For Earth Day, Houston Public Media Is Promoting… Chevron?

One won’t affiliate “public media” with “carrying water for the oil and gas industry,” nevertheless it’s 2022, and something can occur. On Wednesday, Houston Public Radio, which encompasses town’s NPR affiliate in addition to its public broadcasting community, unveiled a sequence it produced with oil large Chevron on the power transition—and, if the primary episode is any indication, it’s going to be crammed with nothing however fossil gasoline propaganda.

The 10-part series, paradoxically referred to as CounterACT, will discover how “the energy sector is working towards a lower carbon future,” in addition to “ways the energy sector can address the climate crisis.” The phrase “lower carbon” is a largely bullshit time period made up by the fossil gasoline trade, meant to distract from their continued air pollution in addition to the truth that we have to attain a zero carbon future, and shortly. The trade has utilized this phrase to lots of the problematic “solutions” it’s at the moment pushing, like blue hydrogen and carbon seize, that each proceed to depend on fossil fuels and don’t reliably eradicate emissions. (Last 12 months, oil main Occidental introduced it will produce “carbon-neutral oil,” which is simply oil with a whole lot of offsets hooked up—technically lower-carbon than an everyday barrel of oil, however not precisely what’s going to repair the local weather disaster.)

The first episode of the CounterACT sequence, posted Wednesday morning, is an interview with three speaking heads—together with Chevron’s director of “New Energies”—that focuses on Houston’s status because the “energy capital of the world” and the methods wherein the area could possibly be primed to contribute to the power transition. While the video begins with an acknowledgement that the science on local weather change “is something that has been settled for quite a long time,” there isn’t a point out of how the oil and fuel that Chevron produces instantly contributes to local weather change. Nor is there any reference to how main scientists and power analysis institutes have stated that new fossil gasoline exploration must be fully phased out this 12 months, and emissions to peak by 2025, with a purpose to keep away from the worst impacts of local weather change.

The video and accompanying website for the sequence is listed beneath the Houston Public Media’s “Programs and Podcasts” tab on its web site, which incorporates different partnership sequence with firms and organizations like United Way and major hospital systems. The web site gives curious readers with a “Resources” tab that gives precisely two hyperlinks—“Energy Transition” and “Lower Carbon”—each of which go on to pages on Chevron’s web site. While Chevron’s emblem is displayed prominently on the graphics for the web page, no details about funding is offered, nor any data on the reporting or fact-checking course of for the sequence.

We despatched a number of questions concerning the sequence’s reporting course of and funding to Houston Public Media and can replace this text in the event that they reply. After receiving criticism from reporters on Twitter, the tweet from Houston Public Media selling the Chevron partnership was deleted Wednesday. Grid News reporter Dave Levitan posted on Twitter Wednesday afternoon {that a} supply knowledgeable him that “employees at Houston Public Media received an email from management today instructing them not to engage with criticism of HPM, and that responses should only come from upper management.”

Chevron’s not precisely a stranger to attempting to govern media to get its message throughout. Earlier this 12 months, E&E News reported on a set of curious job postings for writers and editors for a “newsroom” Chevron was planning to begin in Houston. In the lead-up to a listening to earlier than federal lawmakers on the oil trade and misinformation final fall, Chevron spent $120,000 in a single month to promote in well-liked political electronic mail newsletters, an Earther and Heated joint investigation discovered; these ads included a lot of the identical language on a “lower-carbon future” that’s current within the CounterACT supplies. Chevron has additionally for years paid for a newspaper in Richmond, California, a city the place a Chevron refinery has precipitated many years of environmental issues within the primarily Black and Latinx neighborhood. Chevron’s enterprise in Houston is, actually, outdated hat for the oil and fuel trade: Exxon invented what we now know as “paid media” within the Nineteen Eighties, when it started to take out adverts in newspapers designed to look like editorials.

A fast skim of internet historical past exhibits that the corporate has publicly supported Houston Public Media in varied fundraising ventures all through the years, together with donating gas cards for raffles, sending employee volunteers to fundraising drives, and matching financial presents. It’s one factor for an area financial powerhouse, like Chevron is in Houston, to assist the general public radio station. But a information group becoming a member of up with polluters to push their particular greenwashing messages—together with some that intentionally distort the science on what’s truly wanted within the power transition—is one other factor completely. Looks like Chevron’s “newsroom” is difficult at work.