FAIR’s new action alert shows how the Washington Post failed to disclose to readers that a two-page spread on the election-year energy debate was based on events the paper co-sponsored with the American Petroleum Institute.
We’re asking people to write to the Post‘s ombud about this conflict. Please feel free to share your letter in the comments section below.
to ombudsman:
The Washington Post should be so ashamed of publishing industry-sponsored propaganda falsely labelled as “news”. When there is only one side of the story presented by the credible advocates, then it is not a “debate”!
A very visible apology is called for!
Brain-WashPosted, AGAIN!
Patrick Pexton,
I shall skip over the ethical discussion, only to point out that this is a very stupid business move.
No wonder the Washington Post is losing readership – it is a propaganda rag for the oil industry.
Richard Pauli
Seattle, WA
Mary Jordan’s article failed to articulate the views of environmentalists or those opposed to the big business fossil fuel industry.
I am deeply disappointed in the Washington Post for not acknowledging in the article that Vote4Energy.org, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, was actually a sponsor.
I am also deeply disappointed in Mary Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize winner, for not being far more balanced and forthcoming with the bias she perpetrated on the readers.
At an incredibly fragile time in the election cycle and with the dire future we are facing on this planet as a result of unchecked pollution and greed, the Washington Post should be ashamed of not standing up to corporate manipulation.
Sincerely,
Alan Papscun
Dear Mr Pexton::
What an outrage for a “news” feature!!
Shouldn’t Post readers have been told that what they were reading was less a news feature and more like an advertisement?
Why? Perhaps because the oil industry, undisclosed to Post readers, was sponsoring the discussion. Entirely missing from this “debate” were environmentalists or any strong critics of the fossil fuel industry.
Shouldn’t Post readers have been told that what they were reading was less a news feature and more like an advertisement?
Interestingly, you published a letter last month (8/4/12) complaining about the Post’s failure to cover a large anti-fracking protest in D.C. that ended at the offices of…the American Petroleum Institute. Did anyone there read it?
Washington Post Live editor Mary Jordan explained, “Huge natural gas and oil finds…have drastically changed America’s energy outlook.” She went on to note, “Gas burns cleaner than coal,” before admitting that “there are environmental concerns with ‘fracking.'”
As Jordan explained, the debate grew out of discussions held at both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Those forums were sponsored by the Post and the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
You failed to credit another sponsor: Vote4Energy.org, aproject of the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group of the oil and gas industries
The Post featured excerpts from the invited guests. On the Democratic side, that meant Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer–an enthusiastic supporter of fracking–and Rep. Ed Markey (Mass.), who seemed to endorse more gas drilling, along with Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, who touted oil and gas drilling in his state before mentioning renewables. On the Republican side, readers heard from Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas and Bill Maloney, a candidate for governor of West Virginia, who declared global warming to be “nothing but a hoax.”
The right was also represented by the Heritage Foundation’s Kim Holmes, Margo Thorning of the Koch-backed American Council for Capital Formation and Karen Harbert of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Industry views were provided by Melissa Lavinson of Pacific Gas & Electric, Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners and David Holt of the Consumer Energy Alliance, an industry-aligned advocacy group. There were also comments from Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, Paul Bledsoe of the Bipartisan Policy Center and Josh Freed of the centrist think tank Third Way.
Entirely missing from this “debate” were environmentalists or any strong critics of the fossil fuel industry.
In a video of the discussion at the Republican convention posted on the paper’s website, Emily Akhtarzandi–the Post’s “strategic partnership executive”–credited the American Petroleum Institute in her opening remarks, saying the group “saw value in making today’s conversation possible.”
Indeed they would; arranging a “debate” that excludes your critics participating is very valuable. And so is seeing that one-sided discussion spread across two ombudsman@washpost.com
Shame on the Post!!
Merrill Kramer
Clearwater, FL 33763
Dear Mr. Pexton, The Washington Post must have turned itself into a subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry. Your Sept. 11 “discussion” on energy was laughable. You either didn’t know where to get detailed information on environmental impacts, or else you didn’t care to present it. This is a big mistake. Nowadays the public KNOWS where to look for facts, and the public CARES about what is happening to our air, water, and weather. Katherine Graham must be turning over in her grave.
“Profession Fail By Blatantly Open Advertizing – Withholding Information is Deceiving the Public”
Dar low-life ad-prostitutes, formerly known as ‘journalists’ (*LMFAO*).
Explain why you failed to disclose that your September 11 energy feature was essentially sponsored by the oil industry.
Corporate Fascism = Death-Wish Insanity
“You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time!”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.”
– James Madison
As a former subscriber and long-time admirer of the Post, I am distressed to learn of the specious “debate” carried in your September 11 edition. When energy sources are discussed with barely a mention of their environmental impacts, especially on the climate, it is more an industry presentation than an honest debate. I expect more from the Post.
Kent Price
Orland, Maine
Washington Post
Ombud Patrick Pexton
202-334-7582
ombudsman@washpost.com
Mr. Pexton:
It was indefensible for the Post to feature what amounted to a fossil fuel industry ad disguised as a “debate” on energy policy!
In your Sept. 11th feature, you failed to disclose that the fossil fuel industry was the main sponsor, or to include anyone but its minions in the actual discussion.
Why was the American Petroleum Institute (the main lobbying group of the oil and gas industries) not mentioned as a sponsor, when its Vote4Emergy logo is on the Post Live website that features the forums?
You did not include anyone in the debate who is strongly against fossil fuels and takes climate change seriously, or who would actually bring up the numerous very serious problems with fracking, such as:
1) A single fracking well can require more than one million gallons of water, which can deplete local ground water.
2) Toxic chemicals are added to the water used for fracking and can comtaminate local ground water through being injected or through leakage.
3) The toxic chemicals had to be detected by independent analysis, because the fracking companies refuse to release information on what they are adding to the water.
4) Big Oil and Gas are exempt from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts (thanks to their intensive lobbying & Dick Cheney).
5) The high explosives used in fracking can cause the gas itself to leak into local wells, which is highly flammable, & is a significant safety hazard to anyone living in the entire area affected.
6) There have already been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination near drilling sites, and methane leaks related to drilling have caused wells to explode, resulting in deaths, injuries, and loss of property.
7) Fracking wastewater can contain (in addition to the toxic chemicals added) dissolved solids and naturally occurring radioactive chemicals from its journeys underground. Wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to deal with these large quantities of that sort of contamination.
8) Fracking and the chemicals used in it can also cause air pollution over many miles of the area around the fracking site.
9) Natural gas is NOT clean energy!!!!! It emits 70 % as much carbon as oil does, and 50% as much as coal. In addition, it emits vast quantities of METHANE, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide!
SHAME ON YOU FOR NOT PRESENTING THESE FACTS & OTHERS ON BEHALF OF THE PLANET AND 98% OF THE PUBLIC, INSTEAD OF ALLOWING ONLY THE LIES AND EXAGGERATIONS OF BIG OIL AND GAS!! I CHALLENGE YOU TO APOLOGIZE FOR THAT PSEUDO-DEBATE AND TO ACTUALLY PRESENT A REAL DEBATE WHERE ALL SIDES ARE REPRESENTED FULLY!!!!
Dear Mr. Patrick Pexton,
Why is the Washington Post so uncritical as to present as news its 2 page pro-oil energy feature, without disclosing the biased nature of the reported “discussion;” without noting the exclusion of the opponents to perpetuation of fossil fuel extraction, transportation and burning? This reporting of an in-house industry “discussion” as a national discussion of the relevant issues by the impacted stakeholders is in the tradition of propaganda, misleading, not informative journalism based on reporting relevant facts, such as who did what where how & why.
This omission should be corrected by publishing an equally prominent op-ad in the Washington Post covering the magnitude of the probable and statistically certain environmental costs and who will pay for them; economic medium and longterm impacts on the health of our people, our air, soil and water; and the impacts of conservation during the period of replacement with alternative sources of energy that do not foul and deplete the physical environment and moral requirements to maintain humanity’s planetary existence at a sustainable level.
If we do not turn from our current course the planet will no longer sustain human civilization. Our species decline will be of our own making. Complicit or not: We will radically reduce our resource use to what is sustainable by this finite and mutable planet. Our choice is to do this in an orderly and responsibly rapid fashion, or we will “crash” as a species. The choice of method can barely still be made. Your job is to make sure your readership has all the information necessary to make informed choices on how to achieve a sustainable future, should they wish to preserve a world hospitable to life as we know it, and not to feed us propaganda promoting proliferation of an unsustainable global industry at the irreparable expense of our verdant and biologically diverse world.
In his poem Change, Robinson Jeffers concludes “…and if man never were, Ah, perfect loveliness of earth and sky.” I don’t think Jeffers thought the earth could be made barren and the sky made pink by our misguided excesses.
Our sins, the wages of which in Biblical terms are death, are also in this instance predicted by science and corroborated by history.
Global corporate imperialism, greed, is a sin against humanity and our earth that permits our habitation within limits. Stop misleading and dis-informing your readership. Stop presenting propaganda as news.
I look forward to your response and reading a prominent 2 page fact based expansion of the considerations at issue for a truly comprehensive “national discussion” on the impacts of current fuel burning vs. conservation and energy replacement with non-poluting alternatives. We breath, we eat, we live mostly on land and die without potable water. We are all stakeholders. Please include us in the “national” discussion.
Thank you,
Shoshannah Benmosché
Dear Mr. Pexton,
Why has a reputable news source like Washington Post failed to disclose that its September 11 ‘LIVELY DEBATE on ENERGY’ was essentially sponsored by the oil industry with no representation by the industry critics.
Don’t you think this would cause the Washington post to lose readership.
Shahzad Shah
Santa Fe, NM 87505
I’m deeply disappointed in the Sept. 11 edition two page discussion posed as an “energy debate.” Not surprisingly — as it was sponsored by Vote4Energy (an American Petroleum Industry lobbying group) it was strongly supportive of fossil fuels! With all the hype about neutrality when it comes to something like global warming or challenging a political lie, when someone is paying the piper, science and neutrality go down the tubes. I expect better!