Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is in bed with -- and funded by -- the oil industry, and it has regularly shilled for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. So it's no surprise that it would harshly criticize the Obama administration for rejecting the pipeline.
The pro-oil, anti-Obama bias is palpable in the headlines alone:
- Obama Nixes Job-Creating Pipeline 11 Months After Launching Plan With Canada to Boost Growth on Both Sides of Border
- Obama Blames Republicans, Hides Behind His Own State Dep't, in Rejecting Keystone Pipeline
- Romney, Other 2012 Hopefuls, Back Keystone XL Pipeline That Obama Rejected
Two of the articles uncritically repeat claims that the pipeline project wiould create 20,000 new jobs, ignoring the fact that this claim comes straight from the pipeline's builder and has been discredited.
Another CNS article, by Elizabeth Harrington, is dedicated to attacking Nancy Pelosi for disputing that the oil that would be distributed in the pipeline would be consumed in the U.S. Harrington relies on the American Petroleum Institute and the pipeline builder to rebut Pelosi, insisting that it almost certainly be consumed in the U.S. and that without it, “the U.S. will continue to import millions of barrels of conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela.”
But as the Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Levi points out in the Washington Post, U.S. vulnerability to turmoil in the Middle East is linked to how much oil we consume, not where we buy it from, and the pipeline would have no effect on oil prices in the U.S. since those are set on a global basis.
When your parent organization has a fellowship named after oilman T. Boone Pickens, who has donated millions to said organization, it only makes sense to toe the pro-oil line -- and CNS does so here to the expected slavish extent.
