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Kevin Begos is to fracking as Judith Miller is to the Iraq War

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I’ve been holding back on this for a long time now but it must be said:

Kevin Begos is fracking’s Judith Miller.

I don’t care how many awards Judy Miller has, she is a miserable failure who has irreparably harmed her country with bad journalism and by allowing her own personal beliefs to infect her reportage. Source

Miller has blood on her hands and so does her editor.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller says one of his biggest mistakes as editor was not addressing the paper’s misleading pre-Iraq War coverage sooner, including the reporting of former Times writer Judy Miller.

Keller tells Media Matters that he is “not at all” surprised that Miller ended up at the “conservative” Fox News Channel after she left the Times under a cloud of controversy related to her Iraq reporting.

Keller, who announced Thursday that in September he will leave the post he has held since July 2003, said: “Judy was the author of a lot of those stories, and I should have dealt with the stories and with her I think as the sort of first order of business when I took the job rather than waiting until the following year.” Source

Where is Begos’ editor?

Begos was designated as “Energy” writer in one of his recent articles. I have not seen that designation on his writing previously and I wondered if that was his editor’s attempt to make a distinction between science and what Begos writes. That point needs to be crystal clear–Begos is no science writer. But the distinction is not enough.

Will the Associated Press editor for Kevin Begos step up and pay attention? Or will (s)he some day write about his biggest mistake in regards to another American disaster?

More to come…

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

Comments

  2. TXsharon says

    This came Friday in an email blast from the Marcellus.

    SICK OF THE ‘KEVIN BOGUS’ SPIN?
    Is anyone else sick of reading all the re-spun versions of this latest study, in newspaper articles with the pro-industry slant that Marcellus drilling has not impacted our water?

    Seems it all originated from a recent story by AP reporter KEVIN BEGOS, who has developed a history of authoring similar slanted news stories, with slanted headlines to match. I’ve watched various versions of these slanted headlines hit newspapers across the United States in recent days…

    Typical national headlines:
    “Pa. water study shows spill concerns small”
    “Water study shows spill concerns from Marcellus Shale drilling small”

    Maybe this article will lend more balance:

    Study Says Marcellus Drilling Will Raise Pollution Levels

    Mar 13, 2013 – Shale gas development can adversely affect surface water quality by increasing the downstream concentrations of two pollutants, chloride and total suspended solids, according to a study by scholars at Resources for the Future. The results were published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Sheila Olmstead, Lucija Muehlenbachs, Jhih-Shyang Shih, Ziyan Chu, and Alan Krupnick relied upon more than 20,000 surface water quality observations taken over 11 years in Pennsylvania to estimate the effects of shale gas development on downstream water quality through 2011. The results indicate statistically significant water quality impacts from wastewater sent to treatment plants and runoff from well pad development. The study found no systematic statistical evidence of spills or leaks of flowback and produced water from shale gas wells into waterways. (They weren’t looking very hard!)

    Story:
    http://paenvironmentdaily.blogspot.com/2013/03/study-says-marcellus-drilling-will.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PaEnvironmentDaily+%28PA+Environment+Daily+Blog%29

    Judge for yourself, here is the full text of the study:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1213871110.full.pdf