Host Of "Drilled" And "Rigged" Podcasts Amy Westervelt Sounds Off In Guardian Article About Oil Companies' Propaganda

 

In October, NBC's Al Roker and Savannah Sellers presented independent journalist Amy Westervelt with Covering Climate Now's Audio/Radio award for the Mad Men season of her climate change podcast Drilled, which focused on the 100-year history of fossil fuel propaganda in the United States. 

This week, host of the podcasts Drilled And Rigged Amy Werstervelt sounds off  in a Guardian Article About Oil Companies deceptive advertising about fossil fuels, climate change, and what they're doing to help the environment.

Here are some key excerpts from the article:

 "ExxonMobil’s ad in The Daily, for example, emphasizes its work to scale up carbon capture as a climate solution. Yet the company currently captures less than 1% of its emissions, according to a report by the activist hedge fund Engine No 1, and uses some of the captured CO₂ to extract more fossil fuels through a process called enhanced oil recovery."

 "It’s unsurprising that Exxon’s ad passed media companies’ filters, said John Cook, research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, Australia, and an adviser to Facebook on climate disinformation. That’s because it deploys a tactic often used by oil companies called 'paltering', he said, the use of truthful statements to convey a misleading impression."

 John Cook, research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, Australia, and an adviser to Facebook on climate disinformation concludes in the article:

“It requires background knowledge to spot it, so it’s tough. They can run an ad that’s 100% accurate statements. Exxon is investing in algae – that’s 100% true – then they can do a lot to convey the impression that they’re environmentally friendly without conveying that they’re spending more on advertising than on algae tech. So it’s very hard for factcheckers or social media guidelines to catch that because the companies can say ‘What? Everything is true.'”

Amy Westervelt launched  her new project Rigged, a massive multi-platform archive on the history of disinformation, in late October.

Amy explains the project's genesis:
"I started Rigged because I realized I had hundreds of documents on my desk that weren't doing any good there, and that could be useful to other reporters working on stories about disinformation, ranging from climate denial and Covid hoaxers to the Big Lie around the election.

"There's a general sense out there that disinformation is a relatively new thing, and I think it's important for people to understand that it's more than a century old, that Americans--not Russians--invented the techniques we're still seeing today, and that it was created largely to help American industry circumvent democracy when it needed to."

Drilled is part of a podcast network run by Critical Frequency, which is a women-run podcast network founded by journalists and focused on the backstory of the biggest issues facing society today, climate change and justice. 

Critical Frequency shows are billed as answering the questions: how did we get here? And how are we going to get out?

Named AdWeek's 2019 Podcast Network of the Year, Critical Frequency was founded in 2017 and has produced a total of 24 shows, including forthcoming co-productions with Stitcher's Witness Docs and Crooked Media. 

 Drilled was also one of the first climate podcasts, started independently at a time when host Amy Westervelt was told again and again there was no audience for such a thing. Turns out, there was, and Drilled has remained at the forefront of the climate-pod movement as it has exploded in the last couple of years. 

 Sure, there are numerous podcasts about climate change. But it's an expansive topic that offers podcasts a wide berth to follow a multitude of eddies and currents that run through the climate change discussion.

Drilled does not play the role of climate change proselytizer. Instead, the podcast takes a "boots on the ground" view of climate upheavals through personal stories and the consequences of "ostrich in the sand" denial.

Westervelt brings sonic excellence to the podcast and deftly foreshadows the sense of future danger without dismal doomsday warnings.

You can listen to earlier seasons of Drilled here and below is a summary of the previous five seasons. Drilled in its sixth season. 

You can read the full text of The Guardian article here.

 

Check it out. I highly recommend it. What the article says about corporate advertising in general is that too often the truth espoused in advertising does indeed have a thin layer of accuracy to it. But a little digging reveals a mountain of deception and a clear intention to deceive and disrupt.