July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— The president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

The debate over hydraulic fracturing — using high-powered water cannons to reach natural gas and oil reserves deep underground — is heating up in California, driven by the vast economic potential of the Monterey shale formation under vast swaths of the state.

Last month, a committee of the California Legislature passed three bills targeting “fracking.” A Nexis account shows hundreds of mentions of hydraulic fracturing in state newspapers over the past 12 months.

Given the extent of media interest and the high stakes for the state’s economy, one would think the Obama administration’s position on the safety of fracking would be central to coverage of California’s possible expanded use of the energy-exploration process. The president, after all, is broadly seen as the greenest president in history, using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and his executive powers to advance far-reaching regulations.

Just another heavy industry with ‘challenging but manageable’ pollution

It would thus seem to be highly relevant that:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

It is true that the White House has prevented fossil-fuel exploration on federal lands, which perhaps can be interpreted as opposition to fracking. But at a very basic level, the Obama administration has disagreed with the central claims of the anti-fracking campaign, which build on the idea that the process is new, unproven and hugely destructive to the environment.

Plenty of coverage — but none of it mentions Obama administration’s view

Here is a short list of recent California newspaper coverage that mentions greens’ warnings about hydraulic fracturing but never acknowledges that the Obama administration is on record as essentially dismissing greens’ claims and supporting fracking’s use:

— A May 9 column in the Ventura County Star by Timm Herdt headlined, “Drilling for a middle ground on fracking.”

— A May 2 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Fracking in drought regions a bad recipe.”

— A May 1 column in the Sacramento Bee by Dan Morain headlined, “Calculating the profits, pitfalls of an oil tax.”

— An April 29 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “Assembly committee passes three bills to impose fracking moratorium.”

—An April 20 story in the Ventura County Star headlined, “New leases reveal an oil land rush in Ventura County.”

— An April 13 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “Report urges tough rules on fracking.”

— An April 11 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Ground rules: On fracking.”

— An April 10 story in the Los Angeles Times headlined, “California Senate panel approves bill to regulate ‘fracking’.”

— An April 9 story in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined, “Foes of fracking win case — delay in drilling likely.”

This list could be far longer. I have been following the fracking issue intensely in California for a year and have never seen a newspaper story that even mentioned the Obama administration’s views in passing.

The juicy angle on greens and fracking that’s never shared with public

It’s impossible to know if ideology or groupthink or a combination of both is driving this bizarre omission of basic facts from fracking coverage. But one way or the other, it’s indefensible as journalism — especially because of the juicy story that awaits telling by the mainstream media:

Hydraulic fracturing has been a common tool in oil and gas exploration since the 1970s, and has been around since the late 1940s. It was only after it became a much more efficient and refined process in the last decade and began generating vast amounts of natural gas and oil that environmentalists began to object to it.

But this increased efficiency has also made fracking cleaner and less wasteful than ever. Less water is used, more is recycled — and there’s a race on to improve recycling technology.

Isn’t that worthy of coverage? That greens didn’t object to the much dirtier version of fracking for decades but only griped when it got efficient — and much cleaner?

Of course it is.

But if this juicy, important, obvious angle ever appears in the Times, Mercury-News, Bee or Chronicle, it will likely come as a complete surprise to subscribers. California’s environmental reporters simply refuse to cover the big picture on fracking.