The WaPo's Latest Gift to Big Oil

By: Kindler
Published On: 1/14/2008 10:30:48 AM

(Cross-posted on Daily Kos)

When the Washington Post publishes an Op-Ed, it has an obligation to disclose enough about the author's interests to allow you to judge whether he or she is merely expressing an opinion or being paid to represent a special interest. The WaPo failed to fully live up to this obligation in printing 5 Myths about Breaking our Foreign Oil Habit by Robert Bryce of the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

From its name, IER sounds like your typical professional think-tank. But it doesn't take a lot of research to dig up a few interesting facts about IER, such as:

- It has received $212,000 from Exxon-Mobil since 1998;

- Its president, Robert L. Bradley Jr., "was previously Director of Public Policy Analysis at Enron, where he wrote speeches for Kenneth Lay." Bradley, incidentally, also authored that literary classic of 2003, "Climate Alarmism Reconsidered".

- IER is part of a large web of organizations funded by Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries to spread disinformation and sow doubt about climate change. These groups all cite and reinforce each other to create the illusion of a growing consensus that climate change is a hoax. They are too numerous to list here, but among the best known are the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute - and yes, George Mason University's Mercatus Center is also a member of this motley crew. [For more on the funding of these groups, see the Mother Jones and Union of Concerned Scientists articles on this topic.]


Might knowing these facts color how you read this Op-Ed? Well, it should. The basic point of this piece is that striving for energy independence is a waste of time. Better to trust our best friend, Big Oil, to keep us safe, secure and all gassed up.

If you have any concern about the Post slipping this bit of oil industry propaganda into the paper without alerting its readers, you might want to slip a (polite) e-mail on the matter to the Post ombudsman,Deborah Howell. Because independence is not a dirty word - whether used in the context of energy or journalism.

Comments



WaPo Editorials and Op-Ed seem more and more biased (Hugo Estrada - 1/14/2008 10:52:51 AM)
Maybe it is just me, but it seems that the these pages are not what they used to be when Katharine Graham was running the newspaper. It now reads like a puzzle page where one is supposed to find the Republican talking points. And even when they have "opposing" views, it often is in the Fox News format of having a radical right wing columnist paired with a conservative moderate, standing for the "liberal."

But it could just be my perception.

And you are right about people having to write polite letters to Howell. She freaks out otherwise. And Deborah Howell doesn't get what an ombudsman is about. She behaves as if she were the WaPo PR spokesperson. She doesn't understand that her role is to represent readers, not the Post's management.