Anti-Fracking FOIA Fail

A pretty long article at Hot Air on how anti-fracking activists defeated a non-disclosure agreement about a suit settlement that they hoped would provide them the evidence they could use to shut down fracking for good.  What they found didn't help.

For these journalists and activists there has been no better story about the evils of fracking than the Hallowich family in Washington County Pennsylvania. Mrs Hallowich told news outlets from across the world how her family’s health was destroyed by fracking activity near their home. She claimed her family and in particular her children were suffering devastating healy impacts caused by fracking and said her children could some day have cancer as a result.

Their story was featured by CBS News, the BBC, and National Geographic and everyone else who loves great stories about how fracking is evil.

This narrative was only strengthened when it emerged that the Hallowiches had settled a legal battle with an oil and gas company and received a financial settlement. And if any further proof was needed the settlement was covered by a non-disclosure clause–which the journalists and anti-fracking activists took as evidence of wrongdoing and then the cover up of the wrongdoing

But let’s not forget that journalists, when they want to be, can be enterprising. So they worked out that the agreement covered minors–who of course have to be protected from corporations and, in the eyes of the law, sometimes even their parents. So they petitioned a court to release the details of the agreement because the court and not the parents were allowed to decide what was right for the children.

The court decided that there was no reason why the lawsuit covering the children should be kept secret and ordered all the documents should be released.

Cue: much excitement from journalists; they had managed to destroy the veil of secrecy around a fracking lawsuit. Letters were being written to the Pulitzer committee. “Thank you” speeches were being composed.

Then the hundreds of pages of documents were released.

Cue: pretty much complete silence. There were no detailed exposes; there were no sensational headlines or serialized articles. And there was a very big reason for the silence.

To the dismay of anti-fracking activists and, I suspect, their journalistic supporters, the document dump confirmed that the Hallowiches had lied to them. The documents confirmed that even as they were claiming to media that fracking was damaging their children’s health, the Hallowiches were sitting on scientific and medical evidence that their children were healthy and not affected by fracking.

And far from a family suddenly overwhelmed by a growing gas industry, it’s clear from the court documents that the Hallowiches bought into the gas boom. They bought land and built a house in the middle of an active gas field. And how do we know they knew about the gas boom? Well because they were–and still are–receiving royalty checks from a gas company.

In short the documents revealed that they received a substantial settlement even though they admitted, under oath, that neither they nor their children had suffered any medical ill-effects from fracking.

But apart from a few small local newspapers none of the “respectable,” no doubt heavily qualified journalism school graduates, have rushed to correct the record. They were happy, in graphic detail, to cover the allegations, but in what seems to be a complete inversion of journalism, they go silent when the science comes in.

It's not about the science, it's about the narrative.