Chris White Tech Reporter
January 29, 2020 11:17 AM ET
The Guardian announced Wednesday that the news outlet is banning fossil fuel company advertisements, even as the newspaper pushes back against activists who want it to nix automotive ads.
“Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world,” the company’s interim CEO, Anna Bateson, and chief revenue officer, Hamish Nicklin, said in a statement. The Guardian will become the first major news outlet to enact an all-out ban on such ads.
Bateson and Nicklin acknowledged that doing away with the ads could bring financial strain. (RELATED: Apparently, The Guardian Might Have Thought Impeachment Managers Were Selected Through ‘An NFL Style Draft’)
“The funding model for the Guardian – like most high-quality media companies – is going to remain precarious over the next few years,” they said in the statement. “It’s true that rejecting some adverts might make our lives a tiny bit tougher in the very short term.”
They added: “[W]e believe building a more purposeful organisation and remaining financially sustainable have to go hand in hand.” Advertising makes up nearly half of the British outlet’s revenue, The Guardian noted in a report announcing the move.
Readers are also pushing The Guardian to eliminate automotive advertisements as well, Bateson and Nicklin acknowledged before explaining why the outlet would continue to accept such ads.
“Stopping those ads would be a severe financial blow, and might force us to make significant cuts to Guardian and Observer journalism around the world,” they said, noting that the media industry is in crisis mode and needs as much ad revenue as possible to survive.
Greenpeace, one of the largest and most influential environmental groups in the world, is pushing news organizations to swear off such ads. The organization praised The Guardian’s move.
“This is a watershed moment, and the Guardian must be applauded for this bold move to end the legitimacy of fossil fuels,” Mel Evans, senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said in a statement to The Guardian.
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The COGS continue to turn and grind together. I wonder what they will be using for lubrication now they have decided to ban oil?
I particularly like the Guardian’s description of themselves as “significant”,
The constantly offended green socialists love shooting themselves in the Michael (foot).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51281986
Indeed … the ludicrous “business as usual” case has and always will be an improbably small possibility – but hey, using it generates funding because it generates scary outcomes and clickbait for headlines –> fame.
It’s all a crock and it depresses me
The Guardian is such a joke of a “media” organisation. The moderators would do the old Pravda proud.
In one of their usual polemics the author, using all her training as a novelist, stated “Scientific consensus, affirmed by Australia’s exhausted fire chiefs, is that the fires are effects of the anthropogenic climate crisis.”
My (apparently community standards breaching) statement was that I doubt that any scientific body would back that statement, some might attribute an increase in intensity, but none would claim the fires were a result of AGW. Needless to say that after a few of their “community” posted nothing but invective, my comment was deleted by their little band of moderators.
If you have the stomach to actually read the commentary that apparently meets their standards you’d really have to wonder at the intellectual and maturity level of their “target market”.
What you cannot achieve through democratic processes you may achieve through backroom dealing. The Gaurdian can decide which advertisers it does business with. No big. Just a small part of the campaign to demonize a very important part of the economy
I would really like to see them swear off political ad money. Here in the US it a major source of engine for media companies. And yet those who rake in that cash crop bemoan money in politics.
so are they going to be cutting their power off?
and then theres the paper ink and delivery vehicles carting their cage liner around as well
if anyone still didn’t think they were batshit crazy there..this oughta wake em up
wonder how many staff are looking elsewhere right now?
I think this is a very serious situation and reminds me of stories from my Grandparents from the 30th in Germany. The middle and upper class Germans discussed behind closed doors, that this Nazi idea is horrible, will lead to war and that they should stop this, or at least that all others will see the truth after a while and it will disappear. Then the Nazis blackmailed the companies, cooperate, or we will close your business, and they threatened the middle class Germans, shut up or get fired.
Now the Antifa works like the SA from Hitler, threatening people on the street and disturbing conventions from non-believers. I really hope that Trump will label the Antifa as a terrorist organization.
When I read articles last week that a company that will not “go green” won’t find new venture capital, that is a dangerous situation. I hope I’m wrong.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, i have myself have concluded that current events appear very similar to Nazi Germany. Hysteria, fear mongering and propaganda abound, companies are now basically forced to proclaim their Environmental, Social Governance (ESG), which btw has no standard or measurable value, in order to ensure they are not shut-out of the public investment stream. History is repeating its self once again, we could be facing an economic holocaust. If CO2 is the cause of global temperature increases there is no instant fix, we simply cannot shut the taps off, millions of people will die and again what did i say about history?.
The next ‘logical’ step is to ban the funding of ‘green’ technology with money from the oil and coal industries.
I don’t understand why the fossil fuel companies don’t fight back and ban the use of their products by companies and peopled that are undermining them. Why not try banning people from using their credit or debit cards from purchasing fuel? Like a no-fly list … a no-buy list.
Think this will hurt the quality of their journalism?
/sarc for the irony-impaired
“The funding model for the Guardian – like most high-quality media companies – is going to remain precarious over the next few years,” they said in the statement. “It’s true that rejecting some adverts might make our lives a tiny bit tougher in the very short term.” – article
Hoity toity, aren’t they? It’s called cutting off your nose to spite your face. They must live on beans and toast and not much else. The stoopid is strong with them!!! Perhaps the auto companies will get tired of paying them far too much for ads and withdraw their business.
Obviously, no one at the Grauniad went to business school. I hope they have enough biscuits (cookies) to last them a few years.
The sooner The Guardian is buried, right along side News of the World, the better. The Guardian has become unreadable; a mouthpiece of the unhinged loony left. And to think I used to subscribe!
I expect they will survive, people don’t really care enough to punish companies for poor behaviour. Nike and Starbucks seem to be doing OK, and they are as the poster children for “woke”
They always beg for a donation when I see them on the web.
Was the Graun always as bad as it is today? I used to read it 20 years ago but I can’t abide it nowadays. My impression (which may well be wrong) is that it has gone far, far down the Identity Politics/Woke rabbit hole since the days of Peter Preston.
I understand that Warren Buffet is getting rid of all his newspaper holdings. There’s a man who knows when a business model is dying.
How I love the hypocrisy from the mainstream media. No integrity, no principles, no honour, nothing!
By the way, big pharma is also one of the biggest advertisers which might be the reason why many health scandals (like Vaccinegate) are ignored.
High quality. The Guardian?
It certainly is for lining the bottom of bird cages. Would be like wall to wall Axminster carpet for budgies.
Smart move from the Grauniad – it’s not as if they are struggling for revenue…. oh hang on
Who cares? If they advertise autos, they advertise fossil fuels. Period. However, now that they have capitulated, the auto ads will go next and the death of the Guardian will follow. Don’t you love a happy ending?
From the article: “Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world,” the company’s interim CEO, Anna Bateson, and chief revenue officer, Hamish Nicklin, said in a statement.”
To prevent meaningful climate action? In what way? It appears to me that the oil companies are pretending to be alarmists, and are doing nothing to rein in the unsubstantiated catastrophic claims about CO2. Alarmists should be pleased with how low-key the oil companies play this CAGW game.
It’s not really about the oil companies resisting the alarmists and their delusions, because they don’t, rather it is simply about the fact that oil companies produce oil.
There sure are a lot of fools in this old world. Some of them are trying to govern us.
The Guardian’s only readers are those who ideologically oppose Fossil Fuels advertising and fossil fuels. All they have done is deny themselves revenue. Of greater concern is that there are folk in Fossil Fuel companies willing to waste money advertising in the Guardian.
The sooner the Grauniad joins the Pravda and Izvestia in the rubbish bin of history the better. The staff of the Grauniad can all retire to their tax-avoidance-haven in the Cayman Islands.
Hopefully the Grauniad goes full woke on the business side, then in 12 months it wont exist. The seem to be following a well trodden path. No actual journalism to be seen there folks.
I remeber in the 1980’s and early 90’s EXXON and it’s international subsidiary ESSO would print ads in ‘National Geographic’ talking about new oil finds and the modern technology used in order to get this oil to market. They were interesting as it showed how humans were able to overcome barriers in order to get this energy to market. But to be honest I don’t think I’ve seen a printed oil company ad in years.
It probably has occurred to the thick heads that the oil companies will spend their Guardian budget on other newspapers without any promotional loss, and laugh at the Guardian losers.
Does anybody actually still buy The Guardian..?
Apart from – obviously – schools and universities for their staffrooms..?
Björn, if the MSM regularly belittled zodiac sign fashion jewellery.
And you as representative of a zodiac sign fashion jewellery producer had some financial means, but no direct access to the MSM.
Karl Kraus called that kind of “Neue Freie Presse” “revolver press”.
Derided from https://www.google.com/search?q=clay+roofing+tiles+revolver+press&oq=clay+roofing+tiles+revolver+press&aqs=chrome.