Putting to rest any semblance of journalistic integrity, InsideClimate News (ICN) yesterday used the New York attorney general’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil as an opportunity to send out a fundraising email touting their work attacking the oil and gas company.
ICN has played a central role in perpetuating the unsubstantiated “Exxon Knew” narrative over the past few years – and they seem intent on keeping it going. Taking credit for the NY AG’s lawsuit – which is about accounting practices, not “Exxon Knew” – their fundraising email states:
“The case is a direct result of work we published in 2015, a nine-part series of stories called ‘Exxon: The Road Not Taken.’ Our work was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service that year, and it is what provoked the New York attorney general’s three-year investigation ending in today’s trial.”
It was later found that ICN’s series of stories that kicked off the #ExxonKnew campaign were paid for by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) and Rockefeller Family Fund as a part of a coordinated effort to bring litigation against energy companies. Michael Northrup, director of the Sustainable Development grantmaking program at RBF, “provided the seed grant that got ICN started in 2007,” and RBF remains a “core funder” to this day.
The Rockefellers have funded nearly every aspect of the “Exxon Knew” campaign, from climate attribution reports to PR work aimed at “establish[ing] in the public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution.” They’ve even admitted to directly funding litigation against energy producers.
This fundraising email shows clearly what ICN really is: an advocacy platform and mouthpiece for the “Exxon Knew” movement.
To give just a glimpse of the coordination between ICN and “Exxon Knew” activists, ahead of publishing a story in 2015, David Sassoon – ICN’s publisher – passed along an embargoed version to members of Climate Nexus, a Rockefeller-supported PR firm. A staffer from Climate Nexus then emailed a group of activists calling for government prosecution of climate skeptics, adding that the “Exxon Knew” story would provide the “perfect news hook” for their effort to go after “deniers.”
But that’s not all. During that same time in 2015, after ICN published their first story in the series, the Los Angeles Times published a nearly identical story written by students at the Columbia University School of Journalism as a part of a program funded by – you guessed it – the Rockefellers. Later, David Kaiser of the Rockefeller Family Fund and Valerie Rockefeller Wayne of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund acknowledged that they provided the financial support for the Columbia University program with the explicit purpose of writing the original #ExxonKnew pieces.
If there is still any question about the outlet’s lack of objectivity, ICN fundraising email shows their ultimate goal is not sharing the facts, it’s about going after oil and gas.
