The New York Times on Tuesday ended its sponsorship of the Oil & Money conference, which is attended annually by CEOs from major oil and gas companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total.
The media company has had a relationship with the event since the conference began in 1980 and became an official sponsor of the event in 2013.
Earlier this summer, dozens of climate activists were arrested in front of the Times’ Manhattan headquarters while protesting, demanding the Times refer to climate change as an emergency.
The New York Times issued a statement citing its expanding climate change and environmental policy coverage and potential conflict of interest concerns as reasons for the decision.
Energy Intelligence, the company that hosts the Oil & Money conference, has not issued a direct statement reacting to the Times’ move but did announce later on the conference will be renamed to the Energy Intelligence Forum.
The statement says the change will go into effect in 2020 and is due to the evolving energy industry and climate change. Alex Schindelar, president of Energy Intelligence, said the Times' sponsorship drop accelerated plans to announce a conference’s rebranding.
The Times’ move to end the sponsorship has raised conflict of interest questions when it comes to journalism companies sponsoring events with a specified agenda.
On "Bulls & Bears," FOX Business' David Asman, Capitalist Pig hedge fund’s Jonathan Hoenig, Layfield Report CEO John Layfield, FBN’s Kristina Partsinevelos and FBN’s Jackie DeAngelis debated whether news organizations should attach their names to these sorts of events.
While some are saying the publication is caving to activist pressure, Layfield said he thought the Times was making a business decision to remove itself from a polarizing topic where “50 percent of the country is gonna hate you for this, 50 percent is gonna love you.”
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FBN’s Kristina Partsinevelos raised the ethical issues that can come with this and said the Times shouldn’t be sponsoring anything unless “every time they have to cover [the topic] as a reporter, they have to preface ‘Hey, we put x amount of money behind this.’”
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