Swedish newspaper stops taking adverts from fossil fuel firms

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/26/swedish-newspaper-stops-taking-adverts-from-fossil-fuel-firms

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A Swedish newspaper has announced it will stop taking advertising that promotes fossil fuel-based goods and services with immediate effect.

The editor of the daily Dagens ETC said the decision was “crucial for our credibility”. He urged other media outlets to consider doing the same.

The ETC, which launched in 2014, is a daily paper and online newspaper. Its editor-in-chief, Andreas Gustavsson, said the decision was taken by the owner, the board, the marketing department and the 25 editors and reporters on its staff.

He said the decision would hit the paper’s finances. “But I am also convinced that this will prove to be a wise decision in the long term,” said Gustavsson.

“I am very aware that the media industry is extremely tough and it is difficult to survive financially. However, the climate crisis affects every single one of us.”

He added: “How far can journalism go when it is bankrolled by forces that have everything to gain from blocking large-scale action to address our climate crisis?”

Dagens ETC, based in Stockholm, has about 10,000 daily subscribers and more than 60,000 unique readers a week, according to Gustavsson. Its funding comes from a mixture of reader subscriptions, advertising and the government support offered to papers across Sweden.

Gustavsson said the paper’s revenue from advertising amounted to more than 1,000,000 Swedish kronor (£85,000), of which 15-20% had previously been from advertisements they will now decline.

The decision comes after the biggest mass climate protest in history took place around the world last Friday, with further demonstrations expected this Friday.

The UN climate summit in New York met in an effort to inject urgency into governments’ pledge to restrict the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed under the 2015 Paris agreement.

In May the activist group Extinction Rebellion wrote an open letter to advertisers and agencies urging them to use their powers to tackle the climate emergency. Some agencies responded this summer by setting up the Creatives for Climate movement, pledging to avoid working on fossil fuel briefs.