Reporter With Anti-Drilling Views Points Out Bias of Internet Reporting & Reveals His Own Bias in the Process

From Tom Wilber, on his Shale Gas Review blog, comes an article that decries the abundance of sources of free content on the Internet because of how they allow non-professional journalists to write things that people can then read.  Well, actually, Tom doesn't totally mind that.  Anti-drilling non-professional journalists, such as anti-fracking extremist Vera Scroggins, receive praise from Wilber.  It seems that it's more the people or PR firms with a pro-drilling viewpoint that offend his journalistic sensibilities.

An excerpt:

As the public turns to free content on the Internet at the expense of paid content by professional reporters, the type of credibility and checks and balances that professional journalists have traditionally brought to the public are disappearing. The depth of reporting, and the newspaper’s traditional role as advocate for open government and transparency in matters of public interest are also suffering with the decline of revenue available for investigative journalism. It’s not just about the revenue, it’s about the source of revenue – from an independent readership and viewers – that makes the press such an effective watchdog.

Obviously, Wilber feels that he is credible.  Thus, his reporting should follow a higher standard and be even-handed in its coverage of the topic at hand.  Anyone who has read Shale Gas Review before knows, though, that Wilber has an anti-drilling viewpoint that leaks into every article he writes.  And ironically, this article is no exception:

The gas industry claims that drilling is not a public health threat, and that fracking fluid is harmless. In support of these claims it cites lack of evidence tying operations to pollution and illness. What’s missing is full disclosure. The industry operates on private property without the level of regulatory oversight that other industries face. (It is exempt from both federal Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste laws that require disclosure of what goes into and what comes out of the ground.) When something goes wrong, it is often a matter between the company and the homeowner to resolve. When legal pressure necessitates, the industry can make the problem go away with settlements that contain non-disclosure clauses.

A recent example came to light with a personal injury claim against Range Resources and other operators by a family in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pa. Range Resources agreed to pay the Hallowich family $750,000 to settle a lawsuit for personal injury damages related to operations near their home. The case was settled by the parties in 2011, no official complaint was filed, and the records were sealed.

We only know this because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Washington Observer-Reporter filed and won a suit to get the records unsealed. The unsealed documents also revealed that the PA Department of Environmental Protection did not maintain records of an investigation into a complaint about water contamination at a neighboring property, and that the investigator, Mark Kiel, soon left the agency to work for the gas drilling company he had been investigating. For every case that gets unsealed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of cases sealed in documents that are never opened because their public relevance goes unchallenged, and that’s largely because mainstream media outlets have fewer resources to do that then they did in the golden age of investigative journalism.

So in the first of those three paragraphs there is a complaint about the lack of full disclosure from the industry to support their claims that fracking isn't causing health problems.  Then comes mention of the $750,000 that Range Resources paid the Hallowich family "to settle a lawsuit for personal injury damages related to operations near their home."  Of course, if you are not familiar with what the unsealed documents in that case revealed, that description would give the impression that the family was compensated for the personal injury that drilling caused, right?

Wilber follows by pointing out things in the unsealed documents of that case which could perhaps indicate that there is the possibility that the drilling at a neighboring property did cause problems that weren't recorded properly by the PA DEP.  It's an insinuation meant to lead you to a certain conclusion, based on a portion of those court records.

Meanwhile, Wilber makes no mention of the fact that those unsealed records also contained a document signed by the Hallowich family in which they acknowledge that there was no medical evidence whatsoever to support their claims that drilling caused health problems for their family, and that their children were not experiencing any health problems or symptoms that could be allegedly related to drilling.  Full disclosure, indeed.

People are smart.  If you are reading something written by Energy in Depth, you are probably smart enough to know that it is biased in favor of the industry.  EID is committed to doing PR for the industry.  So when EID is blasting a report because it is biased against shale drilling, it's important to remember that the article you are reading from EID is unequivocally biased in favor of shale drilling.

If you are reading a report on the website of Water Defense about a study funded and commissioned by an activist group, you are probably smart enough to realize that the conclusions of the study and report were predetermined and that little weight can really be attached to it.  And if you are reading something from Shale Gas Review - well, you can tell me what you think you find there.

Yes, there is plenty of bias in the reporting on shale drilling and fracking.  We link to articles that are written from both sides of the debate, and frankly, much of the time it is amusing to read the articles and see how crystal clear the bias is - even from the paid, professional media outlets that Wilber would have us believe are free from such things and thus more credible.



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