Big Tobacco Tries to Buy Your Trust Online

Summary

• Tobacco companies are paying to place content on reputable news websites to rebuild their credibility.
• Researchers do not always disclose industry-related conflicts of interest and scientific sites and journals do not always make it clear when the research they publish has industry links.
• This makes it hard for readers to tell when content may be tobacco industry misinformation.

The tobacco industry is spending big—both openly and more covertly—to gain undeserved credibility for its products and messages through media outlets and scientific journals.

Revelations of the tobacco industry’s lies, over many decades, have done permanent damage to its reputation. And rightly so. Since the 1950s, tobacco companies have lied about the health harms of their products, they misleadingly claimed that each wave of new products were safer than what they sold before and they’ve funded science to sow doubt around tobacco regulations.

The tobacco industry is still, to this day, trying to gain back this lost credibility so that the public and policymakers will believe its messaging and embrace its addictive products.

Tobacco companies are turning to the internet, and especially news and research sites, to spread credible-sounding content that casts the tobacco industry and its products in a positive light.

One of the biggest problems: It’s not always clear this content is coming from the tobacco industry.

Big Tobacco sponsors content on reputable news sites

To appear more credible, tobacco companies place their names and narratives in news outlets popular with policymakers around the world. They do this by paying to publish or sponsor content, often in the form of advertorials. These articles are designed to look like regular editorial content, and are sometimes on topics seemingly unrelated to tobacco, such as science or innovation.

For example, Philip Morris International (PMI), one of the world’s largest cigarette makers, has sponsored content in The New York Times, Americas Quarterly, Politico, Civil Service World, ETHealthworld.com (the online health section of The Economic Times in India) and Reuters. The last two articles featured the same content, but industry funding was only disclosed in the latter.

Much of this sponsored content is designed to influence policy by supporting the industry’s messages about products like e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs). In Switzerland, for example, where HTP taxation is under debate, the Swiss Association for Tobacco Control identified PMI-sponsored content on popular sites including Le Temps, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Blue News and Blick. All of this content casts PMI or its HTPs, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches in a positive light.

Because sponsored content is designed to look like independent editorial content, readers, and even the people interviewed for these articles, may not realize it’s coming from the tobacco industry. Two Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors said it was not clear to them that the articles they were being interviewed for were linked to Philip Morris, and requested that the Boston Globe remove their comments from the articles.

This industry-sponsored content isn’t harmless. Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have called these advertorials “thinly veiled brand promotions” that “convey deceptive, factually inaccurate messaging” and that seek to influence policymakers to support regulations favorable to the tobacco industry’s business. Despite what these advertorials often say, the industry isn’t motivated by health or “innovation,” it’s motivated by profit.

Big Tobacco links to scientific content are not always clear—or disclosed

Trying to influence scientific discourse to “purposefully create misinformation, doubt, and ignorance” and to obscure the proven harms of its own products is a long-standing tactic of Big Tobacco. Researchers call this the Science for Profit model.

Like many industry-sponsored “news” stories, it can be difficult for readers to tell when science content is coming from Big Tobacco.

In 2023, researchers examined 553 publications by 10 authors who received direct or indirect funding from the tobacco industry. They found that only 33% of conflict of interest declarations were complete, 51% were incomplete and 16% were absent altogether.

There are many other examples of indirect industry funding being harder to identify and reject.

For example, the PMI-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (now called Global Action to End Smoking) sought to publish a special issue in the “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.” Despite the journal’s policy against publishing industry-funded content, the special issue almost came to fruition, as the managing editor stated they were not aware of FSFW’s connections to the tobacco industry. Researchers from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath alerted the journal to these connections and the special issue was canceled.

FSFW then took the special issue proposal to “Drugs and Alcohol Today,” which did not have a policy against publishing industry-funded content and published the special issue. Even then, some of the papers submitted did not disclose authors’ tobacco industry links.

This suggests that some journals are not doing enough to prevent industry-funded research from appearing online, or to adequately warn people that such research is funded by the tobacco industry.

To further flood the internet with industry science-related content, PMI, British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands have also developed specific “science” websites that contain significant amounts of their own biased content.

Avoid spreading tobacco industry misinformation

Tobacco companies appear to be trying to saturate the internet with pro-industry content, seeking to gain credibility with policymakers, influence dialogue around regulation and persuade the public to use its products.

The responsibility to label and reject this content is collective. To protect people from the industry’s harmful messaging, news sites must implement or uphold tobacco advertising and sponsorship bans that include advertorials. Journals and research sites must commit to not publishing science with tobacco-industry links and must thoroughly examine researchers’ conflict of interest statements.

Readers can take action, too. Contact STOP if you see content online that is, or might be, sponsored by the tobacco industry. Calling out industry-funded content to news or journal editors can also apply pressure to remove and reject industry content in the future.