Josh Fox Gasland

vitter rep---2021 % life 3%<a href="https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/andy-harris">https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/andy-harris</a>The Oscar-nominated activist-director of the documentary “Gasland” was arrested on Capitol Hill for trying to film a hearing without proper media credentials. Staffers say Fox declined an order by House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee chairman Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) to turn off his camera.“This was an act of civil disobedience, yes, done in an impromptu fashion,” said Fox in an emailed statement later. “When I was led out of the hearing room in handcuffs, John Boehner’s pledge of transparency in Congress was taken out with me.”JOK failed scam EID FTI IPAA attacks=<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In 2009, EID mounted a fierce “rebuttal” campaign against the documentary film, GASLAND, by Josh Fox.  <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/entertainment/la-et-0215-oscar-gasland-20110215" style="text-decoration-line: none;">EID sent a letter to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences</a> stating Gasland should be ineligible for nomination because it was based on inaccuracies.   EID also published several blog entries “debunking” the film. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Energy_in_Depth" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The funding sources</a> for EID include: Anadarko, BP, Chevron, El Paso Corporation, EnCana, Halliburton, <place w:st="on" xmlns:w="w">Marathon</place>, Occidental Petroleum, Schlumberger, Shell API, Talisman and XTO Energy. </div>1/20In his new one-man show “The Truth Has Changed,” activist, director and writer Josh Fox is raising an alarm: The Democrats are ill-prepared for Trump’s oncoming misinformation campaign. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr)

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute Josh Fox, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind “Gasland,” the documentary that started the global anti-fracking movement, is bringing a new message to audiences across the country with “<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/tthc-php/crccll/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Truth Has Changed</a>,” a live theater-based project that sounds the alarm on the right-wing disinformation campaign working to secure President Trump’s reelection. Commissioned by legendary documentary producer Sheila Nevins for HBO as a solo performance to inspire grassroots action, “The Truth Has Changed” traces Fox’s personal arc from 9/11 to present-day America to tell a story that is both a warning and a prescription to save our democracy—and the planet.

I talked to Fox about this new project and the dark forces working to spread lies and misinformation to influence the 2020 presidential election.

Reynard Loki: Your films have been about the environment, and the fight to save it from climate change, fracking, pipelines, the activists at Standing Rock. How has your previous work led you to your new live performance-based project, “<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/tthc-php/crccln/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Truth Has Changed</a>”?

Josh Fox: That’s a great question. It started with an intriguing proposal from HBO. They said, “We know you do theater. We know you’ve been on the road for 10 years bringing your films to people. And you in a live setting is a part of the show, right? It’s not just that people come out to see your films. They come to see you, so how about you do a one-man show that brings that reality to the people?” And that was an assignment from Sheila Nevins when she was at HBO. And I said, “Absolutely; I’ll try this.” And then I started to really think about it, and at first, it was kind of a reporter’s notebook, but to be honest, what I really zeroed in on was the fact that for the last 10 years, the oil and gas industry has made a huge effort to discredit my work and discredit all of the people who spoke about how bad fracking is. And this is very similar to the campaigns of climate denial, which hinge on widespread misinformation and then spreading disinformation and propaganda, smear and lies.

RL: Can you describe the effort to discredit your work?

JF: Big names in conservative smear campaigns were following me all around the country. [Steve] Bannon. Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose pro-fracking documentary “FrackNation” attempted to refute my own documentary “Gasland.” Conservative activist James O’Keefe. GOP media strategist Fred Davis. These high-profile right-wing charlatans clearly did opposition research on me. They collected all this data on me and figured out how to attack me personally. They tried to get inside my psyche to unnerve me. And they did it in a very specific and deliberate kind of way.

RL: What exactly did they do?

JF: They created hate emails specifically designed for my personality. There were tweets threats; there were death threats on Twitter. They highlighted my life in the theater, my hairline, the fact that my family’s Jewish; they found out that I had quit smoking several years ago, but they found a picture of me with a cigarette in my hand online from the past, and they ran that as a pro-fracking TV ad in Ohio saying, “This environmentalist is a smoker.” They followed me around the country for years. They booked shadow tours of our films. They tapped into ethnic and regional stereotyping. And then they tried to paint me as some kind of rich, intellectual, New York City liberal, which is not the case. They flung all of these stereotypes at me. They gathered all this information about me—my background, my ethnicity, my age, my race, where I live, where I went to school, how much money I made, what I had done in my previous life before the films.

RL: Are you saying that those techniques used against you are similar to the current disinformation campaigns we’re seeing today? Could you have been a kind of beta test for this data-based approach to spread propaganda?

JF: Absolutely. Basically, what Steve Bannon did to me from 2010 to 2015, he did to the entire American electorate in 2016. In developing “The Truth Has Changed,” I made two startling realizations. One was that the people who ran those campaigns against me had a very strong hand in influencing the 2016 election: Steve Bannon, who was running Breitbart when all these attacks were happening against me, took over the Trump campaign and his team profiled the electorate in the exact same way. This connection led me down two trails in my own life. The first looked back to my own personal history as a grandson of Holocaust survivors. I have an intimate knowledge of how white supremacy works, how the Nazi playbook operates, and feel a sense of intergenerational trauma. The second trail looks to the present time and the future, to how the same techniques that were used in a smear campaign against an individual through Google, Facebook, data collection, [and] <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-dollars-shift-digital-173653-/crcclq/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">addressable ad technology</a>, which enables advertisers to selectively segment audiences to serve different ads, are used to influence a massive amount of people. And instead of just following one person around and knowing one person’s data—mine—now they know the personal data of tens of millions of people, and they use that information to create highly personalized ads according to different personality types.

RL: How important was big data to Trump’s victory in 2016?

JF: During the 2016 election, CNN called political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica “<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/cambridge-analytica-index-html/crccls/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump’s mind readers</a>” and his “secret weapon.” They gathered up to <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/every-american-voter-1-4348283/crcclv/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">5,000 data points on more than 220 million Americans</a>. And they used that data to tailor ads specifically toward people’s personality types to influence their thinking. The same folks are currently rallying white supremacists all across the world and are making a bid to get Trump reelected in 2020. Their digital campaign created <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/mp-campaign-ads-democrats-html/crcclx/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">5.9 million different ad variations in 2016</a>, versus just 66,000 ads created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was so key to Trump’s victory that Trump’s digital campaign manager <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/le-campaign-manger-trump-2020-/crcclz/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Brad Parscale is now his campaign manager</a>.

RL: So in “The Truth Is Changed,” you’re connecting big oil and white supremacy to big data—and how these forces are working together to influence the 2020 election....The tobacco industry originally started doing this. They started to say things like, “Smoking is good for you.” And they created all this bogus science and fake reports that said, “These cigarettes are fine.” And what they were trying to do is sow confusion in people and stave off regulation. The exact same technique has been used by the oil industry.

RL: Why is the truth crisis such an urgent matter?

JF: It’s so important because the further we get away from the terrestrial planet as our source of empirical reality, the closer we come to being evicted from the planet like climate change, and that is those same forces, the oil industry and the conservatives that are forcing us to an unlivable world. This is an emergency because of the climate. It’s also an emergency because we’re seeing right now the reemergence of white supremacists and Nazis on this planet, and they are taking over. Right-wing authoritarian governments are sweeping elections across the earth, and they’re doing so primarily by using Facebook and WhatsApp and by lying directly to the public. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/accounts-set-back-bolivia-coup/crccmg/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Sixty-eight thousand fake Twitter accounts</a> helped push the recent Bolivian coup. In the UK, Boris Johnson’s recent election, <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ng-compared-0-labour-11651802-/crccmj/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">88 percent</a> of the conservative parties’ advertisements were misleading. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was elected with the help of <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/r-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news/crccml/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">fake news messages sent via WhatsApp</a>, a messaging app used by 120 million Brazilians, saying that his opponent was a criminal. Obviously, there’s Donald Trump, who had <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/mp-campaign-ads-democrats-html/crcclx/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">5.9 million ad variations</a> using Cambridge Analytica. There’s also Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Narendra Modi in India. There are dozens of examples. So you’re seeing right-wing, authoritarian, racist regimes cropping up all over the world. And in 2019, Steve Bannon raised <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ie-review-steve-bannon-812011-/crccmn/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$100 million</a> for his white supremacist project in Europe.

So what is really dangerous about all of this is the two-headed monster of the rise of white supremacy, Nazism and racism on the one hand and on the other hand, climate change denial and the fossil fuel industry. And these are linked, and these are linked in the persona and in many actions by the Trump administration. In 2017, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil turned Secretary of State, created a <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/partment-terrorist-propaganda-/crccmq/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">contract between the State Department and Cambridge Analytica</a>, and their mission was to influence elections all across the world. Big data and big oil running American diplomacy. And that continues to this day.

RL: Why should people see “The Truth Has Changed”?

JF: Because this is a chance to rally for the truth. It’s the chance to rally for a new America. This project concerns itself with the oil industry, the world at war post-9/11, climate change. We’ve seen the United States get <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/articles-war-with-iran-/crccms/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">closer to war with Iran</a>. We see Australia on fire, and authorities there must battle <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/tle-as-they-take-a-tragic-toll/crccmv/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">misinformation campaigns contending that the fires were caused by arson and not climate change</a>. We know that we’re watching the <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-and-the-new-age-of-extinction/crccmx/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extinction of countless species in real time</a>. We’re in an emergency.

At every single performance of “The Truth Has Changed,” there will be activists in the room who are campaigning on these issues, and that’s what we need to do. We need to set the record straight. We need to say climate change is real. We need to say fracking is bad, we need to see Donald Trump as a racist and say that is not who we are as a nation. So we have to take our country back, and this is our effort to try to fight back against this wave of lies, smear and misinformation.

“The Truth Has Changed” opens at New York’s Public Theater this January and will tour across the United States. For more information, visit <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/tthc-php/crccll/537682439?h=mdzuGx76QtWo1C8X0VhM89bqXIpfDLZksti3QXVmgGA" style="text-decoration-line: none;">internationalwow.com/tthc.php</a>.ref  $wall<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/2020-campaigns-disinformation.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/2020-campaigns-disinformation.html</a><div id="app"><div class=""><div class="css-183q51 e1suatyy0"><header class="css-1bymuyk e1suatyy1"><section class="css-ui9rw0 e1suatyy2"><div class="css-eph4ug er09x8g0"><div class="css-6n7j50" /></div></section></header></div></div></div><div class="css-10488qs"><div class="css-eph4ug er09x8g0">2020 Campaigns Throw Their Hands Up on Disinformation</div><article id="story" class="css-1vxca1d e1qksbhf0"><header class="css-8ksslt euiyums4"><div class="css-1vkm6nb ehdk2mb0"><h1 itemprop="headline" class="css-1s4ffep e1h9rw200" id="link-39d05c33"></h1></div>Few politicians have teams to spot false statements about them online, or to fight back before it spreadsIn 2018, Lisa Kaplan assembled a small team inside the re-election

campaign for Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine. Wary of how <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/russian-hacking-elections.html" title="">Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election</a>, it set out to find and respond to <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/technology/facebook-disinformation-russia-iran.html" title="">political disinformation</a> online.</header></article><main id="site-content"><article id="story" class="css-1vxca1d e1qksbhf0"><section name="articleBody" itemprop="articleBody" class="meteredContent css-1r7ky0e"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">The

team noticed some false statements shared by voters, and traced the

language back to Facebook pages with names like “Boycott The NFL 2018.”

It alerted Facebook, and some pages were removed. The people behind the

posts, operating from places like Israel and Nigeria, had misled the

company about their identity.Today,

Ms. Kaplan said, she knows of no campaigns, including among the 2020

presidential candidates, that have similar teams dedicated to spotting

and pushing back on disinformation.They may “wake up the day after the election and say, ‘Oh, no, the Russians stole another one,’” she said.</div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-190ncxp"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">Less than a year before the 2020 election, false political information is moving furiously online. Facebook users <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6472-us-2020-facebook-disinformation/d53c6e6fe884c9d2aa27/optimized/full.pdf#page=1" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank">shared the top 100 false political stories over 2.3 million times</a> in the United States in the first 10 months of this year, according to <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52019JC0012&from=EN" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank">Avaaz</a>, a global human rights organization. </div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">The examples are numerous: A hoax version of the Green New Deal legislation went viral online. <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/business/media/fact-check-biden-ukraine-burisma-china-hunter.html" title="">Millions of people saw unsubstantiated rumors</a> about the relationship between <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/us/politics/joe-biden-ukraine.html" title="">Ukraine and the family of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr</a>.

A canard about the ties between a Ukrainian oil company and a son of

Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican, spread widely, too.Still,

few politicians or their staffs are prepared to quickly notice and

combat incorrect stories about them, according to dozens of campaign

staff members and researchers who study online disinformation. Several

of the researchers said they were surprised by how little outreach they

had received from politicians.Campaigns

and political parties say their hands are tied, because big online

companies like Facebook and YouTube have few restrictions on what users

can say or share, as long as they do not lie about who they are.</div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-190ncxp"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">But campaigns should not just be throwing their hands up, said some researchers and campaign veterans like Ms. Kaplan, who now <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.aletheagroup.com/about-us" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">runs a start-up</a> that helps fight disinformation. Instead, they said, there should be a concerted effort to counter falsehoods.“Politicians

must play some defense by understanding what information is out there

that may be manipulated,” said Joan Donovan, a research director at

Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center. Even more important for

politicians, she said, is pushing “high-profile and consistent

informational campaigns.”Too many

campaigns are now left on their heels, said Simon Rosenberg, who tried

to thwart disinformation for the Democratic Congressional Campaign

Committee before the 2018 midterm election.“The idea of counterdisinformation doesn’t really exist as a strategic objective,” he said. </div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">Political

groups are not ignoring false information. Bob Lord, the chief security

officer of the Democratic National Committee, encourages campaigns to

alert his organization when they see it online. The

committee also gives advice on when and how to respond. He said

campaigns must decide when the costs of ignoring a falsehood outweighed

drawing additional attention to it by speaking out. But he said his reach was limited. “The

amount of disinformation that is floating around can cover almost any

possible topic,” Mr. Lord said, and his team cannot look into each

reported piece. If campaigns need connections to social media companies,

he said, “we’re happy to make some.”</div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-190ncxp"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">In September, President Trump’s re-election campaign released an ad that included an incorrect statement about <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/business/media/fact-check-biden-ukraine-burisma-china-hunter.html" title="">Mr. Biden’s dealings with Ukraine</a>. The campaign posted the ad <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/technology/facebook-trump-biden-ad.html" title="">on Facebook</a> and the president’s Twitter account. Between the two services, the ad has been viewed more than eight million times.Mr.

Biden’s campaign publicized letters that it had written to Facebook,

Twitter, YouTube and Fox News, asking the companies to ban the ad. But

it remained up. In mid-November, the Biden campaign released a website

called <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://thefactsfolks.com/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Just the Facts, Folks</a>. Jamal

Brown, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said it was not the

campaign’s responsibility alone to push back on all falsehoods. But, he

said, “it is incumbent upon all of us, both public- and private-sector

companies, users, and elected officials and leaders, to be more vigilant

in the kinds of content we engage and reshare on social media.”Several

months ago, a team at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

flagged some ads on Facebook to the office of Representative Ilhan Omar,

a Minnesota Democrat. The ads called for an investigation into

unfounded accusations that she had violated several laws. After

the committee and Ms. Omar’s campaign contacted Facebook, the company

said it would limit the prominence of the ads in people’s feeds. But the

ads, which have now reached over one million views, remain active. Facebook

does not remove false news, though it does label some stories as false

through a partnership with several fact-checking organizations. It has

said politicians like Mr. Trump can run ads that feature their “own

claim or statement — even if the substance of that claim has been

debunked elsewhere.” In October, <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/twitter-political-ads-ban.html" title="">Twitter announced plans to forbid all political ads</a>.

But the company does not screen for false accusations. Twitter said it

did not want to set a precedent for deciding what is and is not truthful

online.</div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column"><div /></aside></div><div class="css-190ncxp"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">In an email, Ms. Omar said it was “not enough” to rely on private companies alone. “We

as a nation need to think seriously about ways to address online

threats to our safety and our democracy while protecting core values

like free speech,” she said.</div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8">Academics

and researchers said it was surprising how little outreach there had

been from campaigns that faced disinformation operations. Many of the

researchers can dissect when a false idea first appeared online, and how

it spread.Graham Brookie, the

director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said

there needed to be “more ingrained information sharing” among

politicians, campaign staff, social media companies, civil society

groups and, in some cases, law enforcement to counteract the increasing

volume of election disinformation.But

when disinformation is used as a tool in partisan politics, Mr. Brookie

said, the discussion becomes “a Rorschach test to reaffirm each

audience’s existing beliefs, regardless of the facts.”“One side will accuse the other, and then disinformation itself is weaponized,” he said. Chris

Pack, communications director of the National Republican Congressional

Committee, said the disinformation that his party fought was

“perpetuated by a liberal press corps that is still incapable of

wrapping their heads around the fact that President Trump won the 2016

election.”That leaves some in the

research community wary of wading in at all, said Renee DiResta, the

technical research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory, which

studies disinformation.“I think this

is a concern for a lot of academics who don’t want to work directly with

a campaign,” Ms. DiResta said, “because that would be problematic for

their neutrality.”Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></section></article></main>https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4101-the-truth-has-changed<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-january-21-2019/">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-january-21-2019/</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The Truth Has Changed,” a new theater work performed by Emmy winner and Oscar and Drama Desk Award-nominated filmmaker, playwright, and activist Josh Fox (“Gasland”), will play The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley Church, 20 Church Road, at 7 p.m. Aug. 22.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Initially commissioned by HBO, “The Truth Has Changed” is a solo monologue tracing the arc of American political life from 911 to the Trump era. The piece, which will be filmed as part of a feature film for release in 2019, traces Fox’s experiences as a first responder during 911, his groundbreaking reporting on fracking, his eye-opening eco-flights over the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil spill, Hurricane Sandy, the massive rallies during the 2016 election and the Democratic Convention, Standing Rock, and beyond.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fox’s first book, “The Truth Has Changed,” with introduction by Bill McKibben, will be published by Seven Stories Press on Sept. 11, 2018.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Golden Globe winner and NOLA resident Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes has penned the score for this theatrical piece, adding an immediate emotional musical impact to the work.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The Truth Has Changed” is written and performed by Fox, directed by Ron Russell, features original music by Alex Ebert (aka Edward Sharpe), dramaturgy by Morgan Jenness, project advising by Nathan Lemoine, Susan Barnes, Kyle Cadotte, and Bonnie Sue Stein, and is produced by International Wow Company, GOH Productions, and Barrow Street Productions.
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/rex-tillerson-has-been-misleading-public-about-dangers-fracking-years">http://www.alternet.org/environment/rex-tillerson-has-been-misleading-public-about-dangers-fracking-years</a>.... It worked. With help from sympathetic (and largely conservative) media outlets and a barrage of propaganda from industry front groups like “Energy in Depth,” the industry was able to brand the victims as liars and charlatans. “Their water was always like that” became a meme—a “sciencey” explanation that let the industry off the hook and blamed the victims. Each new case got the same treatment, and with oil industry PR money behind it, much of the nation believed it.  Central to the oil industry’s branding of fracking as a clean source of energy is the claim that “there’s never been one case of water pollution from fracking.” Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exon (and now Secretary of State) looked straight into the camera and proclaimed in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2013 that after “a million data points,” there had “never been a verifiable case of fracking polluting drinking water.”  The claim was patently false. At that point we knew aquifers had been polluted in Dimock Pa, Pavilion Wyoming and Parker Country Texas.  Texas, Colorado, Wyoming resulting in dozens of water wells being polluted. Testing in all three cases pointed to gas extraction.In fact, there are documented cases of fracking contaminating drinking water as early as the 1980s. An EPA report from 1987 showed that “fracturing the Kaiser gas well on Mr. James Parson’s property, fractures were created allowing migration of fracture fluid from the gas well to Mr. Parson’s water well.” Industry itself admitted that fracking polluted the well.  During the 1990s when modern fracking technologies were being pioneered in Texas, widespread instances of pollution were acknowledged by Texas regulators.But with enough people in positions of power and influence repeating it, the claim that there had never been a single case of fracking polluting drinking water became a “fact.” Media figures, oil industry officials, politicians, state regulators and gas and oil PR teams repeated the same story line: Fracking has been around for seventy years and there’s never been one documented case of pollution.There were numerous problems with this story. First, modern slick-water fracking combined with horizontal drilling is a relatively new technology.  Comparing the “stimulation” of old vertical wells to modern fracks with pressures up to 15,000 PSI and hundreds of chemicals is like comparing a 1960s rotary phone to today's iPhone.  Also left out of the not-one-case story is a clever sleight of hand with the definition of fracking. The oil industry defines “fracking” as only what happens in the horizontal section of pipe thousands of feet underground. According to this reasoning, the only way fracking can pollute drinking water is by migrating through thousands of feet of solid rock. Pollution from the vertical part of the well—where most leaks occur—or surface activity is not in this technical definition pollution from fracking.Of course, most people understand fracking as the whole process of transporting equipment and chemicals to the site, drilling the well, extracting the gas and transporting it to market. Oil industry PR people are perfectly willing to use this confusion to their advantage. They can cite scientific papers claiming that “there has never been a case of fracking polluting drinking water,” and let the public believe they are referring to the common-sense definition of fracking as the entire industrial process.Industry leaders like Tillerson know all this, of course. But they just keep repeating the same misleading claim. If enough “experts,” authority figures and media personalities keep repeating it, the big lie becomes a fact in people’s minds. And once it’s embedded, these everyone-knows-it facts are very difficult to dislodge.An important part of the oil industry drive to control perceptions of fracking is demonizing its critics. Victims are portrayed as greedy fraudsters. Environmentalists are portrayed as hysterical, hypocritical busy bodies inventing scandals about a clean energy technology they should be celebrating. Filmmakers like Josh Fox, whose film “Gasland” shined a spotlight on cases of pollution associated with fracking, were subjected to withering character assassination campaigns.The IPAA, the oldest petroleum industry association in the nation, funded a film a film to discredit “Gasland” called “Truthland.” It was a shiny spin piece that painted any case of water contamination as naturally occurring. The best known of these fracking-denial films is “FrackNation” by Phelim McAleer. McAleer has made a career out of making films depicting environments as hypocritical elitists and pollution victims as frauds and liars. A darling of conservative news outlets, McAleer has been one of the most effective proponents of fracking-has-never-contaminated-drinking-water meme. Other media figures like Alex Epstein and Ezra Levant have cashed in by writing Ann Coulter-style books popularizing oil industry talking points. Levant is famous in Canada for his shouting-head attacks on oil industry critics.IPAA also fired up their own PR “news” outlet, Energy In Depth. In a memo announcing the new media group, IPAA stated the group’s goal; “EnergyInDepth.org: a state of the art online resource center to combat new environmental regulations,”. The venture was funded by major gas and oil interests including; BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, Halliburton and Schlumberger and Energy in Depth remains one of the main purveyors of the gas industry’s talking points regarding water, fracking and pollution.When a reporter or member of the public asks if fracking pollutes drinking water, they’re likely asking if any part of the entire process contaminates drinking water. That’s logical since the entire process will be used as the nation moves forward with the planned fracked gas revolution. When the question is answered with a resounding, seemingly convincing ‘NO’, the reporter or citizen thinks no water has ever been contaminated by any part of the fracking process.While industry has gotten away with this ruse for a decade, hundreds of cases of water contamination have become known. After a long fight, The Scranton Times got Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to count the number of letters it sent to residents confirming incidence of water contamination during their fracked gas boom. That number was 243. The Associated Press found at least four states had recorded water contamination also. One troubling fact keeps us from knowing how many cases have actually occurred. When a homeowner settles their case with the operator, they are required to sign a silence agreement that disallows them from sharing any facts about their case. Not only do we know hundreds of cases of water contamination related to the fracking boom have occurred, as it is today, we can never know how many cases there really have been.= O’Keefe’s Attempt At A Bombshell Hollywood Fracking Video Ended With A Target Using His Own Secret Recording To Expose O’Keefe. 
In May 2014, O’Keefe released a video he said exposed “the darker side of how a lot of the feel-good environmentalist propaganda gets funded by international interests who jeopardize national security.” In the video, a Project Veritas actor posed as “Muhammed,” an oil tycoon from the Middle East who attempted to fund a documentary project on the harms of fracking. O’Keefe suggested that, based on an instance in which two filmmakers appeared to accept the funding, his tactics had “exposed the truth about the dark funding behind Hollywood’s anti-fracking messaging machine.” O’Keefe even “debuted” the edited video at “a ‘premiere’ in Cannes, France.” Media Matters found that O’Keefe’s claims were refuted by unedited footage O’Keefe himself released, and one target of Project Veritas, film director Josh Fox, revealed his own secret recordings of their interactions that “caught” O’Keefe “in total deception,“ "willfully portray[ing] it in the wrong light” with heavy editing. The director shared his own revealing recordings on MSNBC’s All In, where host Chris Hayes introduced the segment on “disgraced right-wing operative professional troll” O’Keefe:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 25px 30px 10px; margin: 20px 20px 25px; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgb(204, 204, 204) 0px 6px 0px -4px; clear: both;">CHRIS HAYES (HOST): People who plead guilty week continued on The Kelly File last night, fresh off the heels of the blockbuster interview with Dinesh D’Souza, who recently pled guilty to campaign finance law violation, was James O’Keefe, the disgraced right-wing operative professional troll who has pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering federal property under false pretenses. On Fox News last night, O’Keefe was pushing his latest trolling enterprise in which he plays gotcha with environmentalists who are hypocritical because, well to be honest, I didn’t care enough to read about it. But it’s a James O’Keefe bombshell. You just wait a day for it to be debunked. [Media Matters, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/21/the-deceptive-edits-in-james-okeefes-fracking-h/199414" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">5/21/14;</a> The Daily Beast, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/22/inside-a-hollywood-hit-job-how-james-o-keefe-tried-and-tried-to-sting-his-latest-victim.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">5/22/14;</a><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/21/the-deceptive-edits-in-james-okeefes-fracking-h/199414" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">MSNBC.com, </a><a href="http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/james-okeefes-latest-bogus-claim-busted-263774275727" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">5/22/14</a>]</blockquote>OMFG:
The role Sea Change plays as a member of the Billionaire’s Club is deeply troubling,especially in light of recent revelations that environmental activists, many of whom are clearlybenefiting from this extreme “dark money,” do not have any moral qualms over where theirmoney comes from – so long as it supports the far-left cause.416
 This sentiment was captured bya recently released investigative video that revealed Hollywood producers of far-leftenvironmental films were eager to accept Middle Eastern money to produce an anti-frackingvideo. Notably, in speaking with a man believed to represent rich Middle Eastern oil interestsopposed to American energy independence through fracking, one producer said:416 Project Veritas, Full Un edited raw video, exclusive release by Project Veritas, available at YouTube.com,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6HZ5VLmyes&list=UUL9PlYkRD3Q-RZca6CCnPKw (last visited July 29,2014).65 This is not the first major project that we’ve had funded through a funding sourcewhich you know, for various reasons – we didn’t disclose. It would have beenvery unwise for everybody to understand the dynamics of that funding. So we know how tricky it is…. It’s money, so in that sense we have no moral issue. OKEEFE
=<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><ul><li>Most of the PR push-back on <a href="http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gasland </a>appears to be coming from an oil and gas lobby group calling itself <a href="http://www.energyindepth.org/" target="hplink" style="line-height: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Energy In-Depth" </a>whose anonymous website lists other oil and gas lobby groups, like American Exploration and Production Council, the Indiana Oil and Gas Association and the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, as their members.</li></ul><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the members of <a href="http://www.energyindepth.org/" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Energy in Depth</a> might be listed, who is actually running the day-to-day operations and mounting the attack on Gasland is a bit of mystery.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">No contact information, phone number, mailing address or anything else telling us who is organizing the group can be found on the website.A little digging, finds that the website is registered to a Washington, DC public relations firm called <a href="http://www.fdpublicaffairsamericas.com/overview.html" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FD Americas Public Affairs</a> (formerly FD Dittus Communications).FD's clients include other oil and gas lobby groups with one in particular that stands out, the American Energy Alliance, run by former Republican staffers Eric Creighton, Kevin Kennedy and Laura Henderson. The <a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/08/22/dirty-energy-town-hall/" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Energy Alliance ran an "Energy Town Hall" bus tour</a> last summer attacking the Obama administration's Clean Energy and Security legislation.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As <a href="http://www.fdpublicaffairsamericas.com/energy-environment.html" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FD explains on their website: </a><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 15px; direction: ltr; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(240, 240, 240);">We have managed successful public affairs campaigns for clients on complex energy policy issues such as climate change, increased energy exploration and production, carbon capture and storage, electricity deregulation, natural gas prices, renewable energy development, and business and consumer energy efficiency.<div class="ql" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="qr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></div></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An email that was forwarded to me gives a little further information on who's behind the PR push.The email was sent by the Senior Public Affairs Representative for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anadarko_Petroleum_Corporation" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anadarko Petroleum Corporation</a> - one of the world's largest independent oil and gas companies - saying that the company is "actively engaged with groups like America's Natural Gas Alliance, Energy In Depth and the American Petroleum Institute to educate the public, government officials and other stakeholders about the errors in the film, and the truth about natural gas."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In public relations, it is always a bit of a tricky decision about when to begin countering your opponents' message. If you hit back too early, you may give the story "oxygen" and inflame a controversy that may have gone away if ignored. But if you wait too long to counter your opponent you risk jumping in too late and losing the war of words. The trick is to watch for the tipping point.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 21px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-stretch: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Looks like the tipping point for <a href="http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gasland's</a> opponents was last night's HBO screening, so watch out because we're all about to subjected to more spin than the teacup ride at Disneyland.=Gasland director <a href="http://ecowatch.com/author/jfox/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Josh Fox</a> recently found himself in a game of “Gotcha.” That is, until he turned the tables back around on the man who tried entrapping him.Conservative activist James O’Keefe had loads of fun in recent years staging scams and releasing audio and video recordings of notable people who were supposedly caught in compromising or contradictory situations. He thought he had the perfect plan for Fox—an over-the-phone offer to fund a future project with so much <a href="http://ecowatch.com/news/energy-news/pipelines/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">oil</a> money that even an environmentalist like Fox wouldn’t pass it up.However, a listen to the recording lets you know just how poorly O’Keefe thought this thing out. He also didn’t anticipate that Fox would recording the conversation as well. That was perfect for exposing how O’Keefe edited the chat to give people the perception that Fox was a sellout.MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes captures it all and lets Fox explain why he also recorded the odd conversation: Fox reveals that representatives for O’Keefe’s fictitious financier had been sending emails for six months. He knew he was already involved in a “web of deception,” so hitting the record button once he received some phone time made a lot of sense.“You do a brilliant job of setting that up, and it’s a laughing matter when you actually have the tape,” Fox told Hayes, “but let’s say I didn’t have it.“Why did I record this? I recorded it because it looked shady, it looked like a scam, it looked like entrapment.”——–<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/25/gasland-josh-fox-james-okeefe-entrapment/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/25/gasland-josh-fox-james-okeefe-entrapment/</a>
<div class="story-date" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="field-items" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="field-item even" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="date-display-single" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">May 23, 2014  |</div><div class="article_insert_container" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><div class="insert_border_bottom" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Conservative videographer James O’Keefe tried to make a big splash at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week, debuting a 20-minute video that he claims exposes hypocrisy among notable documentary filmmakers and Hollywood activists. But the film ended up backfiring on O’Keefe as one of his targets,<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Gasland director Josh Fox, recorded his end of a phone conversation with O’Keefe’s cohorts, and exposed deceptive editing by O’Keefe.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">O’Keefe also secretly recorded and filmed environmentalists Josh and Rebecca Tickell and their friends, actors Ed Begley, Jr., and Mariel Hemingway, trying to trap them into accepting financing for an anti-fracking film from Middle East oil interests.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">But while the Tickell’s might have taken the bait from O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, Fox was wary of the group that contacted him several months back and made his own secret recording. Fox claims that he’s become careful with his contacts, as he’s frequently a target of the energy industry since the debut of his landmark 2010 documentary.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The latest O’Keefe saga began in December 2013, when Fox said that a large number of emails from a group called Beacon International began to arrive in his inbox. The organization claimed to be an overseas consortium interested in funding an anti-fracking film. Smelling a rat, Fox took to Google. All he could find was a hastily slapped-together site that “basically looked like a joke site up up overnight.”<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Recognizing that he was likely being scammed, Fox began to ignore the emails. But Beacon International was persistent, even visiting Fox’s New York City apartment, where they left their calling cards in his mailbox and on his door.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Fox was even more suspicious at this point, and he decided to engage into the suspicious filmmakers. With a fellow filmmaker in the room, Fox made the call, recording the conversation from his end. In the recording Fox gave <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Daily Beast, he asks a representative from Beacon International the names of the individuals the group represents. But the person on the other end of the phone, “Brandon Turner” would only tell Fox that they were from Europe and the Middle East. At this, Fox balked, repeatedly explaining to Turner that he wouldn’t participate in a project if he didn’t know the names of the individuals funding it.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/22/inside-a-hollywood-hit-job-how-james-o-keefe-tried-and-tried-to-sting-his-latest-victim.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">On the recording</a> Fox says: “We don’t know much about your company…I would need to have more transparency than you’re giving me right now to feel comfortable with doing that.”<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Fox concluded that his contact with Beacon International was just a scam and didn’t give it much of a thought after that…until this week when James O’Keefe debuted his latest sting video at Cannes.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Toward the end of O’Keefe’s video, Fox is recorded as saying: “Obviously there are projects that we are working on ahead of time, that we’re working on now, that do sound like they would be interesting to your clients.” But Fox’s worries about Beacon International’s lack of transparency had been cut from the audio clip.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">“We have them caught in total deception,” Fox told <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Daily Beast. “This phone call reveals exactly how they work. They willfully portray it in the wrong light. They edit it so it sounds like you said something that you didn’t. Luckily I had the full tape.”<p id="bookmark" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">O’Keefe is a conservative activist who infamously produced audio and video recordings of staged encounters with public figures and workers in a variety of organizations, purportedly showing abusive or illegal behavior. He first gained national attention by recording ACORN workers supposedly aiding a couple (himself and a colleague pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute) in criminal planning in 2009. While the video footage virtually destroyed ACORN, California prosecutors later found that O’Keefe selectively and heavily edited the raw footage.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">O’Keefe has receives monetary support from conservative media and interest groups to produce videos where he ‘punks’ individuals and organizations considered liberal. In 2009 Andrew Breitbart paid the activist to produce videos for BigGovernment.com. In June 2010 O’Keefe formed a 501(c)(3) organization, dubbed Project Veritas with the stated mission to “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct.”<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Despite his tactics, O’Keefe’s productions are praised by conservative pundits like Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Bill+O%27Reilly+James+O%27Keefe&oq=Bill+O%27Reilly+James+O%27Keefe&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.9990j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bill O’Reilly.</a><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">O’Keefe’s activities have generated legal trouble for him. He was arrested and sentenced to three years’ probation for his involvement in a break-in and attempted wiretap at Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in 2010.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">In this latest sting operation, O’Keefe claims to have been inspired by the 2012 film <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Promised Land, where an anti-fracking activist was actually an operative for the energy companies trying to buy land rights from a small, rural community. The film was financed, in part, by an organization partially owned by the United Arab Emirates government.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">After Fox didn’t take the bait, Brandon Turner dangled it in front of the Tickells, producers of the documentary,<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Fuel, a few months later. The Tickells are currently working on a documentary on hydraulic fracturing. The duo, however, were less suspicious of Turner and appeared grateful to have found possible funding for a film that they felt was very important.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Turner told the Tickells that his client — who wished to remain a silent parter — was from the Middle East and was heavily steeped in oil energy interests. The Tickells then participated in a series of follow-up conversations. The recordings portray the couple as promising to keep the identity of their new-found funding source a secret.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">“We’re confident that we can keep this zip-locked, you know tight, tight, air-tight forever,” Josh Tickell says in one recording. “Money to us…It’s money…we have no moral issue…But we know how a lot of people that would be necessary to pull this off, they would have issue.”<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Tickells now claim that they were trapped and prodded into responses by Turner, although Josh Tickell admits they were gullible. “We flat out deny any implication of impropriety,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Turner asked the Tickells to participate in another meeting two other men at the Beverly Hills Hotel. One of the men was “Muhammad,” who Turner identified as the son of Beacon International’s funding source. The Tickells brought their friends Begley and Hemingway for support. In the meeting, Muhammad complains that fracking and energy efficiency in America are a threat to Middle Eastern oil interests.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Toward the end of the meeting, the Tickells say they started to get worried, but instead of going with their instincts they continued to talk to Beacon International.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">In response to the O’Keefe video, Begley and Hemingway have both released statements insisting that they attended the meeting solely to help their friends get financing for their film. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Begley even insisted that hearing problems kept him from understanding much of what Muhammad was saying and that his agreeable demeanor shown on tape was just him being polite.<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Tickells have contacted the FBI and local authorities wondering if O’Keefe broke any laws by recording their conversations, considering that they signed a non-disclosure agreement presented by Beacon International.</div><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">For his part, Fox says that he’s disappointed in the Tickell’s behavior. However, Fox points out that the real villain in this Hollywood drama is O’Keefe.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Watch Josh Fox on Chris Hayes below: </div><a href="http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/25/gasland-josh-fox-james-okeefe-entrapment/">http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/25/gasland-josh-fox-james-okeefe-entrapment/</a>==press2:

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;

margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">CONGRESS:

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;

margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:

normal">Josh Fox,

who had made a much-praised documentary on fracking, Gasland, was arrested

while attempting to videotape a public hearing of the Committee for not

having the proper credentials, though the ranking Democrat thought that the

rule is a way of not having bulky cameras take up space when citizens wanted to

attend, and there was plenty of room (an ABC crew that presumably was

credentialed was also turned away). While he was being handcuffed in the

hearing room, a request to delay a week so that credentials could be obtained

was denied by Chair Andy Harris of Maryland

(Koch, Club for Growth, Tea Party, Citizens United). He primaried moderate

Republican Wayne Gilchrest who Boehner denied a seat on the Select Committee on

Energy Independence and Global Warming unless he denied that humans have a role

in Global Warming (he was a moderate, decorated vet who also made the mistake

of praising Obama).

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;

margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;

margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">hmmn: we are change Russia TV Bilderberg question http://www.mediaroots.org/senator-rand-pauls-intimidation-against-abby-martin/

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;

margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:150%">Rand Paul threatened to revoke the press passes of two

reporters, but perhaps also that of their organizations, because they were

asking about the Bilderberg group, that he had promised to look into as a

candidate.

==
wapohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/gasland-director-josh-fox-arrested-at-house-hearing/2012/02/01/gIQA2fKmiQ_blog.html
A year ago, Josh Fox was getting suited up for the Academy Awards. On Wednesday, he found himself in cuffs.

The Oscar-nominated activist-director of the documentary “Gasland”

was arrested on Capitol Hill for trying to film a hearing without proper

media credentials. Staffers say Fox declined an order by House Science,

Space and Technology subcommittee chairman Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) to turn off his camera.

“This was an act of civil disobedience, yes, done in an impromptu

fashion,” said Fox in an emailed statement later. “When I was led out of

the hearing room in handcuffs, John Boehner’s pledge of transparency in Congress was taken out with me.”

Fox’s “Gasland” chronicled the environmental impact of natural gas

drilling — he’s opposed to it — on small communities. The same topic was

at hand in Wednesday’s hearing.

</a><a name="pagebreak">Committee Republicans issued a statement to AP saying that Fox had

failed to get credentials from the House Radio and TV Gallery — but some

Democrats said they didn’t have a problem with him being there. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.)

told our colleague Aaron Leitko he motioned to allow Fox to keep

filming, “provided there was space and that it was not disruptive,” but

the measure was defeated. Harris’s office did not get back to us for

comment.</a>

The subcommittee’s proceedings are viewable on the Web, but Miller —

who said he hasn’t seen “Gasland” — understood why a filmmaker might

want his footage. “There’s more latitude to show who you want to show.”

Charged with unlawful entry, Fox has a hearing scheduled for Feb. 15.

Read also: <a target="blank" data-xslt="http" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/20/AR2010062003000.html">Gasland: One man’s journey into a natural gas crisis</a>, 6/21/10; <a target="blank" data-xslt="http" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/no-longer-rumpled-without-a-cause/2011/02/18/ABXNEpH_story.html">Mark Ruffalo promotes “Gasland” documentary</a>, 2/19/11==reuters<h1>'GasLand' Director Josh Fox Released After D.C. Arrest; Feb. 15 Court Date Set</h1>

"GasLand" director Josh Fox has been processed and released

following his arrest at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. Fox, who was

charged with unlawful entry for trying to film a House Science Committee

meeting on hydraulic fracturing -- aka "fracking" -- is due in court on

the matter Feb. 15.

Also read: "GasLand" Director Josh Fox Arrested During House Hearing

But just because Fox is a free man again, doesn't mean he's placated.

Fox issued a scathing statement from Washington, D.C., on Wednesday

following his release.

"I was arrested today for exercising my

First Amendment rights to freedom of the press on Capitol Hill," Fox

said in the statement. "I was not expecting to be arrested for

practicing journalism."

Fox, who's currently working on his sequel to the HBO documentary,

characterized his refusal to stop filming the hearing as "an act of

civil disobedience" and claimed the Constitutional high ground over the

legislators that had shut him out.

"It is my understanding that

public speech is allowed to be filmed. Congress should be no exception,"

Fox asserted. "No one on Capitol Hill should regard themselves exempt

from the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states

explicitly 'Congress shall make no law...that infringes on the Freedom

of the Press.' Which means that no subcommittee rule or regulation

should prohibit a respectful journalist or citizen from recording a

public hearing."

Fox and an ABC news crew had attempted to film a

hearing to explore the Environmental Protection Agency's investigation

into whether the gas and oil-extraction process of hydraulic processing

had contaminated the water supply in Pavillion, Wyoming. Fox's 2010,

Oscar-nominated documentary "GasLand" covered the topic extensively, as

will its sequel.

During Wednesday's incident, Rep. Brad Miller

(D-N.C.) pleaded to allow Fox and ABC to film the hearing. However,

according to Politico, Republicans on the committee tabled Miller's

motion.

Toward that end, Fox took a swipe at Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner in his statement.

"When I was led out of the hearing room in handcuffs, John Boehner's

pledge of transparency in congress was taken out with me," Fox said.

Asserting that hydraulic fragmenting is an environmentally damaging

practice, Fox predicted that lawmakers' efforts to keep the hearing

under wraps would ultimately prove futile.

"The truth that

fracking contaminates groundwater is out, and no amount of intimidation

tactics -- either outright challenges to science or the arrest of

journalists --will put the genie back in the bottle," Fox said. "Such a

brazen attempt to discredit and silence the EPA, the citizens of

Pavillion and documentary filmmaking will ultimately fail and it is an

affront to the health and integrity of Americans."   Related

Articles:  'GasLand' Director Josh Fox Arrested During House Hearing

Michael Moore Gets Giddy Over Occupy Wall Street: 'Finally!' (Exclusive)===democ
<div id="content-navigation">

    <font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="show-date">Thursday, February  2, 2012</span>

</div>

      <div id="top-video-content">

    <div id="story_wrapper">
      <h1 class="pageTitle" itemprop="name"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Gasland" Director Josh Fox <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Arrested at Congressional Hearing on Natural Gas Fracking</span></font></h1>

    </div>

</div>

<div id="story-summary" itemprop="description">The Academy

Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox was handcuffed and arrested Wednesday

as he attempted to film a congressional hearing on the controversial

natural gas drilling technique known as fracking, which the

Environmental Protection Agency recently reported caused water

contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. Fox directed the award-winning

film, "Gasland," which documents the impact of fracking on communities

across the United States, and is now working on a sequel. Fox says he

was arrested after Republicans refused to allow him to film because he

did not have the proper credentials. "We wanted to report on what

happened [at the hearing]. I was not interested in disrupting that

hearing. It was not a protest action," says Fox. "I was simply trying to

do my job as a journalist and go in there and show to the American

people what was transpiring in that hearing, so that down the line, as

we know there will be a lot of challenges mounted to that [Pavillion,

Wyoming] EPA report—and frankly, to the people

in Pavillion, who have been sticking up for themselves and demanding an

investigation into the groundwater contamination—and to make sure that

people could view that in a larger forum than usually happens."

[includes rush transcript]</div>

    
      <h2 class="section-header"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transcript</font></h2>
      <div id="story-rush-transcript">
        <p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
          This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
        </font></p>
      </div>
      <p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><span class="caps">JUAN</span> <span class="caps">GONZALEZ</span>:</strong>

The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox was handcuffed and

arrested Wednesday as he attempted to film a congressional hearing on

the controversial natural gas drilling technique known as fracking. Fox

directed the award-winning documentary Gasland and is now

working on a follow-up. Fox says he was arrested after Republicans

refused to allow him to film because he did not have the proper

credentials.

Video was posted online showing Fox being escorted out of the hearing

room in handcuffs. This is what the room sounded like at that moment.

You can hear lawmakers debate the arrest and Josh Fox exclaiming, quote,

"I’m within my First Amendment rights, and I’m being taken out." Listen

closely.

CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER 1: Do you want to leave your camera, sir? You’re under the same rules as the regular staff.

</blockquote>

JOSH FOX: I have said it several times, no.

</blockquote>

CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER 1: OK. Do your duty, Officer.

</blockquote>

CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER 2: All right. Sir, turn around and put your hands behind your back.

</blockquote>

UNIDENTIFIED: Oh, come on. Come on. Come on, Mr. Chairman.

</blockquote>

UNIDENTIFIED: What’s the decision? You’re arresting him?

</blockquote>

REP. BRAD MILLER:

Mr. Chairman, can we discuss this before the Capitol police take action

at your direction without debate in front of the committee, or the

subcommittee?

</blockquote>

JOSH FOX: This is a public hearing. I’m within my First Amendment rights, and I’m being taken out.

</blockquote>

REP. BRAD MILLER: No, I’d rather do it here.

</blockquote>

REP. ANDY HARRIS: The meeting is not—I haven’t [inaudible] the meeting.

</blockquote>

REP. BRAD MILLER:

Well, but before the meeting has begun and before the subcommittee has

had a chance to discuss the issue, this guy is being led away in

handcuffs. I’d like to move that he be allowed to film the—film this

meeting.

</blockquote>

REP. ANDY HARRIS: The motion [inaudible]. We’re not in the hearing.

</blockquote>

REP. BRAD MILLER: Well, then, can you gavel the hearing in, before this guy is—

</blockquote>

REP. ANDY HARRIS: That’s at my discretion.

</blockquote>

AMY GOODMAN:

Moments after director [Josh] Fox was arrested inside the hearing in

the House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology, the

subcommittee’s chair, Republican Congress Member Andy Harris of

Maryland, defended the decision to have the filmmaker removed.

REP. ANDY HARRIS:

Nine, the following shall apply to coverage of committee meetings or

hearings by audio-visual means. Subsection J is very clear. Personnel

providing coverage by the television and radio media shall be currently

accredited to the radio and television correspondents’ galleries, and

that personnel providing coverage by still photography shall be

currently accredited to the press photographers’ galleries. Obviously,

someone who records this hearing—records this hearing is to be

credentialed. I will remind the members of the audience and the ranking

member that on the House floor, you can’t even bring a cell phone into

the gallery. So we’re allow—we allow cell phones here, but we do draw

the line at what recording devices, when you use a recording device,

that you have to be credentialed.

</blockquote>

AMY GOODMAN:

Democrats on the committee attempted to postpone the hearing a week in

order to give Josh Fox time to acquire the proper credentials. Congress

Member Brad Miller of North Carolina is the top Democrat on the

subcommittee.

REP. BRAD MILLER:

Mr. Chairman, I move, in addition to the fellow who was just escorted

out, who I understand was not credentialed, although he’s, I understand,

filming an HBO documentary—an ABC

crew showed up earlier, and they were turned away on the stated reason

that they had not requested to film in advance. I think all those rules

are to control access where there’s limited access. It is very clear

that we have space in this room for either of them to testify—or to film

this hearing. If you claim that that rule does not provide—does not

allow them to film or, more accurately, allows you the discretion, the

majority, the power to turn them away, I move that the rules be

suspended to the end that the HBO—the fellow who wanted to film for HBO be allowed to film this hearing and that ABC

News be allowed to film this hearing, and all God’s children be allowed

to fill this hearing, until the room is too full to conduct our

business.

</blockquote>

JUAN GONZALEZ:

Wednesday’s hearing focused on a recent Environmental Protection Agency

draft report that linked contaminated water supplies in Wyoming to

chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. While a lobbyist from the

Western Energy Alliance testified at Wednesday’s hearing, no local

residents impacted by the water contamination were invited to speak.

AMY GOODMAN: Joining us now from Washington, D.C., is filmmaker Josh Fox. With us also via Democracy Now! video stream is John Fenton, who is a Wyoming farmer and chair of the Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens.

Josh, it’s good to have you out of jail.

Explain exactly why you were in that hearing yesterday and what

happened, as we listen to the debate between the Democrats and the

Republicans as you were being handcuffed by police and taken out of the

room.

JOSH FOX: Good morning, Amy and Juan. And certainly, hi to John Fenton. Nice to see you.

Well, basically, I was there to report on a

story that I’ve been following very closely for three-and-a-half years.

John and his fellow people from Pavillion, I’ve been documenting their

cases of water contamination for three years, and it’s featured in the

first film, Gasland. We continue to feature that in Gasland 2. So, this was a crucial hearing for us to tape, because what was going on there was a clear and brazen attack on the EPA

and on the meticulous three-and-a-half-year investigation that took

place in the small town of Pavillion, Wyoming, to expose a link between

fracking and groundwater contamination. And this is the first case in

which EPA has come out and said, at least in this last 10 years, that the likely cause of groundwater contamination was fracking.

And what was apparent to us was that this was

going to be an attack on science from within the science and technology

committee, that they had a panel that was stuffed with gas industry

lobbyists, that there was—this was actually a way of trying to dismantle

this EPA report. We wanted to be there to

show that that was what the agenda was. We wanted to report on what

happened. I was not interested in disrupting that hearing. It was not a

protest action. I was simply trying to do my job as a journalist and go

in there and show to the American people what was transpiring in that

hearing, so that down the line, as we know there will be a lot of

challenges mounted to that EPA report—and

frankly, to the people in Pavillion, who have been sticking up for

themselves and demanding an investigation into the groundwater

contamination—and to make sure that people could view that in a larger

forum than usually happens.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Josh, the attacks have come not only through this congressional investigation on the EPA

report, but also from local press in Wyoming, as well? Obviously, there

are huge implications nationwide for what the results of this study

show.

JOSH FOX: Well, virtually every Republican candidate right now is out for elimination of the EPA,

which shows the deep, deep influence of oil and gas on Congress and on

the Republican Party. So, what you’re seeing here happening is a war

between the federal agency, which is well funded and impartial, in a

certain sense, or more impartial, and the state regulatory agencies,

which, as we’ve investigated, and we will show quite thoroughly, I

think, in Gasland 2, have an enormous amount of influence and

pressure on them from oil and gas, to the point to which many, many

people think that they’re corrupt. So getting the EPA out of the way is one of these ways that you completely dismantle the regulatory system, and that’s why the EPA is the target here.

AMY GOODMAN:

I want to turn to President Obama’s recent comments about natural gas

drilling. This is what he said just last week in his State of the Union

address.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years.

And my administration will take every possible action to safely develop

this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs

by the end of the decade. And I’m requiring all companies that drill for

gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use, because America

will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our

citizens at risk. The development of natural gas will create jobs and

power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we

don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy. And by

the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years,

that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out

of shale rock, reminding us that government support is critical in

helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.

</blockquote>

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama in the State of the Union address. Josh Fox, director of Gasland?

JOSH FOX:

That was actually quite, I think, a very painful moment for a lot of

people who have been focusing on gas fracking for the last several

years. I think the President’s statements right there are wrong. I mean,

it’s very clear that we do not have a hundred years’ worth of natural

gas, and certainly not if we want to start using it in cars and trucks.

And it has been—it’s very, very unclear, in the science, whether or not

this fracking technique can be done safely. And in my research, it shows

itself to be inherently contaminating. And there is no proof to think

that we could be doing this gas extraction safely.

On the other hand, what the President did say

was that he was in support of the disclosure of the chemicals, which is

to say, the reversal of the exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act

that the gas industry was granted in 2005. They were made exempt from

the Safe Drinking Water Act, which stated that—in the 2005 energy bill,

allowing them to inject toxic chemicals and toxic material into the

ground without having to report that. So what he’s saying is, you can’t

get away with not reporting and not disclosing the chemicals that you’re

pumping into the ground. However, when we look at the industry’s own

reports, and it shows that 40 percent of their wells have integrity

issues—that is to say, the well casing that protects the groundwater

cracks in 40 percent of the cases over a short period of time, and in a

larger percentage over a longer period of time—this is basically

surrendering those areas to groundwater contamination, either in the

short term or in the long term.

So, I think that this is obviously an issue of

an enormous amount of importance. And there’s no way you can actually

just start galloping down this road of natural gas. What this means is a

further delay in our transition to a renewable energy economy. And when

you look at what Obama’s EPA is doing, they’re extremely aggressive. They have actually been very responsive. I mean, John could probably talk about that. EPA

just delivered water to people in the town of Dimock, which suffered a

similar kind of water contamination as happened in Pavillion. And they

have been stepping up to the plate. So this is why you’re seeing the

Republicans attacking EPA, which is the part of Obama’s policy which I agree with wholeheartedly.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Josh Fox with us, director Gasland, now making Gasland 2 for HBO, was arrested yesterday, handcuffed and taken out of a House hearing on the EPA

and fracking. When we come back, Josh will also be joined by John

Fenton, a Wyoming farmer. They’re now shipping in water for people to

drink and cook with in his area of Wyoming called Pavillion. Stay with

us.Before Gus Van Sant's latest film Promised Land even premiered, the energy industry was up in arms, gearing up to counter the film's apparent anti-fracking stance with a barrage of "community" responses (read: thinly veiled corporate PR). James Schamus, chief executive of Focus Features the distributor of the film, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443294904578042620641185816.html" target="_blank">expressed shock</a> about the attacks on Promised Land: "We've been surprised at the emergence of what looks like a concerted campaign targeting the film even before anyone's seen it." With blogs, astroturf websites, Facebook pages, internet ads, and theater ad buys in advance of the movie, the industry is working hard to spin the conversation in a more fracking-friendly direction.

The film chronicles the story of a gas industry salesman, played by Matt Damon, and his attempt to convince the residents of a rural Pennsylvania town to agree to fracking development. The questions raised by actors in the film mirror the debates taking place in communities across the country. What type of chemicals are used in fracking? What is the effect of fracking on air and water? While the industry may make a few struggling families rich, what is the cost for the community as a whole?

Conveniently, the fracking industry has launched a number of websites to answer these questions for you.

<h2>Energy in Depth Launches "Real Promised Land" Site</h2>

The fracking industry was caught unprepared by the brilliant, 2010 documentary Gaslands by Josh Fox, whose indelible images of tap water bursting into flames introduced fracking to the American public. Having learned their lesson, the industry was not eager to repeat its mistakes.

Before it was even released, Energy in Depth (EID) took issue with the new movie, which is not a hard-hitting documentary like Gaslands and has more romantic content than factual content. Through a new website titled <a href="http://realpromisedland.org/" target="blank">RealPromisedLand.org</a>, EID rolled out "real stories" from "real Americans" about their positive experiences with fracking. Videos from Ohio, Colorado, Texas, and Pennsylvania highlight seemingly ordinary citizens who have benefited from fracking development in their area. On their glossy <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Realpromisedland" target="blank">Facebook</a> page you can learn that: "the natural gas industry takes all the safety measures possible in order to protect the earth and water from any contamination" and other tall tales.

The website does not disclose that EID was launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America to serve as the PR mouthpiece for the gas industry. <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/%E2%80%9Cenergy-depth%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-reporters%E2%80%99-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks" target="_blank">As CMD has documented</a>, EID is funded by the likes of Shell, BP, Chevron, and XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. EID has also privately described itself, in a memo, as the "online resource center to combat new environmental regulations."

<h2>Industry Buys Ads for PA Movie Theaters</h2>

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, the drilling industry's biggest trade group in Pennsylvania, cut ads to run before the film aired in Pennsylvania theaters. The ads direct viewers to their website, <a href="http://www.learnaboutshale.org/" target="blank">learnaboutshale.org</a>, which seeks to dispel the "complete work of fiction" <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/01/04/168562019/drilling-for-facts-under-the-promised-land-fiction" target="blank">they call</a> Promised Land. Would-be viewers of the film are implored to engage in a "straightforward" and "honest" conversation on natural gas. Folks worried about fracking's impact on water will not be told what chemicals are used or how many <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-02/cabot-s-methodology-links-tainted-water-wells-to-gas-fracking.html" target="_blank">wells have been contaminated</a>, but they will be reassured that water sources will be just fine -- as long as the drillers follow all state and federal regulations.

<h2>"Propaganda Specialists" Fight Anti-fracking Narrative</h2>

"To be honest," <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/gas-industry-buys-ads-counter-matt-damons-promised/story?id=18132574" target="_blank">said Schamus</a> of Focus Films, "if I could afford the kind of propaganda specialists the fracking industry has sent after our little movie... They're pretty impressive at what they do."

Curiously, none of the countless websites and articles published against Promised Land have countered any of the movie's factual claims about hydraulic fracturing. The attacks against the film are more centered on the notion that the film's narrative is flawed, not that it presents false information.

Despite finding no factual errors in Promised Land, the gas industry will not take bad PR lying down. In response to Gasland, the industry produced a film called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTJaaeiuzSU" target="_blank">Truthland</a>. We can't wait to see what their next "blockbuster" will be, Broken Promises?

<hr />

Learn more about fracking battles taking place across the nation at Food and Water Watch's <a href="http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/fracking/fracking-action-center/" target="_blank">Fracking Action Center.</a>

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