New York Times pulls sponsorship for London Oil and Money conference
The New York Times newspaper has binned its plans to sponsor one of the world's biggest oil industry conferences following pressure from environmental activists.
A month of protests outside the NYT offices in Manhattan led the paper to scrap its support for the 40th annual Oil and Money conference.
The environmental activist groups, with Extinction Rebellion among them, called on the NYT to withdraw and “tell the truth about climate change” and use “climate emergency language”.
The conference was set for October at the InterContinental Hotel on Park Lane in London, with the biggest companies in the sector, senior leaders from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and ministers from fossil fuel-rich Middle Eastern nations all set to converge on the British capital.
A spokeswoman for the New York Times said the paper had "decided to end its relationship with the Oil and Money conference" because its subject matter "gives us cause for concern".
"We want there to be no question of our independence or even the potential appearance of a conflict of interest. Over the last several years [the New York Times] has significantly expanded its reporting on climate change and its impact, as well as broader investigative and explanatory coverage of energy and environmental policy," she said.
"We have a large team focused solely on the topic and in the last year alone we’ve travelled to every continent to document the effects of a warming planet."