I'm not the only one who noticed Gannett and the Ithaca Journal re-hashing a story from the Energy In Depth folks. County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson has some hard questions for the Journal.
The Ithaca Journal should investigate where the real money is coming from and where it's going. One example I gave Campbell when he called me for this story was a mailing from Rep. Tom Reed (whose district will now include Tompkins County) that included the tagline "Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute." So who does Reed work for? Shouldn't that be the target of an exposé?...
Why is the Ithaca Journal doing the work of the gas industry? When will the Journal explore the Common Cause reports to see which politicians are getting gas industry money? That's what readers really need to see, especially in this election year.
My guess is that it's not the Journal per se. It's Gannett, the larger company, and perhaps especially the connections they've built to the Binghamton and Elmira papers, in areas that are at least slightly fonder of fracking than Tompkins County. This article came out of the Gannett Albany offices, and turned up in papers across the state.
(The Journal did publish this critical viewpoint, but it doesn't look like it turned up in the Elmira Star-Gazette or the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin.)
Hmmm... maybe next we'll see articles based on Time-Warner Cable and Verizon press releases criticizing Tompkins County for taking a Park Foundation grant to study broadband demand. (More detail here.)
Posted by simon at April 28, 2012 10:36 PM in Ithaca Journal , energy