CNS' Fossil-Fueled Bias,
Part 2

The Media Research Center gets a lot of money from oil interests, so its "news" division CNSNews.com is appropriately eager (or perhaps contractually obligated) to parrot the industry's agenda.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 3/29/2017

Penny Starr

This is to be expected. After all, CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, receives no small amount of its funding from oil industry sources -- more than $400,000 from ExxonMobil alone. The MRC has also benefited from the largesse of oil and gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has given so much money that vice president (and loyal MRC apparatchik) Dan Gainor holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow.

So it's not a surprise that the oil-industry shilling by Starr and others at CNS has continued apace.

Pipeline propaganda

For instance, Starr has been an industry mouthpiece regarding controversies over the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline.

In a November 2014 article, Starr heavily quoted those with a direct financial interest in getting the Keystone XL pipeline built, including the American Petroleum Institute and pipeline builder TransCanada, touting how the pipeline project would create 42,000 jobs. But Starr didn't report the full context of the number, which came from a prediction in a State Department report. PolitiFact pointed out that the 42,000 jobs that would be "support[ed]" by the pipeline doesn't mean that 42,000 jobs would be created. The vast majority of those jobs are temporary and would last only as long as the pipeline is being constructed, and a number of them already exist. The operation and maintenance of the pipeline after construction will create only about 50 jobs.

In January 2015, Starr once again let API president Jack Gerard misleadingly claim that that Keystone XL "would generate more than 42,000 jobs in the U.S." Starr also let Gerard misleadingly suggest that Canadian oil shipped through the pipeline will stay in the U.S. -- and, thus, lower U.S. oil prices -- because "all crude oil in the U.S. – including that from Canada – is banned from export." But neither Gerard nor Starr mention that there are no limits on the export of refined oil products. (The prohibition on export of U.S. crude oil was lifted in December 2015, taking away that argument.)

In September 2016, Starr gave a platform to the business lobby -- specifically, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now -- to criticize President Obama's decision to halt the building of the Dakota Access pipeline. Much of her article was devoted to critics of the decision, while just a single paragraph was given to quoting from a statement from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which is central to the controversy.

In a Dec. 5 article, though, Starr went on an odd tangent of misdirection:

Native Americans and other activists vow to continue their protest over the final stretch of the Dakota Access pipeline under the Lake Oahe near Standing Rock, N.D., but at another reservation in the state, Native Americans are happy about the prosperity that pipelines have brought to their community.

“One hundred fifty miles up the Missouri River from Standing Rock, pipelines and pumpjacks are plenty on the Fort Berthold reservation,” an article posted on the Inside Energy website on Nov. 23 said.

“More than 4,000 miles of pipe carrying oil, natural gas and wastewater criss-cross the reservation in the heart of the Bakken oil patch,” the article said, noting that Fort Berthold is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes — known as MHA Nation.

But Starr omitted the fact that the situation with the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock reservation is completely different from that of the Fort Berthold reservation. The pipeline as planned does not cross the Standing Rock reservation as currently constituted; it does, however, cross tribal land the Standing Rock Sioux claim was promised to them in an 1851 treaty but instead provided to white settlers, land the tribe claims contains ancient burial mounds and other historical artifacts. The tribe also asserts that federal officials made little effort to consult the tribe about the pipeline's route.

When Starr did has devoted space to the tribe's side of the pipeline controversy, it was in order to paint it as extremist. A Nov. 23 article cited "a director at a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C." who claimed that "white privilege and white supremacy" led to the creation of the pipeline "and compared it to building a pipeline under Arlington Cemetery and across the Potomac River."

In other words, more biased reporting from Starr designed to present only one side -- the side she's getting paid to report favorably about -- as reasonable.

Even more pro-oil bias

A Nov. 22 CNS article featured a spokesperson for something called the Arctic Energy Center critical of the Obama administration's five-year moratorium on oil and gas leases in the Arctic. Starr made sure not to disclose that the Arctic Energy Center is not a local grassroots group but, rather, an advocacy group for the oil industry founded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. The center claims that part of its mission is to highlight "the long history of exploration and development in the region, and the scientific and technological advancements that allow for safe energy development today." In September, it launched a PR campaign to build support for offshore drilling in the Arctic that was scheduled to include a "six-figure television buy" in the Washington, D.C., TV market. Starr also quoted one of her favorite industry sources, the American Petroleum Institute, criticizing the lease decision as well.

Unusual for her, Starr actually balanced the story with a statement from the environmental group EarthJustice. But she showed her bias again by labeling it as an "activist group" -- a descriptor she did not apply to the Arctic Energy Center though it too is activist (as a six-figure TV ad buy ought to have indicated to her).

More examples of Starr's pro-oil bias:

• An April 2014 article repeated a claim that "Three U.S. oil companies paid a total of $289.7 billion in corporate income taxes between 2007 and 2012, the biggest portion of corporate taxes in absolute terms." Because Starr can't be bothered to go beyond PR flacks for the API, readers didn't know that this amount is in dispute because of how the tax figures are computed. Reuters reported that oil-industry numbers included payment of foreign taxes, while the rate is much lower if only U.S. taxes are counted.
• In August 2014, Starr regurgitated a National Association of Manufacturers study on the impact of a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule to reduce ozone that called it "the costliest federal rule by reducing the Gross National Product by $270 billion per year and $3.4 trillion from 2017 to 2040 and adds $2.2 trillion in compliance costs for the same time period." She added how "the American Petroleum Institute introduced a map it has produced showing how the new regulation would harm the economy in states across the country." Starr made no apparent effort to talk to any actual environmentalists about the claims made by NAM and API.
• A January 2016 article uncritically promoted how, at a press conference, American Petroleum Institute president and CEO Jack Gerard said "that federal government data show the United States will continue to rely on fossil fuels as its main source of energy for decades to come, despite efforts by environmentalists to work toward a goal of banning them." Starr went on to highlight how "Gerard said the U.S. was the world’s leader in gas and oil production while also leading the world in carbon reductions – thanks, in part, to increased production of fossil fuels, specifically liquefied natural gas (LNG)." Starr quoted nobody else in her article except Gerard.
• Starr used a February 2016 article to tout a claim by ExxonMobil that "in the 2040 market, oil, natural gas, and coal will meet 80% of the world’s energy needs and that carbon emissions should peak by 2030." Starr failed to disclose ExxonMobil donations to her employer over the years. Starr got assistance for oil-industry stenography from fellow CNS writer Barbara Hollingsworth, who the day before uncritically repeated spin from the American Petroleum Institute that President Obama’s proposal to impose a $10 per barrel tax on oil "increases the hostile campaign the administration is waging against the American consumer." Hollingsworth made no attempt to seek out a point of view in response.
• An Oct. 26 article in uncritically reported the results of a study by the similarly oil industry-funded conservative Heritage Foundation touting how “The U.S. did drill its way to lower gas prices over the past several years, for both natural gas and gasoline, and broke the back of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the process." Starr couldn't be bothered to seek out any commentary from any renewable-fuels interests on Heritage's study.
• A Jan. 9 CNS article touted how "Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, said last week that opening up offshore production of oil and natural gas could create more than 800,000 U.S. jobs and provide some $200 billion in revenue to the federal Treasury." Starr made no apparent effort to seek out an alternate view.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest

A related issue in which CNS also took the oil industry's side is a case in which state attorneys general subpoenaed right-wing think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute regarding their relationship with ExxonMobil and that company's alleged suppression of evidence that climate change is driven by fossil fuels.

When the first subpoena was filed in April 2016, CNS published an armada of op-eds defending climate change denialism in general and CEI in particular:

Hans Bader -- identified only as someone who "practices law in Washington, D.C." -- declared that the subpoena is "raising red flags under the First Amendment" and the investigation of ExxonMobil itself is "a threat to climate science and the First Amendment."

The Heritage Foundation's Kim Holmes asserted that the subpoena and other actions against Exxon are "blatant attempts to bend the law ... to shut down free and open research. It is but another example of the new illiberal attempt by progressive liberals to use the power of the law to intimidate and coerce those with whom they disagree." Holmes ignored that there's precedent for such action: As Media Matters noted, then-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican, demanded that the University of Virginia provide emails and other documents from climate scientist Michael Mann -- document that were also sought by the American Tradition Institute, whose senior director of litigation, Chris Horner, was also a senior fellow at CEI.

Holmes also claimed that "It is possible that CEI was being targeted by Walker precisely because one of its attorneys, Hans Bader, had criticized New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who was leading the campaign."

Funny, Bader did not disclose his relationship with CEI in his CNS op-ed.

CNS, finally, published an op-ed from a CEI employee who was, for once, actually identified as such. Kent Lassman, CEI's president, ranted that "The audacity of this legal action is profound. George Orwell’s dystopian novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' described 'crimethink' as entertaining thoughts unacceptable to the government."

None of these op-eds, however, addressed the actual reasoning behind the subpoena. As InsideClimate News explained, Exxon had an "emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s," but then subsequently worked to "undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI."

CNS published a second op-ed by Bader on the subject on June 16. In it, he attacked that "incredibly burdensome subpoena" that was issued to CEI and asserts that the investigation "raises obvious First Amendment issues."

CNS published a third op-ed by Bader on June 22, in which he attacks the subpoena as a "climate-change witch-hunt" and explained that "CEI filed a motion for sanctions against the attorney general who sent us that subpoena, Claude Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands, under the District of Columbia’s anti-SLAPP law." In all of these op-eds, Bader is identified only as someone who "practices law in Washington, D.C."

But he's much more than that, and not just any CEI employee either: He's a senior attorney at CEI. So of course Bader is going to criticize the subpoena -- that's what he's being paid to do.

In addition to CNS failing to disclose this clear conflict of interest to its readers, Bader himself doesn't explicitly disclose it. Given that the op-eds originated as posts at CEI (here, here and here), he really didn't need to, but he knows that CNS reproduces his posts, as is obvious from a an April 8 CEI post in which he cited "an earlier commentary at CNS News" that he wrote.

While Bader should have made sure CNS disclosed his CEI employment on his columns, it's ultimately not his job. CNS shouldn't have to be asked to do so, given that disclosure of conflicts of interest is a bedrock principle of journalism.

Ironically, at the same time CNS was publishing Bader's disclosure-deficient op-eds in June, the MRC's Tim Graham was giddy that it prompted NPR to issue a correction on an item that identified a woman as less political than she actually was.

Don't expect CNS to do the same -- the MRC is rarely interested in practicing what it preaches.

But if you haven't seen much pro-oil propaganda at CNS lately, there's a reason: Starr left earlier this month for a similar reporting job at Breitbart News. In her first couple weeks on the job, her oil industry cheerleading has continued in stories like "Donald Trump’s State Department Gives Green Light to the Keystone XL Pipeline" and "EXCLUSIVE: Navajos Celebrate End of Obama’s Job-Killing Energy Policies: Trump Offers ‘Unwavering Support’ for Coal."

And the propaganda cycle continues.