Emails sent to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta reveal $3m campaign aimed to put media mogul ‘on the defensive’ and help conservative politicians support global warming action

A well-funded international campaign to counter the influence of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire on climate change has been planned, emails to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman reveal.

The plan to use “guerilla tactics”, civil disobedience and targeted advertising appears to have been hatched by David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications, a US public relations agency.

The proposal aimed to “make Murdoch’s climate denial a major issue,” and “bring the scientific facts on climate change to his audiences directly in print and on television”. It would involve adverts in his and other publications, and the creation of websites that disseminated facts about climate change, and directly challenged the reporting in Murdoch media.

The goal was to put Murdoch “on the defensive on climate change,” and make it possible for conservative politicians to support action on climate change. Part of the plan involved “public shaming” of Murdoch so that his children, who have more progressive views on climate change, would have “leverage with their father”.

On 19 February 2015, David Fenton thanked Clinton’s chairman, John Podesta, for a meeting earlier that day, and sent him two emails. WikiLeaks has published a series of emails hacked from Podesta’s account, and Clinton’s campaign has neither confirmed or denied their authenticity but has attacked what it said were Russian state actors involved in obtaining them.

One email said: “Here is the plan to go after [the Wall Street Journal] and Fox [the TV network] on climate. I have 500,000 [dollars] of this pledged if I can raise another million. It’s a real pledge from Graeme Wood in Australia. I sure hope something like this can happen it’s long overdue.”

Graeme Wood is the founder of travel website Wotif and an internet entrepreneur who provided a loan to help launch Guardian Australia. Wood told the Guardian: “It sounded like a good idea at the time but in the end I didn’t proceed with any funding.”

Some of the strategies discussed in the plan in 2015 went ahead this year, with an ad campaign designed and written by Fenton’s company. A group called Partnership for Responsible Growth ran ads in the Wall Street Journal and Fox in June and July this year. They were created by Fenton’s agency and contain many of the same messages outlined in the email to Podesta.

It is unclear who funded the campaign.

The plan, attached to the email and dated 1 December 2015 said: “Unless and until Murdoch is put on the defensive on climate change, opening political space for conservatives to come forward, it is unlikely that bipartisan efforts on climate change will be achieved in time.”



“Fox News is the biggest single factor keeping almost 40% of Americans from believing humans are changing the climate, while only 10% know that 97% of climate scientists agree we are warming the earth at our peril.”

“In some ways, the effect of the Wall Street Journal is even worse, as it sows regular confusion among its 3 million daily subscribers – business leaders and investors among the most influential people in the country.”

The plan also mentioned the role Murdoch papers played in Australia and the UK.

It outlined and costed a $2m plan with six main steps and 12 “campaign elements”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The plan to use ‘guerilla tactics’, civil disobedience and targeted advertising appears to have been hatched by David Fenton, founder of a US public relations agency. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

According to the plan, $600,000 would be spent advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and $350,000 would be given to other groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace to conduct “grassroots and social media activism”.

Plans for a campaign outside the US were not costed but Fenton said: “We would be happy to work with counterparts in Australia and the UK to create proportional budgets for similar campaigns there, adapted to local conditions.”

Fenton concluded: “We have let Rupert Murdoch get away with this atrocious behavior for too long. It’s time to make his endangerment of national and economic security a prominent, inescapable issue.”

• This article was amended on 27 October 2016 to report that advertisements for the campaign were published in the Wall Street Journal and on Fox. The original story stated that it was understood that the campaign did not go ahead.

