Health care reform seems a long way from climate change but they share something very important in common: well funded interest groups that want to keep things just the way they are.
Take the Manhattan Institute. They are railing against proposed health care reform, churning out a dizzying number of reports and op-eds about why “Obama-care” is wrong for America. They also expend abundant effort slagging climate science, last year feting Danish doubter Bjorn Lomborg. The Manhattan Institute received $235,000 from ExxonMobil, as well as funding from various other conservative organizations.
Other groups working hard to derail Obama's health care platform include the notorious Heartland Institute. Desmog Blog readers will remember their remarkably unethical efforts to associate unwitting climate researchers with their propaganda campaign against climate science.
Heartland just released a thick report objectively entitled “Obama Health Plan: Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care”, authored by Peter Ferrara.
Mr. Ferrara is truly a multi-talented researcher. Not only is he apparently an expert on health care and medical policy, he has also spilled buckets of ink hectoring the scientific community for their slap dash research on climate change.
Just this spring Ferrara was holding forth in the national press that the “UN’s global warming reports involve shoddy science skewed to favor the theory of man-made global warming…despite growing evidence from first-rate, blue chip scientists who are increasingly concluding that humans have little effect on global temperatures…”
Who knew that one man could know so much? It's amazing what they teach you in law school.
So why are the same groups that oppose reducing carbon emissions also fighting against health care reform? Perhaps the best explanation is that great unifier, money.
An interesting case study is the newly minted astroturf group Conservatives for Patients Rights - founded by Richard L. Scott, a man who has a rather vested interest in keeping US health care in private hands.
In 1988, Scott co-founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation (Columbia/HCA). He and his business partners aimed to transform US health care by “doing for hospitals . . .what McDonald’s has done in the food business and what WalMart has done in the retailing business.”
Scott apparently intended to own 25% of the nation’s hospitals and predicted that rash of closures might clear the field of unprofitable ““teaching hospitals and children’s hospitals” – increasing market share for Columbia/HCA.
This fixation on the profit motive was illustrated in 1995 when one quarter of Columbia’s administrators were earning bonuses equaling at least 80 percent of their salaries.
Scott apparently wondered out loud, “Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obliged to feed everyone who shows up?”
By 1997, Columbia/HCA was the largest health care provider in the world with annual revenues of $23 billion.
That July, they were also raided by the FBI in five states and later convicted of fourteen felony charges relating to Medicare fraud and doctor kickback schemes. Columbia/HCA eventually paid $1.7 billion in fines – the highest in US history at the time. Three HCA executives were indicted, and Scott was ousted as CEO by the board of directors – with a $10 million severance package and more than $300 million in stock.
Since then he formed an investment company, Richard L. Scott Investments, with a thick portfolio of private health care ventures. In 2001, Scott also co-founded Solantic, a chain of medical clinics that this year raised $40 million in private equity.
Scott has ambitious plans for Solantic to become a national brand of emergency medical clinics with 35 clinics open by the end of the year with $100 million in annual revenues, and potentially “a thousand locations”.
Fast-forward to 2009, one month after Obama was sworn in, when Scott founded Conservatives for Patients Rights with $5 million of his own money and $15 million more from undisclosed sources. According to the WSJ, this campaign is aimed to “pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.”
So what do the voices shrilly opposing health care and energy reform have in common? Money. Both stand to lose big if Obama succeeds in enacting the agenda the American people elected him to do.
Keep that in mind the next time you see an expensive ad telling you to fear efforts to make our health care more accessible, or our energy more sustainable.
The New York Times ran an op-ed last week by Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute, a group funded by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and other polluters to confuse the public about climate change and energy issues. Bryce goes to great lengths to portray solar and wind power as land-hogging energy choices. He suggests that fracked shale gas and nuclear are somehow more environmentally preferable energy options.
This is a common argument from Bryce, who had a similar pro-fracking op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, and who has emerged as one of the loudest of a growing cadre of critics of clean energy. Most of these critics are, not surprisingly, affiliated with “institutes” (i.e., front groups) that get money from the dirty energy industries that solar and wind are starting to disrupt.
But one important question remains - why does The New York Times print such misleading opinion pieces without revealing the clear conflict of interest that a Koch/Exxon-funded front group representative has on such matters? Did the Times’ even ask, and does it do so as a matter of standard practice? If not, the Times could quickly and easily implement and enforce a policy compelling such op-ed contributors to publicly state their financial conflicts of interest. After all, freelance contributors to the news side of the paper are held to such a standard. What's with the free pass that Bryce got?
The Times is well-regarded as one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity, which is why it’s so troubling to see the paper fail to enforce a reasonable standard of ethical disclosure on Bryce's prominent op-ed. The Times ought to provide readers with basic information about the conflicts of interest that a contributor might have.
This is about basic ethics, and doesn't even reach the level of asking the Times to actually verify facts in op-eds -- a step that would inform readers about the blatant misrepresentations and distortions of fact made in propaganda pieces like Bryce's.
It's not difficult to see that his arguments that wind and solar renewable energy projects take up more land than fossil fuel and nuclear operations are preposterous. Does anyone really believe Bryce's claim that wind turbines (which each have a very small physical footprint) are more land-intensive than, say, blowing the tops of hundreds of Appalachian mountains to extract coal, or the vast amounts of land swallowed by oil and gas infrastructure, including pipelines, oil rigs, pump stations, and the roads built specifically to move all that drilling equipment around?
If The New York Times had a policy requiring op-ed contributors to answer basic questions about their funding sources and conflicts of interest, perhaps readers wouldn't be misled by such pieces.
In this case, had the Times’ opinion page staff asked Bryce where his group the Manhattan Institute gets its funding, readers would learn that the groups gets a significant amount of money from dirty energy interests including ExxonMobil and Koch Industries.
How hard is that, really?
Dirty energy interests know they can game the papers, and that's why front groups like Bryce's Manhattan Institute and dozens of similar industry PR firms bother to masquerade as think tanks. It's a decades-old practice stretching all the way back to the call in the 1971 Powell Manifesto to start launching such groups.
By requiring op-ed contributors to disclose financial conflicts, direct or indirect, on the subject of their pieces, the Times would begin to unmask this cottage industry.
In order to set such a policy, the Times would need to look no further than the very standard it applies to its own news staff through its code of ethics:
“Masquerading. Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story. We may sometimes remain silent on our identity and allow assumptions to be made to observe an institution's dealings with the public, for example, or the behavior of people at a rally or police officers in a bar near the station house. But a sustained, systematic deception, even a passive one … may be employed only after consultation between a department head and masthead editors.” [emphasis added]
The Times’ opinion page editors should apply the spirit of that standard on masquerading by asking a few direct questions of op-ed contributors like Bryce about their funding.
By failing to implement this simple standard, the Times enables the printing of industry propaganda on its influential opinion pages.
*Phone and email messages sent by DeSmogBlog to New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane inquiring about this policy discrepancy have not been answered, but we will update this post when we hear from him.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Lewis Powell Memo, a document that set the stage for the creation of the echo chamber that protects corporate interests ahead of the public interest. A corporate lawyer and well-known tobacco industry defender at the time, Lewis Powell wrote this influential memo to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce laying out a strategy to develop a long-term campaign to set up corporate front groups and think tanks to manufacture the appearance of credibility for corporate interests.
The echo chamber that the right wing constructed over the past four decades since Powell's infamous memo has played a central role in blocking action on climate change and a host of other public health and environmental threats. This unethical corporate propaganda mill capitalizes on the dark side of social sciences, preying upon people's biases and encouraging them to support and defend corporate interests above their own.
Charlie Cray from Greenpeace USA has written an excellent overview of the significance of the Lewis Powell memo, and with the kind permission of Greenpeace, we share Charlie's piece in full below. Please read it, share it widely, and help to shine a bright spotlight on this document. If more people understood the roots of this corporate propaganda campaign, perhaps they would become immune to its influence.
Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.
Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”
An astute observer of the business community and broader social trends, Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a board member of tobacco giant Philip Morris and other companies. In his memo, he detailed a series of possible “avenues of action” that the Chamber and the broader business community should take in response to fierce criticism in the media, campus-based protests, and new consumer and environmental laws.
Environmental awareness and pressure on corporate polluters had reached a new peak in the months before the Powell memo was written. In January 1970, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which formally recognized the environment’s importance by establishing the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Massive Earth Day events took place all over the country just a few months later and by early July, Nixon signed an executive order that created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tough new amendments to the Clean Air Act followed in December 1970 and by April 2001, EPA announced the first air pollution standards. Lead paint was soon regulated for the first time, and the awareness of the impacts of pesticides and other pollutants-- made famous by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring – was recognized when DDT was finally banned for agricultural use in 1972.
The overall tone of Powell’s memo reflected a widespread sense of crisis among elites in the business and political communities. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” he suggested, adding that the attacks were not coming just from a few “extremists of the left,” but also – and most alarmingly -- from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including leading intellectuals, the media, and politicians.
To meet the challenge, business leaders would have to first recognize the severity of the crisis, and begin marshalling their resources to influence prominent institutions of public opinion and political power -- especially the universities, the media and the courts. The memo emphasized the importance of education, values, and movement-building. Corporations had to reshape the political debate, organize speakers’ bureaus and keep television programs under “constant surveillance.” Most importantly, business needed to recognize that political power must be “assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”
Powell emphasized the importance of strengthening institutions like the U.S. Chamber -- which represented the interests of the broader business community, and therefore key to creating a united front. While individual corporations could represent their interests more aggressively, the responsibility of conducting an enduring campaign would necessarily fall upon the Chamber and allied foundations. Since business executives had “little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics” and “little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,” it was important to create new think tanks, legal foundations, front groups and other organizations. The ability to align such groups into a united front would only come about through “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.”
Before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court Powell circulated his call for a business crusade not only to the Chamber, but also to executives at corporations including General Motors. The memo did not become available to the public until after Powell’s confirmation to the Court, when it was leaked to Jack Anderson, a syndicated columnist and investigative reporter, who cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity.
Anderson’s report spread business leaders’ interest in the memo even further. Soon thereafter, the Chamber’s board of directors formed a task force of 40 business executives (from U.S. Steel, GE, ABC, GM, CBS, 3M, Phillips Petroleum, Amway and numerous other companies) to review Powell’s memo and draft a list of specific proposals to “improve understanding of business and the private enterprise system,” which the board adopted on November 8, 1973.
Historian Kim Phillips-Fein describes how “many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.” In fact, Powell’s Memo is widely credited for having helped catalyze a new business activist movement, with numerous conservative family and corporate foundations (e.g. Coors, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, Koch and others) thereafter creating and sustaining powerful new voices to help push the corporate agenda, including the Business Roundtable (1972), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC - 1973), Heritage Foundation (1973), the Cato Institute (1977), the Manhattan Institute (1978), Citizens for a Sound Economy (1984 - now Americans for Prosperity), Accuracy in Academe (1985), and others.
Because it signaled the beginning of a major shift in American business culture, political power and law, the Powell memo essentially marks the beginning of the business community’s multi-decade collective takeover of the most important institutions of public opinion and democratic decision-making. At the very least, it is the first place where this broad agenda was compiled in one document.
That shift continues today, with corporate influence over policy and politics reaching unprecedented new dimensions. The decades-long drive to rethink legal doctrines and ultimately strike down the edifice of campaign finance laws – breaking radical new ground with the Roberts Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission– continues apace.
Although many new voices have emerged in the 40 years since it circulated Powell’s memo, the U.S. Chamber has expanded its leadership position within the corporate power movement, leading dozens of judicial, legislative and regulatory fights each year. Measured in terms of money spent, the Chamber is by far the most powerful lobby in Washington, DC, spending $770.6 million since 1998, over three times the amount spent by General Electric, the second-largest spender. At the same time, the Chamber has reinforced its lobbying power by becoming one of the largest conduits of election-related “independent expenditures,” spending over $32.8 million on Federal elections in 2010. The Chamber sponsors the Institute for Legal Reform, which has spearheaded the campaign for tort “reform,” making it more difficult for average people who have been injured, assaulted, or harmed to sue the responsible corporations. Along with well over a dozen legal foundations, the Chamber has also helped shape the powerful “business civil liberties” movement that has been a driving force behind the Citizens United decision and other judicial actions that have handcuffed regulators and prevented Congress from putting common-sense checks on corporate power.
Additional Sources:
Jack Anderson, Washington Report, Volume 12, No. 24, November 26, 1973
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009
Jeff Krehely, Meaghan House and Emily Kernan, “Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Policy,” National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 2004
Michael Waldman, Executive Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law cites the Powell memo as the inspiration for the ideological war waged on behalf of the “free market” approach to the First Amendment that has elevated the rights of corporate speakers. See Waldman’s introduction to “Money, Politics and the Constitution: Beyond Citizens United," by Monica Youn (ed.), New York: Century Foundation Press, 2011
Reprinted with permission from Greenpeace USA. Visit the original post here.
Back in June, I wrote about my effort to seek answers from The New York Times public editor’s office regarding the paper’s lack of a policy for disclosure of possible conflicts of interest among op-ed contributors. In my query to the NYT, I specifically cited the example of Robert Bryce from the Manhattan Institute, a group funded by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and other polluters to confuse the public about climate change and energy issues.
Bryce had penned an op-ed attacking renewable energy while promoting nuclear and fracked shale gas, with no disclosure in his byline about the Manhattan Institute’s fossil fuel clients. I offered Bryce's piece as an example in order to formally seek answers about the disclosure policy at the Times and whether it was adequate in light of the failure to disclose Bryce’s dirty energy backing.
I didn’t get a concrete answer from Public Editor Arthur Brisbane’s office – his assistant acknowledged that "this is a topic that interests due to the number of emails we receive from readers on it," but rather than answer my questions or take action to highlight the policy oversight, he told me "We're going to keep your email on file in the event that we decide to tackle this issue in the future."
With our attention at DeSmogBlog diverted in the ensuing months by the Keystone XL pipeline controversy, the ever-growing list of the Koch Brothers’ threats to decency and democracy, and other dirty energy issues to focus on, I felt that another group would be better suited to devote attention to the NYT disclosure matter. I asked my friend Gabe Elsner at the Checks & Balances Project to take a look at my blog about Bryce and the failed efforts to get a satisfactory answer from the NYT Public Editor’s office.
Well, I’m grateful to Gabe for following through, since the issue is finally gaining some recognition, with the launch of TrueTies.org (designed by Checks and Balances Project) and a petition by 50 journalists echoing the call for The New York Times to lead the industry by creating a disclosure policy for op-ed contributors.
A few examples of the media coverage of the True Ties petition:
As regular readers of DeSmogBlog know, especially readers of our president Jim Hoggan’s book Climate Cover-up, there is a cottage industry of dirty energy front group mouthpieces who use this tactic of placing op-eds without disclosing their funding conflicts – Bryce is not the only one failing to disclose his “True Ties” by a long shot. DeSmogBlog has raised dozens of examples of this front group media activity in both U.S. and Canadian news outlets, and beyond.
It’s a recurring problem that needs to be addressed in order for people to know the interests that lie beneath an innocent sounding group like the Manhattan Institute - which an unsuspecting reader might mistake for a great name for a cocktail club, or worse, a legitimate source of unbiased information.
The New York Times, well-respected for its journalistic integrity, is the perfect outlet to set the tone in the journalism industry by fixing this PR pollution with a simple disclosure policy requiring all op-ed contributors to reveal their funding sources.
Hopefully, the NYT will embrace this opportunity, which will help to rid industry propaganda from its influential opinion pages, and by extension, inspire other news outlets to follow suit.
Robert Bryce, a fellow at the dirty industry-funded Manhattan Institute, is under increasing scrutiny as media outlets continue to use him as an “expert” on energy issues without disclosing his ties to the energy industry. DeSmogBlog’s Brendan DeMelle has writtenseveral pieces on Bryce’s connections to the industry, as well as how media outlets, including the New York Times, continue to allow Bryce to write op-eds on energy issues that are laden with fallacies without disclosing his conflict of interest.
From Brendan’s previous reports on Bryce’s New York Times piece:
Bryce penned an op-ed attacking renewable energy while promoting nuclear and fracked shale gas, with no disclosure in his byline about the Manhattan Institute’s fossil fuel clients. I offered Bryce's piece as an example in order to formally seek answers about the disclosure policy at the Times and whether it was adequate in light of the failure to disclose Bryce’s dirty energy backing.
Now Media Matters has done a fantastic job of detailing the numerous media outlets that are allowing the industry hack Bryce to pen his agenda-driven drivel, as well as uncovering where his group's funding is coming from:
Manhattan Institute Is Funded By ExxonMobil. According to ExxonSecrets.org, the Manhattan Institute has received $385,000 from Exxon since 1998, including $50,000 in 2010.
Manhattan Institute Has Received Funding From The Koch Family Foundations. The Manhattan Institute has received over $1.3 million total from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation and the David H. Koch Foundation over the years, both of which are associated with Koch Industries, an oil, gas and chemical corporation. From 2001 to 2009 (the most recent year for which data is available), the Lambe Foundation gave The Manhattan Institute $200,000 annually. The Lambe Foundation's board of directors is "comprised entirely of Koch family members, senior Koch executives, and staff who serve Koch foundations," including the CEO of Koch Industries Charles G. Koch, according to Greenpeace.
In addition to the reporting of Media Matters, a website called TrueTies.org has taken a close look at Bryce's clear conflicts of interest and asked the New York Times to craft a policy of disclosure of conflicts of interest for its op-ed contributors.
Agenda-driven journalism is a growing problem in America, and without full disclosure from media outlets, viewers and readers have an almost impossible task of sorting the industry’s views from actual facts.
Head over to Media Matters to read more about who Robert Bryce really represents in his op-eds. Who is Robert Bryce?
I asked Bryce if he had financial ties to the fossil fuel industry after his debate appearance before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference on Monday. Not only did Bryce refuse to answer the question, he also launched into an angry, finger-pointing tirade saying that I’d “made up” the amount of fossil fuel support documented by Manhattan Institute records.
Robert Bryce is an American author and journalist based in Austin, Texas.
He has regularly been cited as an "expert" on energy issues in the media, but has been under increased scrutiny after writing numerous articles in media outlets that did not disclose his ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Many of Bryce's articles have been on the energy business. He spent 12 years writing for The Austin Chronicle. From 2006 to September 2010 he worked as the managing editor of the online publication Energy Tribune.
From October 2007 to February 2008 he was a fellow at the Institute for Energy Research (IER). In April, 2010 he joined the Manhattan Institute as a senior fellow in its Center for Energy Policy and the Environment. [2]
"The science is not settled, not by a long shot. . . . If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth’s atmosphere. Furthermore, even if we accept that carbon dioxide is bad, it’s not clear exactly what we should do about it."[4]
Key Quotes
"On the science of global climate change, I'm an agnostic. I've seen Al Gore's movie, and I've read reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I've also listened to the 'skeptics.' I don't know who's right."[5]
". . . the job [at the Manhattan Institute] gives me a platform where I can focus on the themes that I explored in both Gusher of Lies and Power Hungry: that the myths about “green” energy are largely just that, myths; that hydrocarbons are here to stay; and that if we are going to pursue the best “no regrets” policy with regard to energy, then we should be avidly promoting natural gas and nuclear energy."[6]
"It’s time to move the debate past the dogmatic view that carbon dioxide is evil and toward a world view that accepts the need for energy that is cheap, abundant and reliable."[4]
Key Deeds
October, 2011
An October 2011 Petition submitted by the Checks and Balances Project complained about Bryce, pointing to "a disturbing trend of special interests surreptitiously funding “experts” to push industry talking points in the nation’s major media outlets."[7]
According to the letter, "pundits like Mr. Bryce have the right to share their views, but we believe media outlets have the responsibility to inform their readers of opinion writers’ true ties and conflicts of interest."
It appears that an Op-Ed by Bryce titled "the Gas is Greener" which criticizes renewable energy including wind projects and reports to expose hidden costs and "deep contradictions" in the "renewable energy movement."[8]
Signatories asked the New York Times to set the standard by revealing the ties of these "expertS" and ensuring readers get the full story.
New York Times editor Arthur S. Brisbane responded, dismissing the petition's request and saying that "I don’t think Mr. Bryce is masquerading as anything: experts generally have a point of view. And the Manhattan Institute’s dependence on this category of funding is slight — about 2.5 percent of its budget over the past 10 years. But the issue of authorial transparency is an important one, albeit one that isn't always simple."[9]
The panel advocated the process of fracking for reaching unconventional gas reserves. Bryce has also published articles in favour of fracking and in one example where he presents the often-repeated industry claim that fracking poses "minimal risk" to groundwater, he stressed that New York "can’t afford to be left behind in the shale revolution."[10]
In a June 13, 2011 piece published in the Wall Street Journal he wrote that the "shale revolution now underway is the best news for North American energy since the discovery of the East Texas Field in 1930."[11]
May 12, 2010
Bryce wrote am Op-Ed in the New York Times revealing his opposition to the implementation of carbon capture technology.
He was particularly critical of a senate energy bill introduced by John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman which would include incentives of $2 billion per year for carbon capture and sequestration.
Bryce wrote "That's a lot of money for a technology whose adoption faces three potentially insurmountable hurdles: it greatly reduces the output of power plants; pipeline capacity to move the newly captured carbon dioxide is woefully insufficient; and the volume of waste material is staggering. Lawmakers should stop perpetuating the hope that the technology can help make huge cuts in the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions."
He also predicted public opposition to carbon dioxide sequestration areas, writing how "few landowners are eager to have pipelines built across their property. And because of the possibility of deadly leaks, few people will to want to live near a pipeline or an underground storage cavern. This leads to the obvious question: which members of the House and Senate are going to volunteer their states to be dumping grounds for all that carbon dioxide?"[12]
April 8, 2009
Wrote an article titled "Let Exxon Run the Energy Dept." in The Daily Beast. The article is strongly critical of the Obama Administration which he claims is "working to marginalize America's single biggest sector, the sliver of the economy that produces our most essential commodities: gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, coal (which provides about half of the country’s electricity) and natural gas."
Bryce writes "the U.S. has never had a secretary of Energy who has actually drilled an oil well, built a nuclear power plant, or dug coal out of the ground. Indeed, actual experience in the energy business appears to be grounds for disqualification. This is stunning."
In conclusion, Bryce suggests that maybe we should include more people representing the energy industry in government: "Maybe—just maybe—those energy companies aren’t so villainous after all. And here’s another wacky thought: Maybe—just maybe—we should have a few people in government who really understand how the energy business works."[13]
When does a study on the unconventional shale gas industry become a "shill gas study"? The quick answer: when nearly everyone writing and peer reviewing it has close ties to the industry they're purportedly doing an "objective" study on.
John Martin: Martin is a Consultant at JPMartin Energy Strategy LLC. According to his biography appearing on the JPMartin website, he has spent decades working in various sectors of the oil and gas industry, during which he also was responsible for overseeing the research and writing of the first examination of "the natural gas potential of New York's Utica Shale that helped stimulate significant industry investment in this resource." Martin also serves as co-director of the recently created SUNY Buffalo's Shale Resources and Society Institute, which published this "study."
Digging deeper, the Buffalo study also had a Peer Review panel. That panel had five reviewers, four of five of which have ties to the oil and gas industry:
Andrew Hunter is a lecturer at Cornell University's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Hunter, according to the biography appearing on the Cornell website, formerly worked in the oil and gas industry from 1958-2005. He worked for companies ranging from Caltex Petroleum Inc., Petroleum Intelligence Research Associates and Petroleum Database Services Inc.
Brigham McCown is a former U.S. Department of Transportation executive and consultant with United Transportation Advisors. (The only reviewer with no obvious connections to the gas industry.)
Scott Anderson is the senior policy advisor with the Environmental Defense Fund's (EDF) Energy Program. As covered previously on DeSmogBlog, Anderson formerly worked in the oil and gas industry and is a former executive vice president and general counsel for the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. He is also a member of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which opposes extending the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to hydraulic fracturing.
Robert Jacobi is co-director (with John Martin, highlighted above) of the Shale Resources and Society Institute and longtime UB professor of geology. He has also made a career in the oil and gas industry, working as an engineer consultant for corporations ranging from EQT Corporation, Norse Energy Corp and Talisman to others.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute "study" concluded that between Jan. 2008-Aug. 2011, "1,844 of the [Pennsvylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)] violations [by the gas industry], or 62 percent, were administrative and preventative in nature. The remaining 1,144 violations, or 38 percent, were environmental in nature."
Left out of the study is the fact that, as a May 10 Cleveland Plain Dealer report shows, a majority of wells are not even inspected in the state of Pennslyvania by the DEP. In 2009, the DEP inspected 23% of its wells, 24% in 2010 and 35% in 2011, with 84 hired inspectors to examine what grew to 69,000 wells by 2011 in the state.
Underinspection and lack of inspectors is a nationwide trend that can be seen in other places such as Ohio, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma, according to the story.
"Fact-Based, Objective Information"?
The Shale Resources and Society Institute says that it exists to provide neutral, scientific information to the mass public. "We're really trying to provide fact-based, objective information," Martin told the Buffalo Star Gazette in an April 2012 story. "We're guided by science."
Really?
If this most recent "shill gas" study's cast of characters shows anything at all, it makes a mockery of that claim.
In our critique of the "study" we pointed out the fact that all of the authors and nearly the entire peer review board of the study, other than one person, was or has been connected to the oil and gas industry.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute "study" concluded that between Jan. 2008-Aug. 2011, "1,844 of the [Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)] violations [by the gas industry], or 62 percent, were administrative and preventative in nature. The remaining 1,144 violations, or 38 percent, were environmental in nature."
Left out of the study is the fact that, as a May 10 Cleveland Plain Dealer report shows, a majority of wells are not even inspected in the state of Pennslyvania by the DEP. In 2009, the DEP inspected 23% of its wells, 24% in 2010 and 35% in 2011, with 84 hired inspectors to examine what grew to 69,000 wells by 2011 in the state.
[We] conducted an analysis of the report and identified a number of problems that undermine its conclusion: data in the report shows that the likelihood of major environmental events has actually gone up, contradicting the report’s central claim; entire passages were lifted from an explicitly pro-fracking Manhattan Institute report; and report’s authors and reviewers have extensive ties to the natural gas industry.
Serious flaws in the report suggest that the brand-new institute is not so much a venue for the independent study of fracking-related issues as it is a vehicle for industry-friendly propaganda, taking advantage of the University at Buffalo’s independent brand in order to advance a very particular agenda.
"Two of the report’s central claims are false. The report claims that the rate of major environmental violations declined from 2008 to 2011. According to the report’s own data, the rate of major environmental accidents actually increased 36% from 2008 to 2011. The report also claims that the total number of environmental events declined over the period studied. In fact, the total number of environmental events increased by 189%, and the number of major environmental events increased 900%."
"A copy and paste job? The report lifts entire passages, without proper attribution, from an explicitly pro-fracking report released last year by the conservative Manhattan Institute and written by three of the four authors of the UB study."
"Use of biased language and industry spin. For instance, the report says that 'only a fraction' of Notices of Violation (NOVs) were issued for environmental violations. That fraction turns out to be 38%, which is technically a fraction, but this kind of language is extremely misleading at best."
These examples are but the tip of the iceberg and it'd be one thing if no media outfits were reporting on the so-called "findings" of the "independent study."
“The report’s inaccurate and biased analysis and the authors’ conflicts of interest suggest that the University at Buffalo is being used as an academic front for gas industry misinformation, rather than as a venue for independent, informative analysis,” said Kevin Connor, director of PAI in a press release. “This is an unfortunate example of industry spin being given much greater weight than it is worth, and the University at Buffalo is implicated in this deception.”
A storm is brewing in Buffalo and it's not the record snow storm typically associated with upstate New York. Rather, it's taking place in the ivory tower of academia and revolves around hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for unconventional gas in the Marcellus Shale basin.
Public funding has been cut to the tune of over $1.4 billion over the past five years in the State University of New York (SUNY) public university system under the watch of current Democratic Party governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo and his predecessor, David Paterson.
These cuts have created new opportunities for the shale gas industry to fill a funding vacuum, with the SUNY system's coffers hollowed out and starved for cash.
“It’s a growing problem across academia,” Mark Partridge, a professor of rural-urban policy at the Ohio State University, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Universities are so short of money, professors are under a lot of pressure to raise research funding in any manner possible.”
The oil industry's eagerness to fill the void for its personal gain can be seen through the case study of what we at DeSmog have coined the ongoing "Shill Gas" study scandal at the State University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo).
Among other findings, a DeSmog investigation reveals that one of the lesser-known offshoots of the Scaife family foundations, key bankrollers of the climate change denial machine, may potentially soothe SUNY Buffalo's budget woes with funding for the university-connected Shale Resources and Society Institute.
The decision to greenlight SRSI came after SUNY Buffalo hosted the Marcellus Shale Lecture Series in mid-2011...Last fall, enthusiasm stemming from the lecture series grew into informal discussions among the speakers, natural gas industry representatives and members of SUNY Buffalo’s geology department.
On Sept. 21, almost a year and a half after the completion of the Lecture Series, the UB Spectrum revealed the Series was also funded in large part by the gas industry, which gave SUNY Buffalo over $12,900 to host it. $5,000 of that cash came from the coffers of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA).
"If the talk series is not part of the institute – if it’s just an independent talk series – then it is unlike any such series I have ever organized or attended in that it fails to acknowledge the moneys that paid for it," Jim Holstun, Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo and the Chair of SUNY Buffalo Coalition for Leading Ethically in Academic Research, told the UB Spectrum.
Explaining that the gas industry is viewed "very skeptically" by the public, Holbrook said that to gain credibility, IOGA of NY has "aligned with the University at Buffalo (aka SUNY Buffalo)—we’ve done a variety of other activities where we’ve gotten the academics to sponsor programs and bring in people for public sessions to educate them on a variety of different topics."
Shady SUNY Buffalo Study Opens Backlash Floodgates
SRSI produced a study in May 2012 titled, "Environmental Impacts During Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts and Remedies." Calling the final product a "study" is a generous way of putting it, as we reported: all four co-authors had ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four of five of its peer reviewers. The study didn't contain any acknowledgement of these ties.
John Martin, one of the study's co-authors and one of the speakers on the spring 2011 Marcellus Shale Lecture Series, serves as the Director of the SRSI, a quarter-time gig earning him $60,000/year. He also currently serves as a Consultant at JPMartin Energy Strategy LLC, where "he has spent decades working in various sectors of the oil and gas industry," and wrote one of the first scholarly papers on the drilling potential of Ohio's Utica Shale basin. The paper helped "stimulate significant industry investment in this resource," in its early days of production, according to his JPMartin bio page.
In announcing the SRSI's launch, Martin told the Elmira Star Gazette, "We're really trying to provide fact-based, objective information. We're guided by science."
Martin's "guided by science" myth was put to rest roughly a week after the SRSI's release of its premier study, when the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) released a report of its own. PAI's report pointed to seriously - and likely purposefully - flawed methodology, writing:
[We] conducted an analysis of the report and identified a number of problems that undermine its conclusion: data in the report shows that the likelihood of major environmental events has actually gone up, contradicting the report’s central claim; entire passages were lifted from an explicitly pro-fracking Manhattan Institute report; and report’s authors and reviewers have extensive ties to the natural gas industry.
Weeks later, on September 12, 2012, the SUNY System's Board of Trustees backed up the demand of these 83 SUNY Buffalo faculty and staff members, passing a unanimous resolution of their own calling for SUNY Buffalo to look into all of the details of the origins of the SRSI.
SUNY Buffalo's Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Charles Zukoski, offered a retort of both the SUNY Buffalo letter and the SUNY System resolution, stating, "No policies were broken in the establishment" of the SRSI and that SUNY Buffalo "received no industry funding" for the SRSI.
FOIL Documents Show Deep Ties to Oil and Gas Industry, Climate Change Deniers, Rebutting Zukoski
Two key details raise serious immediate red flags about Zukoski's claims of recieving "no industry funding."
The first: in its initial call out for funding, the SRSI stated it was seeking three-year $1.14 million corporate memberships "to create a dynamic and impactful program." Corporate members also are given a spot on the SRSI's Advisory Board, "ensuring focused alignment of purpose and deliverables," according to the funding request form. Put another way, three-year corporate memberships would yield some sort of deliverable goods for oil and gas corporations - a quid pro quo, if you will.
The second: on Sept. 13, Buffalo's ArtVoice released the fruits of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. One of the documents, dated Aug. 7, 2011, read that a "funding plan for alumni and large corporations has been in the works for two years. A pitch to alumni and corporate interests in Houston is planned for October, following on two earlier meetings there in Spring, 2011." Houston serves as the headquarters for numerous oil and gas corporations, and is a great place to go in search of funding for "frackademics."
That same document also showed that the SRSI, as of Aug. 7, 2011, had already received money from IOGA of NY. It also states that SRSI has "good contacts with National Fuel, their wholly owned subsidiary Seneca Resources, and other resource companies involved in the [Marcellus Shale]." Beyond merely offering to fund the SRSI, IOGA of NY has also provided "organizational help," according to the document.
IOGA's Board of Directors has representatives from Shell, Chesapeake Energy, and many other players in the unconventional gas sphere. National Fuel/Seneca "operates approximately 2,500 wells located in western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania...[and currently] owns approximately 730,000 acres of fee minerals, 260,000 acres of leased minerals and 100,000 acres of surface and timber rights throughout the region," according to its website.
The Scaife family foundations are majorfunders of the climate change denial machine, founded by Richard Mellon Scaife, whom the Washington Post dubbed the "funding father of the right" in a 1999 two-part investigative series.
Holstun, in an interview with DeSmogBlog, said of this set of circumstances:
In sending out the corporate appeal, the Institute promised industry contributors a helping hand in running the institute and defining its priorities, an egregious violation of academic integrity. The UB Administration are stewards of the university’s reputation. They must come clean immediately with full information about the founding, funding, and governance of the Institute. Otherwise, they are not doing their jobs, and our reputation will suffer even more.
High Stakes Game in Buffalo for Future of Integrity of Higher Education Research
As budgets continue to be slashed by governors in statehouses nationwide for public higher education, we can expect to see more stories like SUNY Buffalo's unfold at increasingly privatized universities nationwide. PAI demonstrated as much in a follow-up report, revealing University of Texas-Austin also serves as a "frackademia" epicenter. Mother Jones similarly revealed that the gas industry has set up shop in Ohio's universities.
The original Aug. 23 letter penned by the 83 professors raised the key question cutting to the heart of this saga, closing where this article began: "Will cash-strapped public universities, eager to curry favor with potential corporate funders who may stand to gain from certain research, surrender their historic independence in return for possible corporate financial support?"
Five people are confirmed dead and 40 people remain missing in the small hamlet of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a train with 73 carloads full of Bakken shale oil derailed explosively, incinerating 30 buildings on Saturday.
Local resident Henri-Paul Audette told the Huffington Post that his brother's apartment was next to the railroad tracks, very close to the spot where the train derailed.
"I haven't heard from him since the accident," he said. "I had thought ... that I would see him."
This is by all accounts, a major tragedy, lives have been lost, loved ones remain missing and a small town has been nearly wiped off the map. There are still a lot of unknowns about this disaster, but that has not stopped supporters of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from using the horrific events in Lac-Megantic to promote the pipeline.
"After Saturday’s tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, Que., it is time to speed up the approval of new pipeline construction in North America. Pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil and natural gas, and we need more of them, without delay."
No kidding, Furchgott-Roth wants no more delay in the Keystone XL pipeline, since she has been advocating on behalf of the oil industry in one form or another for more than 25 years, with stints as an economist at the American Petroleum Institute and the oil industry-backed American Enterprise Institute.
Working for oil company front groups is one thing, but using the tragedy still unfolding in Quebec to argue for more oil pipelines is a whole new level of low.
Two Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will be releasing a white paper later this week that will allegedly make the case that “regulations” and legislation that “raises energy costs” is damaging America’s underclass.
Senators Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Tim Scott (SC) have teamed up with the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to once again push the bogus theory that government regulations and environmental safeguards are costing American consumers too much money and destroying jobs. The paper will officially be released at a Manhattan Institute event on September 18.
According to The Hill, a representative from Murkowski’s office said that the Senators will be speaking about “the economic, political, and social consequences of allowing energy insecurity to rise in America.”
Both Murkowski and Scott have been notorious opponents of many of the Obama administration’s environmental protection initiatives and have also been on the receiving end of the dirty energy industry’s largesse. Murkowski’s two largest donor industries are electric utilities and the oil and gas industries, receiving a combined $1,490,257 over the course of her career in the Senate. Scott, a freshman Senator, has received $411,701 from the two industries during his short time in office.
The Manhattan Institute is also heavily funded by the dirty energy industry. While the institute does its best to keep its donors secret, documents show that the group has received funding from the Koch Family Foundations, Exxon and Reliant Energy.
The white paper appears to be a response to the EPA’s new power plant emissions standards released this summer. The new standards require power plants to reduce their emissions in compliance with the Clean Air Act, and as part of an overall effort to meet guidelines to help reduce the United States’ contribution to climate change. The Washington Post lays out the economics of the plan, as well as the health savings:
The EPA estimates that the new rule would cut traditional air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and soot by 25 percent, yielding a public health benefit of between $55 billion to $93 billion when it is fully implemented, with 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths avoided and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks a year avoided. The cost, by contrast, would be $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.
The EPA said that for every $1 invested, Americans would reap $7 in health benefits.
If the EPA rule reduces the use of coal, it also would reduce emissions of conventional pollutants that contribute to asthma, other lung diseases and heart attacks, according to a joint study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Syracuse University Center for Health and the Global Environment.
If each investment dollars yields $7 in return, as the EPA estimates, then that would mean that the new proposals will yield a 700 percent return on investment. You’d be hard pressed to find any economist or financial advisor who would tell you that such an investment is unwise.
And the health benefits will be directly observed by the very people (low-income Americans) Murkowski and Scott claim will be harmed by the rule. Statistics show that lower income families are at a greater risk of respiratory illnesses caused by fine air particulates and other forms of air pollution. This is because most factories and power plants are located in urban areas and they tend to drive down property values. Low-income citizens have little choice but to live in affordable housing in areas where corporations dump toxins into the air, land and water, making them far more prone to illness than their wealthier counterparts.
Those are two financial incentives that Murkowski and Scott did not factor into their equations and they effectively negate the main argument of the forthcoming white paper. The second point, that the new regulations will destroy jobs, is simultaneously true, false and completely irrelevant.
First of all, the claim is true. Even the EPA has admitted that the new standards could cause some power plants to close or to reduce staff. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attempted to analyze just how many jobs would be lost, and they put that number right around 224,000 jobs. That seems pretty significant at first glance, but put in perspective, it isn't. Think Progress explains:
First off, as Paul Krugman noted, a $50.2 billion reduction per year is only 0.2 percent of the economy. And that loss of 224,000 jobs is out of a country of 140 million workers — America is adding more than 224,000 new jobs every two or three months right now.
Beyond that, there’s a history here. EPA has been issuing regulations on everything from coal furnaces to urban air quality for four decades. Studies sponsored by the fossil fuel industry have regularly predicted major economic hits as a result, and those hits regularly fail to materialize. In fact, when EPA moved to cut sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants in 1990, the Edison Electric Institute predicted electricity rate hikes for the 10 most coal-dependent states. The Center for American Progress found that by 2009 their projection had overshot by 24 percent, and for several of those states the 2009 costs were lower than in 1990.
So overall, not only will the jobs lost be replaced, but the rate hike scare mongering is also untrue.
But back to the jobs issue: Murkowski and Scott are ignoring the most glaringly obvious fact — a fact that we at DeSmogBlog have been screaming for years — and that is that regulations actually create jobs. Every new standard put in place by a government organization creates jobs. There are inspectors, bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, office workers and so on. That’s the part of the “job killing regulations” story that is very rarely told.
And then there's the fact that left unaddressed, climate change is going to cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars. According to the recent report Risky Business, damages from storms, floods and heat waves are already costing local economies billions of dollars. If we continue on our current path, by 2050 between $66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing coastal property will likely be below sea level nationwide.
Murkowski and Scott are just doing what their campaign donors in the dirty energy industry paid them to do: selling big oil and big coal’s agenda to the American public.
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, originally known as the International Center for Economic Policy Studies, was founded in 1978 by Anthony Fisher and William Casey and in recent years has promoted climate science contrarianism while defending policies supporting the development of fossil fuels.
According to the Manhattan Institute's website, the think tank “produces ideas that are both literally and figuratively outside the Beltway. We have cultivated a staff of senior fellows and writers whose provocative books, essays, reviews, interviews, speeches, and op-ed pieces communicate our message and influence the debate.” [2]
Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE)
In the past, the Manhattan Institute maintained a section of their website titled the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE) which “seeks to influence today’s energy policy debate by developing and advancing ideas rooted in free-market economic principles.” [3]
The Manhattan Instituted listed the following “experts” at CEPE: [3]
“The United States is not running out of energy. It is time to appreciate the staggering economic and geopolitical benefits that the development of our vast hydrocarbon resources can bring. It is no overstatement to say that jobs related to extraction, transport, and export of hydrocarbons can awaken the United States from its economic doldrums and produce revenue such that key national needs can be met—including renewal of infrastructure and investment in scientific research.”[5]
2007
“To what degree are human-induced greenhouse gases responsible for warming the atmosphere? The answer is unclear. Despite the certitude with which the media and politicians treat the issue, the science remains muddled. Temperatures fluctuate: they go up in some regions, down in others, and may be affected by naturally occurring phenomena, such as El Niño.” [6]
September 6, 2000
“No-one doubts that carbon dioxide has increased in the earth's atmosphere profoundly over the last hundred years. Almost everything else, however, is in doubt. Do greenhouse gasses make the earth warmer? It's hard to say because eighty percent of the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere followed, but did not precede the increase in the surface temperature that has been measured over the last hundred years. If it caused the increase in temperature, it's an odd pattern of causality, where the cause follows the effect.” [4]
“I asked Bryce if he had financial ties to the fossil fuel industry after his debate appearance before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference on Monday. Not only did Bryce refuse to answer the question, he also launched into an angry, finger-pointing tirade saying that I’d 'made up' the amount of fossil fuel support documented by Manhattan Institute records.”
Video below:
Gabe Elsner has also launched TrueTies.org (designed by Checks and Balances Project) and a petition by 50 journalists echoing the call for The New York Times to lead the industry by creating a disclosure policy for op-ed contributors. Media Matters additionally compiled a comprehensive page on Bryce's ties to the fossil fuel industry. [47]
Koch Funding
According to Greenpeace's Polluter Watch project, The Manhattan Institute received $1,400,000 from Koch foundations between 2005 and 2011 with a grand total of $1,925,000 in Koch foundation grants between 1997 and 2011. [10]
Tobacco Industry Funding
SourceWatch found that the Manhattan Institute has sought funding from tobacco companies including Brown & Williamson. The Institute received funding from R.J. Reynolds and in 1991, Lorillard, Inc. budgeted a $4,000 contribution to the Manhattan Institute and contributed the same amount in 1996. Philip Morris budgeted $25,000 for the Institute in 1995. [11]
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August, 2015
The Manhattan Institute has strongly opposed President Obama's Clean Power Plan. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow and director of Economics at the Manhattan Institute writes in the National Review that the Clean Power Plan as “a way of punishing the states that did not vote for Obama.” [20]
In the same article, Furchtgott-Roth questions whether carbon dioxide should be mitigated:
“The question to ask is why any of this is necessary. […] Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Everyone breathes it out every day. It even helps the growth of trees and other greenery.” [20]
Oren Cass, another senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (who also served as Mitt Romney's domestic policy adviser during the 2012 presidential campaign), describes the Clean Power plan in a statement republished at Politico New York:
“It is an illegal overreach that claims power never given to the E.P.A. and bullies both states and private businesses. […] Its primary effects will be to disrupt markets and drive up costs, handing victories to politically-favored 'green' industries and sending the bill to consumers.” [21]
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research released a report titled “Less Carbon, Higher Prices: How California’s Climate Policies Affect Lower-Income Residents” (PDF). [22]
The report suggests that renewable energy sources have caused electric prices to rise, leading to “energy poverty” in low income households. They suggest that California should do a cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy sources, and poses the question:
“Do the benefits of California’s proposed GHG reductions—which, even if realized, will negligibly affect global emissions and climate—outweigh their considerable and rising cost to local businesses and households, particularly low-income Californians?”
“In short, California's renewable energy mandates and climate change policies may make wealthy coastal residents feel virtuous, but those policies are having a disproportionate economic impact on the poor,” they write. [23]
The Manhattan Institute Report was heavily promoted in Conservative media, and has appeared in numerous papers and other sources including Investors Business Daily, Fox & Hounds, and theBreitbart.
According to Bryce, “[Pope Francis's] new encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si’ (Be praised), shows a shallow understanding of global energy use and, in particular, of how energy consumption is soaring among the people he claims to care most about: the poor.”
“But if developing countries are going to prepare for possible changes in the climate, they will have to get richer so they can afford to deal with any calamities that may occur. And how will they get richer? The answer is obvious: by consuming more energy. And for countries throughout the developing world, the lowest-cost energy is still coal,” Bryce writes. [24]
September 18, 2014
DeSmogBlog reports how Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Tim Scott (SC) worked with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to fashion a white paper opposing the EPA's new power plant emissions standards. [25]
According to The Hill, a representative from Murkowski’s office said that the Senators will be speaking about “the economic, political, and social consequences of allowing energy insecurity to rise in America.” [26]
The paper put forward the theory that government regulations and environmental safeguards are costing American consumers too much money and destroying jobs. Murkowski and Scott introduced the paper at a September 18 Manhattan Institute event titled “Is Energy Insecurity on the Rise in America?” [27]
July 7, 2013
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth published an article in The Globe and Mail titled “Quebec tragedy reminds us pipelines are safest way to transport oil” that pushing to speed up the Keystone XL pipeline after an oil train explosion. [29]
“After Saturday’s tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, Que., it is time to speed up the approval of new pipeline construction in North America. Pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil and natural gas, and we need more of them, without delay,” she wrote.
CMD offers the following description of the American Legislative Exchange Council:
“ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve 'model' bills.”
Robert Bryce, the Manhattan Institute's Senior Fellow for their “Center for Energy Policy and the Environment” ran an Op-Ed in The New York Times titled “The Gas Is Greener.” [31]
DeSmogBlog reports how Bryce suggests that fracked shale gas and nuclear are more environmentally preferable energy options to solar and wind power. Bryce had published a similar article in the Wall Street Journal earlier that week. DeSmog also notes how the New York Times failed to state the “clear conflict of interest” of the fossil-fuel funded Manhattan Institute. [32], [33]
After DeSmogBlog initially contacted The New York Times regarding these conflicts of interest, the Checks and Balances Project picked up the issue, using Bryce as an example of the “disturbing trend of special interests surreptitiously funding 'experts' to push industry talking points in the nation's major media outlets.” DeSmogBlog further reported on this issue here. [36]
April, 2009
The Manhattan Institute has released multiple editions of its report “Energy and the Environment: Myths and Facts” by Drew Thornley. Its second edition was released in April, 2009.
The report includes a list of “myths” including how “Humans are the main drivers of the greenhouse effect which is likely to cuase global warming.” [37]
According to the Institute's press release (PDF), “Thornley concludes that policymakers should focus on energy policies based on facts that meet our needs today without creating liabilities for us tomorrow.” [38]
The executive summary for the report describes it as a “primer for educators, journalists, and public officials—for concerned citizens generally.” [39]
The book argues that the “quantity of raw fuel matters less to energy security than our ability (both technological and political) to extract the fuel. In this passage, they make the counter-intuitive point (one of many in this book) that energy consumption, rather than limit our supply of energy, actually increases it.”[42]
At its most recent AGM, the oil and gas giant faced a barrage of questions and resolutions over its position on climate change. Then there is the not insignificant matter of investigations by a group of attorneys general that allege the company lied about its knowledge of the risks of burning fossil fuels. ExxonMobil is retaliating.
The company has pleaded innocence, with CEO Rex Tillerson telling the company’s shareholders that his views on climate science were perfectly in line with the United Nations.
But the latest disclosures on donations by ExxonMobil, reported publicly here for the first time, show it continues to support organisations that claim greenhouse gases are not causing climate change, or that cuts to emissions are a waste of time and money.
Organisations including the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the National Black Chamber of Commerce — all organisations with a record of misinformation on climate science — all received grants in 2015 from ExxonMobil. The 2015 tally brings the total amount of known Exxon funding to denial groups north of $33 million since 1998.
Since 1997, ExxonMobil has been releasing reports annually listing donations to public policy groups — several of which were engaged in a public misinformation campaign on climate change science.
In 2007, after years of criticism, ExxonMobil claimed to have turned a corner on the science.
In a corporate responsibility report, the company said: “In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”
ExxonMobil still funding denial
But many climate change campaigners and scientists have illustrated how the company continued to support organisations spreading climate science denial.
Now the oil giant is facing lawsuits from a team of state attorneys general after investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times showed the company’s own scientists were aware of the risks of burning fossil fuels in the 1980s.
A DeSmog investigation found evidence that Exxon’s knowledge went even further back – to the late 1970s.
More than 200 scientists had signed a letter asking AGU to cut sponsorship ties to ExxonMobil over its decades-long funding of organizations pushing doubt about the causes and implications of climate change.
American Enterprise Institute's ExxonMobil cash
In the latest disclosures, one of the larger single donations — $325,000 — went to the American Enterprise Institute, an organisation that has long fought regulations to cut greenhouse gases while also criticising renewable energy.
Zycher cherry-picked his way through various issues — from sea level rise to global temperatures — each time dismissing, or heavily questioning, the role of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
“In short”, Zycher wrote, “it appears to be the case that temperatures have been increasing in fits and starts since the end of the little ice age, and the central issue — whether the dominant cause is natural or anthropogenic — is unresolved.”
Zycher’s view goes against science academies across the world and, according to several studies, the findings of more than 90 per cent of climate scientists.
On polar ice, Zycher claimed: “The recent data do not support the assertion that the polar ice is collapsing as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of GHG.”
But Zycher ignored the numerous studies pointing to rapid and accelerating melting of ice sheets — the grounded ice that is an issue of major concern to sea level rise experts, not to mention the world’s major coastal cities.
From wildfires to extreme weather, Zycher dismisses them all. Elsewhere, Zycher has explained away the recent run of record hot years as being more to do with dodgy data collection.
The earth has been warming in fits and starts since the end of the little ice age around 1850, and so a warming trend is neither surprising nor informative. The real question is: How much of it has been caused by greenhouse gas emissions? The answer is “more than zero,” but beyond that no one knows, and anyone who claims to know is talking out of a hat.
In June 2015, AEI scholar Michael Rubin produced a series of loaded questions for the next president, where he suggested climate change might be good for societies and that models had “repeatedly delivered inaccurate predictions.”
ALEC and Exxon
Another recipient of ExxonMobil cash in 2015 was the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative think tank that produces boilerplate legislation that suits the needs of its corporate backers.
ALEC was given $25,000 to support its annual conference and further $36,500 for “general support”.
In September 2014, Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google (now renamed Alphabet) said ALEC was “literally lying” about the science of climate change. Google had supported ALEC— but no more.
Institute fellows have repeatedly attacked Obama’s Clean Energy Plan, called the UN Paris climate agreement “useless” and dismissed the link between climate change and health impacts.
In one article, MI fellow Oren Cass argued there was no link between rising temperatures and asthma, even though there have been several studies finding just this. Other studies have also linked extreme heatwaves to deaths.
National Black Chamber of Commerce gets Exxon cash
The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) has long been a grateful recipient of ExxonMobil cash — with another $75,000 handed over in 2015.
During the ongoing turmoil of attorneys general lawsuits, one of ExxonMobil’s most vocal defenders has been the influential conservative group the Federalist Society.
The Federalist Society has published numerous essays and articles claiming the lawsuits against ExxonMobil and related requests for records from denialist groups are a threat to free speech, a “chilling campaign to establish ‘consensus’ through intimidation”, a “witch hunt” and a “fishing expedition”.
Not disclosed in the stories, is that the Federalist Society is also a recipient of ExxonMobil cash — $15,000 in 2015.
The Federalist Society does, however, declare the ExxonMobil funding on its annual report, which shows that the oil billionaire Koch brothers, Google and Microsoft are far more generous donors.
The ExxonMobil disclosures do not list other ways in which the company helps to block action on greenhouse gas emissions, such as its membership of trade groups.
In the letter to AGU, reported on DeSmog, congressmen Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Ted Lieu, both Democrats, told the science group:
We can attest that Exxon’s purported support for a carbon tax is not real. It is impossible to reconcile EM’s stated support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax with the lobbying activities of EM and the trade associations that claim to represent EM on the Hill. What we see in Congress is that their lobbying efforts are 100 percent opposed to any action on climate.
Health care reform seems a long way from climate change but they share something very important in common: well funded interest groups that want to keep things just the way they are.
Take the Manhattan Institute. They are railing against proposed health care reform, churning out a dizzying number of reports and op-eds about why “Obama-care” is wrong for America. They also expend abundant effort slagging climate science, last year feting Danish doubter Bjorn Lomborg. The Manhattan Institute received $235,000 from ExxonMobil, as well as funding from various other conservative organizations.
Other groups working hard to derail Obama’s health care platform include the notorious Heartland Institute. Desmog Blog readers will remember their remarkably unethical efforts to associate unwitting climate researchers with their propaganda campaign against climate science.
Heartland just released a thick report objectively entitled “Obama Health Plan: Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care”, authored by Peter Ferrara.
Mr. Ferrara is truly a multi-talented researcher. Not only is he apparently an expert on health care and medical policy, he has also spilled buckets of ink hectoring the scientific community for their slap dash research on climate change.
Just this spring Ferrara was holding forth in the national press that the “UN’s global warming reports involve shoddy science skewed to favor the theory of man-made global warming…despite growing evidence from first-rate, blue chip scientists who are increasingly concluding that humans have little effect on global temperatures…”
Who knew that one man could know so much? It’s amazing what they teach you in law school.
So why are the same groups that oppose reducing carbon emissions also fighting against health care reform? Perhaps the best explanation is that great unifier, money.
An interesting case study is the newly minted astroturf group Conservatives for Patients Rights - founded by Richard L. Scott, a man who has a rather vested interest in keeping US health care in private hands.
In 1988, Scott co-founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation (Columbia/HCA). He and his business partners aimed to transformUS health care by “doing for hospitals …what McDonald’s has done in the food business and what WalMart has done in the retailing business.”
Scott apparently intended to own 25% of the nation’s hospitals and predicted that rash of closures might clear the field of unprofitable ““teaching hospitals and children’s hospitals” – increasing market share for Columbia/HCA.
This fixation on the profit motive was illustrated in 1995 when one quarter of Columbia’s administrators were earning bonuses equaling at least 80 percent of their salaries.
Scott apparently wondered out loud, “Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obliged to feed everyone who shows up?”
By 1997, Columbia/HCA was the largest health care provider in the world with annual revenues of $23 billion.
That July, they were also raided by the FBI in five states and later convicted of fourteen felony charges relating to Medicare fraud and doctor kickback schemes. Columbia/HCA eventually paid $1.7 billion in fines – the highest in US history at the time. Three HCA executives were indicted, and Scott was ousted as CEO by the board of directors – with a $10 million severance package and more than $300 million in stock.
Since then he formed an investment company, Richard L. Scott Investments, with a thick portfolio of private health care ventures. In 2001, Scott also co-founded Solantic, a chain of medical clinics that this year raised $40 million in private equity.
Scott has ambitious plans for Solantic to become a national brand of emergency medical clinics with 35 clinics open by the end of the year with $100 million in annual revenues, and potentially “a thousand locations”.
Fast-forward to 2009, one month after Obama was sworn in, when Scott founded Conservatives for Patients Rights with $5 million of his own money and $15 million more from undisclosed sources. According to the WSJ, this campaign is aimed to “pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.”
So what do the voices shrilly opposing health care and energy reform have in common? Money. Both stand to lose big if Obama succeeds in enacting the agenda the American people elected him to do.
Keep that in mind the next time you see an expensive ad telling you to fear efforts to make our health care more accessible, or our energy more sustainable.
The New York Times ran an op-ed last week by Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute, a group funded by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and other polluters to confuse the public about climate change and energy issues. Robert Bryce goes to great lengths to portray solar and wind power as land-hogging energy choices. He suggests that fracked shale gas and nuclear are somehow more environmentally preferable energy options.
This is a common argument from Bryce, who had a similar pro-fracking op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, and who has emerged as one of the loudest of a growing cadre of critics of clean energy. Most of these critics are, not surprisingly, affiliated with “institutes” (i.e., front groups) that get money from the dirty energy industries that solar and wind are starting to disrupt.
But one important question remains - why does The New York Times print such misleading opinion pieces without revealing the clear conflict of interest that a Koch/Exxon-funded front group representative has on such matters? Did the Times’ even ask, and does it do so as a matter of standard practice? {C}
If not, the Times could quickly and easily implement and enforce a policy compelling such op-ed contributors to publicly state their financial conflicts of interest. After all, freelance contributors to the news side of the paper are held to such a standard. What's with the free pass that Bryce got?
The Times is well-regarded as one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity, which is why it’s so troubling to see the paper fail to enforce a reasonable standard of ethical disclosure on Bryce's prominent op-ed. The Times ought to provide readers with basic information about the conflicts of interest that a contributor might have.
This is about basic ethics, and doesn't even reach the level of asking the Times to actually verify facts in op-eds – a step that would inform readers about the blatant misrepresentations and distortions of fact made in propaganda pieces like Bryce's.
It's not difficult to see that his arguments that wind and solar renewable energy projects take up more land than fossil fuel and nuclear operations are preposterous. Does anyone really believe Bryce's claim that wind turbines (which each have a very small physical footprint) are more land-intensive than, say, blowing the tops of hundreds of Appalachian mountains to extract coal, or the vast amounts of land swallowed by oil and gas infrastructure, including pipelines, oil rigs, pump stations, and the roads built specifically to move all that drilling equipment around?
If The New York Times had a policy requiring op-ed contributors to answer basic questions about their funding sources and conflicts of interest, perhaps readers wouldn't be misled by such pieces.
In this case, had the Times’ opinion page staff asked Bryce where his group the Manhattan Institute gets its funding, readers would learn that the groups gets a significant amount of money from dirty energy interests including ExxonMobil and Koch Industries.
How hard is that, really?
Dirty energy interests know they can game the papers, and that's why front groups like Bryce's Manhattan Institute and dozens of similar industry PR firms bother to masquerade as think tanks. It's a decades-old practice stretching all the way back to the call in the 1971 Powell Manifesto to start launching such groups.
By requiring op-ed contributors to disclose financial conflicts, direct or indirect, on the subject of their pieces, the Times would begin to unmask this cottage industry.
In order to set such a policy, the Times would need to look no further than the very standard it applies to its own news staff through its code of ethics:
“Masquerading. Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story. We may sometimes remain silent on our identity and allow assumptions to be made to observe an institution's dealings with the public, for example, or the behavior of people at a rally or police officers in a bar near the station house. But a sustained, systematic deception, even a passive one … may be employed only after consultation between a department head and masthead editors.” [emphasis added]
The Times’ opinion page editors should apply the spirit of that standard on masquerading by asking a few direct questions of op-ed contributors like Bryce about their funding.
By failing to implement this simple standard, the Times enables the printing of industry propaganda on its influential opinion pages.
*Phone and email messages sent by DeSmogBlog to New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane inquiring about this policy discrepancy have not been answered, but we will update this post when we hear from him.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Lewis Powell Memo, a document that set the stage for the creation of the echo chamber that protects corporate interests ahead of the public interest. A corporate lawyer and well-known tobacco industry defender at the time, Lewis Powell wrote this influential memo to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce laying out a strategy to develop a long-term campaign to set up corporate front groups and think tanks to manufacture the appearance of credibility for corporate interests.
The echo chamber that the right wing constructed over the past four decades since Powell’s infamous memo has played a central role in blocking action on climate change and a host of other public health and environmental threats. This unethical corporate propaganda mill capitalizes on the dark side of social sciences, preying upon people’s biases and encouraging them to support and defend corporate interests above their own.
Charlie Cray from Greenpeace USA has written an excellent overview of the significance of the Lewis Powell memo, and with the kind permission of Greenpeace, we share Charlie’s piece in full below. Please read it, share it widely, and help to shine a bright spotlight on this document. If more people understood the roots of this corporate propaganda campaign, perhaps they would become immune to its influence.
Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.
Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”
An astute observer of the business community and broader social trends, Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a board member of tobacco giant Philip Morris and other companies. In his memo, he detailed a series of possible “avenues of action” that the Chamber and the broader business community should take in response to fierce criticism in the media, campus-based protests, and new consumer and environmental laws.
Environmental awareness and pressure on corporate polluters had reached a new peak in the months before the Powell memo was written. In January 1970, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which formally recognized the environment’s importance by establishing the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Massive Earth Day events took place all over the country just a few months later and by early July, Nixon signed an executive order that created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tough new amendments to the Clean Air Act followed in December 1970 and by April 2001, EPA announced the first air pollution standards. Lead paint was soon regulated for the first time, and the awareness of the impacts of pesticides and other pollutants– made famous by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring – was recognized when DDT was finally banned for agricultural use in 1972.
The overall tone of Powell’s memo reflected a widespread sense of crisis among elites in the business and political communities. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” he suggested, adding that the attacks were not coming just from a few “extremists of the left,” but also – and most alarmingly – from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including leading intellectuals, the media, and politicians.
To meet the challenge, business leaders would have to first recognize the severity of the crisis, and begin marshalling their resources to influence prominent institutions of public opinion and political power – especially the universities, the media and the courts. The memo emphasized the importance of education, values, and movement-building. Corporations had to reshape the political debate, organize speakers’ bureaus and keep television programs under “constant surveillance.” Most importantly, business needed to recognize that political power must be “assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”
Powell emphasized the importance of strengthening institutions like the U.S. Chamber – which represented the interests of the broader business community, and therefore key to creating a united front. While individual corporations could represent their interests more aggressively, the responsibility of conducting an enduring campaign would necessarily fall upon the Chamber and allied foundations. Since business executives had “little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics” and “little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,” it was important to create new think tanks, legal foundations, front groups and other organizations. The ability to align such groups into a united front would only come about through “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.”
Before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court Powell circulated his call for a business crusade not only to the Chamber, but also to executives at corporations including General Motors. The memo did not become available to the public until after Powell’s confirmation to the Court, when it was leaked to Jack Anderson, a syndicated columnist and investigative reporter, who cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity.
Anderson’s report spread business leaders’ interest in the memo even further. Soon thereafter, the Chamber’s board of directors formed a task force of 40 business executives (from U.S. Steel, GE, ABC, GM, CBS, 3M, Phillips Petroleum, Amway and numerous other companies) to review Powell’s memo and draft a list of specific proposals to “improve understanding of business and the private enterprise system,” which the board adopted on November 8, 1973.
Historian Kim Phillips-Fein describes how “many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.” In fact, Powell’s Memo is widely credited for having helped catalyze a new business activist movement, with numerous conservative family and corporate foundations (e.g. Coors, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, Koch and others) thereafter creating and sustaining powerful new voices to help push the corporate agenda, including the Business Roundtable (1972), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC - 1973), Heritage Foundation (1973), the Cato Institute (1977), the Manhattan Institute (1978), Citizens for a Sound Economy (1984 - now Americans for Prosperity), Accuracy in Academe (1985), and others.
Because it signaled the beginning of a major shift in American business culture, political power and law, the Powell memo essentially marks the beginning of the business community’s multi-decade collective takeover of the most important institutions of public opinion and democratic decision-making. At the very least, it is the first place where this broad agenda was compiled in one document.
That shift continues today, with corporate influence over policy and politics reaching unprecedented new dimensions. The decades-long drive to rethink legal doctrines and ultimately strike down the edifice of campaign finance laws – breaking radical new ground with the Roberts Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission– continues apace.
Although many new voices have emerged in the 40 years since it circulated Powell’s memo, the U.S. Chamber has expanded its leadership position within the corporate power movement, leading dozens of judicial, legislative and regulatory fights each year. Measured in terms of money spent, the Chamber is by far the most powerful lobby in Washington, DC, spending $770.6 million since 1998, over three times the amount spent by General Electric, the second-largest spender. At the same time, the Chamber has reinforced its lobbying power by becoming one of the largest conduits of election-related “independent expenditures,” spending over $32.8 million on Federal elections in 2010. The Chamber sponsors the Institute for Legal Reform, which has spearheaded the campaign for tort “reform,” making it more difficult for average people who have been injured, assaulted, or harmed to sue the responsible corporations. Along with well over a dozen legal foundations, the Chamber has also helped shape the powerful “business civil liberties” movement that has been a driving force behind the Citizens United decision and other judicial actions that have handcuffed regulators and prevented Congress from putting common-sense checks on corporate power.
Additional Sources:
Jack Anderson, Washington Report, Volume 12, No. 24, November 26, 1973
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009
Jeff Krehely, Meaghan House and Emily Kernan, “Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Policy,” National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 2004
Michael Waldman, Executive Director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law cites the Powell memo as the inspiration for the ideological war waged on behalf of the “free market” approach to the First Amendment that has elevated the rights of corporate speakers. See Waldman’s introduction to “Money, Politics and the Constitution: Beyond Citizens United,” by Monica Youn (ed.), New York: Century Foundation Press, 2011
Reprinted with permission from Greenpeace USA. Visit the original post here.
Back in June, I wrote about my effort to seek answers from The New York Times public editor’s office regarding the paper’s lack of a policy for disclosure of possible conflicts of interest among op-ed contributors. In my query to the NYT, I specifically cited the example of Robert Bryce from the Manhattan Institute, a group funded by Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and other polluters to confuse the public about climate change and energy issues.
Bryce had penned an op-ed attacking renewable energy while promoting nuclear and fracked shale gas, with no disclosure in his byline about the Manhattan Institute’s fossil fuel clients. I offered Bryce's piece as an example in order to formally seek answers about the disclosure policy at the Times and whether it was adequate in light of the failure to disclose Bryce’s dirty energy backing.
I didn’t get a concrete answer from Public Editor Arthur Brisbane’s office – his assistant acknowledged that “this is a topic that interests due to the number of emails we receive from readers on it,” but rather than answer my questions or take action to highlight the policy oversight, he told me “We're going to keep your email on file in the event that we decide to tackle this issue in the future.”
With our attention at DeSmogBlog diverted in the ensuing months by the Keystone XL pipeline controversy, the ever-growing list of the Koch Brothers’ threats to decency and democracy, and other dirty energy issues to focus on, I felt that another group would be better suited to devote attention to the NYT disclosure matter. I asked my friend Gabe Elsner at the Checks & Balances Project to take a look at my blog about Bryce and the failed efforts to get a satisfactory answer from the NYT Public Editor’s office.
Well, I’m grateful to Gabe for following through, since the issue is finally gaining some recognition, with the launch of TrueTies.org (designed by Checks and Balances Project) and a petition by 50 journalists echoing the call for The New York Times to lead the industry by creating a disclosure policy for op-ed contributors.
A few examples of the media coverage of the True Ties petition:
As regular readers of DeSmogBlog know, especially readers of our president Jim Hoggan’s book Climate Cover-up, there is a cottage industry of dirty energy front group mouthpieces who use this tactic of placing op-eds without disclosing their funding conflicts – Bryce is not the only one failing to disclose his “True Ties” by a long shot. DeSmogBlog has raised dozens of examples of this front group media activity in both U.S. and Canadian news outlets, and beyond.
It’s a recurring problem that needs to be addressed in order for people to know the interests that lie beneath an innocent sounding group like the Manhattan Institute - which an unsuspecting reader might mistake for a great name for a cocktail club, or worse, a legitimate source of unbiased information.
The New York Times, well-respected for its journalistic integrity, is the perfect outlet to set the tone in the journalism industry by fixing this PR pollution with a simple disclosure policy requiring all op-ed contributors to reveal their funding sources.
Hopefully, the NYT will embrace this opportunity, which will help to rid industry propaganda from its influential opinion pages, and by extension, inspire other news outlets to follow suit.
Robert Bryce, a fellow at the dirty industry-funded Manhattan Institute, is under increasing scrutiny as media outlets continue to use him as an “expert” on energy issues without disclosing his ties to the energy industry. DeSmogBlog’s Brendan DeMelle has writtenseveral pieces on Bryce’s connections to the industry, as well as how media outlets, including the New York Times, continue to allow Bryce to write op-eds on energy issues that are laden with fallacies without disclosing his conflict of interest.
From Brendan’s previous reports on Bryce’s New York Times piece:
Bryce penned an op-ed attacking renewable energy while promoting nuclear and fracked shale gas, with no disclosure in his byline about the Manhattan Institute’s fossil fuel clients. I offered Bryce's piece as an example in order to formally seek answers about the disclosure policy at the Times and whether it was adequate in light of the failure to disclose Bryce’s dirty energy backing.
Now Media Matters has done a fantastic job of detailing the numerous media outlets that are allowing the industry hack Bryce to pen his agenda-driven drivel, as well as uncovering where his group's funding is coming from:
Manhattan Institute Is Funded By ExxonMobil. According to ExxonSecrets.org, the Manhattan Institute has received $385,000 from Exxon since 1998, including $50,000 in 2010.
Manhattan Institute Has Received Funding From The Koch Family Foundations. The Manhattan Institute has received over $1.3 million total from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation and the David H. Koch Foundation over the years, both of which are associated with Koch Industries, an oil, gas and chemical corporation. From 2001 to 2009 (the most recent year for which data is available), the Lambe Foundation gave The Manhattan Institute $200,000 annually. The Lambe Foundation's board of directors is “comprised entirely of Koch family members, senior Koch executives, and staff who serve Koch foundations,” including the CEO of Koch Industries Charles G. Koch, according to Greenpeace.
In addition to the reporting of Media Matters, a website called TrueTies.org has taken a close look at Bryce's clear conflicts of interest and asked the New York Times to craft a policy of disclosure of conflicts of interest for its op-ed contributors.
Agenda-driven journalism is a growing problem in America, and without full disclosure from media outlets, viewers and readers have an almost impossible task of sorting the industry’s views from actual facts.
Head over to Media Matters to read more about who Robert Bryce really represents in his op-eds. Who is Robert Bryce?
I asked Bryce if he had financial ties to the fossil fuel industry after his debate appearance before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference on Monday. Not only did Bryce refuse to answer the question, he also launched into an angry, finger-pointing tirade saying that I’d “made up” the amount of fossil fuel support documented by Manhattan Institute records.
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