Edelman Public Relations, the world’s largest PR firm, has broken off a business relationship with the American Petroleum Institute that brought it at least $327 million in billings in more than a decade.
“Circumstances of the divorce…were not immediately clear,” The Guardian reports. “Edelman said it would not comment on the report, and there was no immediate response from API.”
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While Edelman was not the Institute’s exclusive public relations provider, “the lucrative relationship was not without costs,” Goldenberg writes. “Over the past year, Edelman came under growing public pressure for its ties to fossil fuel companies and industry groups which have promoted misinformation about climate change.”
Last year, when other major PR firms declared they would no longer work for climate deniers, Edelman “scrambled to catch up with the new industry standard.” Late last year, the company dropped its campaign in support of TransCanada’s controversial Energy East pipeline, after leaked documents revealed a blueprint for a pseudo-grassroot campaign to support the project.
