Action Alert: NYT Turns to Oil Consultant to Minimize Trump’s Climate Damage
The New York Times minimizes Keystone’s impact on the climate, in the service of false balance and downplaying the impact of Trump’s anti-environmental moves.
‘We’ve Seen Exxon Leading the Charge to Go After Groups That Criticized Them’
“We hope the public and the media really are not taken in by this notion that Tillerson’s deal-making with other countries is something that qualifies him…to be the secretary of State.”
‘Nothing to See Here’ Headlines Conceal Police Violence at Dakota Access
The New York Times gets a failing grade for its headline over a report on escalating police violence against Native American activists and others defending the Missouri River against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
At DAPL, Confiscating Cameras as Evidence of Journalism
While elite media wait for the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline to go away so they can return to presenting their own chin-stroking as what it means to take climate change seriously, independent media continue to fill the void with actual coverage.
Dakota Access Blackout Continues on ABC, NBC News
As of this writing, no TV outlet included in the Nexis database has mentioned that independent journalist Amy Goodman was charged with trespassing for reporting on the pipeline protest. Nor has any national newspaper reported on North Dakota’s legal assault on newsgathering.
Colleagues Mostly Fail to Rally for Amy Goodman, Threatened With Jail for Journalism
When Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman asked security guards at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction project why they were using pepper spray and dogs to attack Native American protesters, the guards soon backed off. It was a dramatic lesson in how journalism can defend the rights of citizens.
‘We Are Peaceful Protectors of Water and of Health’
“This is not just a fight about this one pipeline. This is a fight to protect our planet for all of us as humanity.”
Kandi Mossett on Native American Pipeline Protests
For many people, what’s happening right now in North Dakota is a crucial story of a frontline fight of indigenous people against extractive industry—and on behalf of humanity, really, and the planet.
‘The Real Battle Is, Who’s Going to Own the Energy Supply?’
“These guys running around defending nuclear power aren’t just defending nuclear power. What they’re really about is protecting the grid, which is corporate-owned and corporate-controlled.”
Exxon ‘Knew Earlier, They Knew With Certainty and They Knew Globally’
“They knew that they could evade accountability, or at least delay regulatory and public scrutiny, by suggesting that there was doubt about the science.”
Brendan DeMelle on Exxon’s Climate Cover-Up
Exxon knew decades ago that the increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuels posed a global threat. And it acted on that information–with a conscious and vigorous effort to sow uncertainty about climate science and to forestall regulation on its industry.
Looking Back on Deepwater With Journalism as Usual
The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was even bigger than previously understood in terms of Gulf coastline oiled–as noted by NationalGeographic.com, one of a very few outlets to note the occasion beyond a “This Day In History” squib.
‘Why Is It That the Safety of Those Coal Miners’ Lives Does Not Matter Enough?’
“We watched Upper Big Branch because 29 died in one spectacularly stupid explosion. But there are another 20 miners or so underground, one or two at a time, dying because of the same management style, the same sense of dollars over men, the same sense of production over safety, that accounted for Upper Big Branch.”
BP Deal: Path to a ‘Cleaner Gulf’–or Guaranteed Future Disasters?
“BP Deal Will Lead to a Cleaner Gulf” is the headline the New York Times put over an editorial that, in its tone and substance, makes a pretty good illustration of why it almost assuredly won’t.
Jodi Jacobson on Hobby Lobby, Kate Sheppard on Oil Spills
The Supreme Court hears the Hobby Lobby case, which is about women’s health, reproductive rights and claims of religious freedom–and one more front in the right’s battle against the Affordable Care Act. And 25 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the Sound is still not fully recovered, and spills are still in the news.
Obama’s ‘War on Coal’ Isn’t Real—but It’s Really in the Newspaper
Republicans discuss Barack Obama’s environmental policies as a “war on coal.” And in the New York Times, reporter Trip Gabriel covers that story not as someone trying to explain reality to readers, but as someone helping to make the Republican case.
Public Radio’s Pro-Fracking Spin
The April edition of Public Radio International’s monthly program America Abroad Media, “Global Energy and Innovations,” was essentially an infomercial for the natural gas industry and fracking, under the guise of news.
Kicking Carbon
Just as the mainstream media are evolving away from the era of false balance (Extra!, 11/04) to accept the reality of what scientists call “anthropogenic global warming,” a different type of denial has taken hold: a refusal to acknowledge the fact that the solution to the climate crisis requires humanity to stop depending on fossil […]
It’s Only the Future of the Planet
Issues like oil spills, land use rights, groundwater pollution etc. are all complaints made by critics of the Keystone XL pipeline. And looming over all of them is the way that tapping the tar sands will exacerbate climate change. But the media doesn’t seem to care.
For NPR, Fracking Fight Is Between Farmers & Movie Stars
Who stands between the hard-working people of Upstate New York and money and jobs coming out of the ground? Why, it’s actor Mark Ruffalo.
