Edelman Trust Barometer Fact Check

Edelman has just released the 2024 version of the Trust Barometer at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Edelman has attracted scrutiny in recent years for their numerous associations with fossil fuel polluters and authoritarian governments, and the Trust Barometer is a reflection of those relationships. The research below, compiled by Clean Creatives, identifies methodological and strategic issues with the Trust Barometer that we believe deserve coverage during the release of this year’s report. 

Trust Barometer Fact Sheet:

Edelman continues to work with climate deniers, despite repeated insistence that they would stop. The recent revelation of their role working with Charles Koch definitively breaks with the six commitments they made in 2023 regarding climate policy, and their earlier 2014 pledge not to work on climate denial projects.  

• Charles Koch has given over $100 million to climate deniers, including in 2022, when Edelman was working with them: 

• Competitive Enterprise Institute

• Fraser Institute 

• Manhattan Institute

• Atlas Foundation

• Mike Rowe Works

• Institute for Humane Studies

• George Mason University

• ALEC 

• Cato Institute

• In recent multilateral climate negotiations Edelman client Saudi Arabia pushed to omit references to “human induced climate change” from policy documents, and tried to strike a sentence from a United Nations report that called for an active phaseout of fossil fuels

Edelman’s data on trusted governments is questionable and reflects Edelman’s client list. They keep putting their clients high on the trusted list - even when the governments are authoritarian petrostates.

• Four of the six highest-ranked governments in the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer are current or past Edelman clients: China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Singapore. 

• The six highest-ranked governments in the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer (based on Global 27 data) are ranked by Freedom House as either Not Free (China, UAE, KSA) or Partly Free (Indonesia, India, Singapore).

• There are reasons to be skeptical of polling exercises about trust like the one Edelman conducts with the citizens of authoritarian countries. Analysis of surveys conducted in African countries, for example, describes “autocratic trust bias”, wherein a “fear of the government” leads respondents in autocratic states to significantly overstate their trust in the government. Others have suggested that the specter of imprisonment or physical harm a citizen might face for revealing critical political opinions invokes a psychological effect some social scientists describe as ‘preference falsification,’ a concept introduced in 1987 by economist and political scientist Timur Kuran.

• For instance, the 2019 Trust Barometer conducted polling in Saudi Arabia just over two weeks after the Saudi government murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. They stated that “fieldwork was conducted between October 19th and November 16th”, 2018, meaning that polling was conducted as the government’s assassination of a famous dissident was the top news story in the world. 

• The Trust Barometer data is indistinguishable from Edelman’s paid work for these clients. The UAE was only included in the Trust Barometer polling in 2011 after becoming an Edelman client in 2010. Edelman’s UAE office promotes the finding that “Trust in UAE and government remains amongst the highest in the world,” and the Trust Barometer Report findings are regularly repeated by state media.

The Trust Barometer ‘trust-washes’ Edelman’s business of promoting polluters. Every year, one of the most distrustful agencies positions our greatest social issue as a deficit in trust. The Trust Barometer blames society at large for being more inclined to distrust than trust, even though Edelman has a decades-long history of promoting disinformation for polluters. Edelman uses the Barometer to say they support trusted climate communications but does the opposite in their work for Masdar, Chevron, Sasol, Shell and TotalEnergies. 

• Fossil fuel companies are two of the three lowest-rated business sectors in the 2023 Climate Trust Barometer. Edelman promotes these industries as climate leaders. 

• In 2021, 75% of those polled wanted governments to develop regulations to get businesses to act and to motivate people, while 76% wanted NGOs to hold businesses and governments accountable for their actions or lack of action.

• Later that year, Edelman was caught running ads for ExxonMobil opposing US climate regulations and currently promotes campaigns for Shell intended to shift public opinion about the company without meaningful changes in their business practices. 

• Tensie Whelan, a member of Edelman’s Independent Council of Climate Experts, praised the progress of New York City’s 2019 Climate Mobilization Act as a way of ”stimulating ... investment in decarbonization” and a major trust towards restoring trust in climate action. (32:20 here)

• However, Edelman’s clients fought, and are fighting climate action in New York. An Edelman client, NationalGrid, has spent almost $2 million to defeat New York climate policies and since at least April 6 2022, has been a steering and contributing member of the climate-obstructionist astroturfing group, New Yorkers for Affordable Energy. 

• While Edelman was managing the ExxonExxchange project, Exxon also ran ads specifically aimed at weakening climate action in New York, including fighting restrictions on new gas stove installations. 

• In 2022, 66% of Climate Trust Barometer survey respondents agreed with the statement, “Companies should stop advertising products or encouraging activities that are bad for the environment.” Edelman’s work for fossil fuel clients is dedicated to encouraging activities that are bad for the environment.

• Edelman’s formula for establishing trust in climate action in the 2023 climate trust barometer was as follows: “If more people: 1) trust institutions on climate, 2) believe companies keep climate commitments, 3) see climate progress and news that gives me hope, 4) believe climate solutions will benefit me and society, and 5) believe climate-friendly lifestyles are attractive” there is potential to achieve a 30 point gain in climate optimists.

• Edelman, in the recent past, has: 1) worked with clients like the Saudi government who are undermining trust in scientific institutions, 2) promoted companies that are breaking their climate commitments, such as Shell, 3) run ads from Exxon that claimed climate action would cost millions of jobs, 4) backed companies promoting fossil fuel development such as TotalEnergies, SABIC, and others - a complete repudiation of the strategy they claim to back.