“Believe them when they tell you who they are,” said Maya Angelou.
The front page of Murdoch’s Times was the most honest it has ever been. A literal picture of Europe on fire, accompanied by yet another attack on ending our fossil fuel addiction.
This is not an occasional editorial line. It is a programme, and it is measurable.
The numbers
Carbon Brief’s analysis of UK newspaper editorials found that by early July, national newspapers had already published 63 editorials in 2026 alone calling for more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
Nearly three-quarters of those editorials also attacked the energy secretary personally as a “net-zero zealot” on a “green crusade”.
In the roughly two years since the general election, there have been around 230 editorials attacking Ed Miliband — for the crime of implementing the policy the government was elected to deliver.
Set against that: the same papers have run no comparable campaign demanding faster action to protect the climate our food production depends on.
What they never print
They never print the arithmetic that destroys their own argument.
The North Sea is a dying oilfield. It peaked in 1999. According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, around 90% of the oil and gas likely ever to be produced from it has already been burned.
It has lost over 100,000 jobs as reserves have declined, 30,000 of them under the last Conservative government, with fewer than 28,000 left.
Even if every proposed licence were granted, those jobs would continue to haemorrhage, just slightly more slowly. Rosebank would preserve around 550 jobs. Jackdaw around 27.
And the oil itself would not cut a penny off British bills. Most of Rosebank’s oil is unsuitable for UK refineries and would be exported. Jackdaw’s gas would be sold at European market prices. It is sold on international markets whose prices swing wildly with every war.
Meanwhile, research by CBI Economics for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit found this summer that the UK’s net zero economy is already worth £105 billion and supports 1.1 million jobs, at wages 11% above the national average.
Trashing 1.1 million jobs to extend a few thousand legacy oil jobs by a decade is not economics. It is obedience.
Why this is a media ownership problem
Our politicians cannot act with the urgency required while this barrage of propaganda drowns them daily.
These foreign billionaire-owned newspapers are an existential threat to Britain’s economy, our climate, our farmers and our coastal towns, cities and landscapes.
Ending media billionairism has become an existential necessity. Humanity will not survive if we do not take back control from the tiny elite pumping out climate-trashing propaganda 24/7.
Our petition closes on Friday 18 September.
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Please sign and share our petition to ban foreign media ownership: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760061
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