A job posting by Chevron indicates the fossil fuel company is hiring staff to write articles on the company's behalf.
Mother Nature, as the adage goes, must really abhor a vacuum. The evidence is how assiduously she has filled the ever-expanding vacuum in local and investigative news with fakery on a scale that gives the very concept of vacuums a bad name.
The Cella posting didn’t identify Chevron as the client, mentioning only that the job would be in the “oil and energy” field. But the giant oil company fessed up. Fewer, however, describe their leaders as managing editors or their products as “news articles,” adopting more of the nomenclature of mainstream journalism. Chevron is further requiring applicants to have at least a bachelor’s degree in “journalism, communications or marketing” and five years’ experience in journalism or those other fields.
The danger this poses is the undermining of journalists’ credibility just at a moment in time when the need to make politicians and business leaders accountable for their actions is imperative.