Eileen M. Murphy Vice President, Corporate Communications at the NYT Company, has responded to my post, “NY Times partners with Shell Oil to peddle elite access.”
I’m posting her “correction” in the original post — and that is the best place for comments.
As you’ll see, there is really only one “error” — there won’t actually be current NYT reporters or columnists at the conference. BUT it’s rather obvious that Shell and the NYT marketing department wanted invitees to make that error. They go out of their way to create the misimpression that NYT journalists are involved, both in providing content for the conference and by inviting Frank Rich, who really has no expertise on energy at all.
Actually, it looks like the event is the worst of both possible worlds. The New York Times editorial/reporting side takes a credibility hit, and the marketing department is leaving the apparently false impression that the NYT staff is involved and that people might be hobnobbing with them. Note that the website still says that the conference’s “interactive conversation” will be built around, “content from the New York Times.” So for attendees, I think it is best classified as a bait and switch.
Anyone who thinks that the the NYT isn’t linking the credibility of its brand to Shell’s should click on this.
Anyway, I’m happy to set the record “straight” — Now if I could only get the NYT to post my critiques of their climate coverage:
- Brulle: NY Times article on climate science hearing “fails to inform the public, and plays into the strategy of the climate denial effort.”
- N.Y. Times Faces Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage: One oft-quoted communications expert calls this attack on the IPCC, “the worst, one sided reporting I have ever seen”¦. In this article, the New York Times has become an echo-chamber for the climate disinformation movement.”
- In yet another front-page journalistic lapse, the NY Times once again equates non-scientists “” Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) “” with climate scientists