, and TV networks such as MSNBC and CNN, still feature fossil-fuel ads.

News organizations have in recent years come under fire for the practice, and especially for placing oil ads alongside coverage of the climate crisis. In December 2022, one climate journalist parted ways with the publication Semafor after the media outlet ran oil-company ads on his climate newsletter and articles (the outlet said at the time its ad policy followed industry standards and was robust).

Amid growing scrutiny of their relationships with fossil-fuel companies, some outlets have taken steps to mitigate criticism. National Public Radio’s public editor this year said oil sponsorship should be “handled carefully” after the network faced pushback for accepting funding from the fossil-fuel giant ExxonMobil. The New York Times in 2021 pledged to ban oil and gas companies from sponsoring its climate newsletter and events, and its podcast The Daily. (The climate publication Heated has noted that the Times had since run ads from oil companies on the podcast, but the New York Times says it prevents them from purchasing “all of the ad spots on individual episodes”.)

A spokesperson for Politico, the sole publication that responded to the Guardian’s request for comment, said the outlet had “hosted a diverse array of advertisements”, including from fossil-fuel companies, renewable-energy producers and climate-advocacy groups. The outlet also works to boost transparency, the spokesperson said: “Advertisers are prominently identified, and a clear distinction between news and ads, including sponsored content, is maintained…