Fracking critics gain leverage with social media mastery Why PR matters in the war over shale gas

Richard Levick, an influential public relations advisor, wrote a piece for Forbes last week about how the Oil and Gas industry’s PR machine is losing the battle for hearts and minds of mainstream America “despite industry advertising budgets that dwarf the activist war chest.” Why? In Levick’s view, it’s all about anti-fracking activists’ mastery of social media to galvanize and amplify grass roots movements. Or in his words:

Social media outreach, online content development, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) are all dominated by activist voices. As a result, they are not only rallying significant grassroots opposition; they are doing it in ways that neutralize any advantage that industry money once provided.

Anti-fracking campaigns, both at institutional levels and from the ground up, were quick to catch the crest of the social media wave that has largely displaced community newspapers and town halls as popular incubators and catalysts for free speech, political action, and self-governance. Levick uses an empirical analysis, including a count of tweets about fracking over a given period, to illustrate how “the most influential conversation around this topic is highly negative.” He laments that the industry supporters do little or nothing to engage this on-line discussion, and urges them to get in the program.

Activists understand that the marketplace of ideas has evolved – and they are evolving – and leading — right along with it. If fracking is to become an accepted practice in the U.S., the energy industry must do so as well.

I found Levick’s points relevant enough to merit posting on my own Facebook Page, with this comment: “PR & the fracking war. Big Oil & Gas $ versus anti-fracking organization. Media expert Richard Levick explains natgas industry’s failure in Forbes.”

A reader, perhaps interpreting my post as an endorsement of Levick’s industry coaching, responded that the article was misguided, as the anti-fracking battle transcends a PR contest. She left this query. “He thinks it just comes down to a pr battle. What do you think?” Fair question, and one that – given it was posted on facebook and I am now responding on Blogger -- illustrates the influence of the new media that Levick writes about.

So here’s my answer: As a journalist, I’m always interested in how a message is conveyed, the degree to which it piques public interest, people’s perceptions, and what influences them. I welcome analysis from informed observers, and in this regard I think Levick’s piece rings true… mostly. The industry has done a lousy job from the start explaining itself with a patronizing “Trust-Us-It’s-Safe” message. This assessment is not just from Levkick, but is shared by notable industry supporters as well as skeptics, and it applies to both the industry’s traditional advertising campaigns in print and broadcast, as well as its social media efforts. Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania-governor-turned-public-relations-figurehead for the industry, told an Associated Press reporter that the industry had to do a better job conveying a positive public image and “they know they have some work to do.” That was in 2010.

Last week, Sarah Murphy wrote an article for Motley Fool, the popular investor guide, titled “Fracking is Losing the PR battle.” She cited a recent report called Disclosing the Facts: Transparency and Risk in Hydraulic Fracturing Operations,  released last week. The report assesses investors’ needs for risk disclosure and mitigation against company practices and found “a systematic, industry-wide failure to adequately disclose fracking-related information that is material to investors.” Murphy explains what this means in her view:

The thing is, fracking may really not be as awful as the campaigns make it appear, but the industry is going to have to rethink its strategy or risk condemnation in the court of public opinion… 

Seriously, these guys have got to step up their game if they want to survive. At last week's SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing, I talked with countless fund managers, investors, financial advisors, and academics, all of whom agreed that while fracking is controversial from a sustainability perspective, the industry's ham-fisted approach to public engagement has been so feeble as to be pathetic.

In this day and age, much of that engagement is on line. And, as Levick points out, it’s a place where the industry is out of its element of old-fashioned Madison Avenue advertising strategies aimed at conventional media.

While industry money went into advertising and traditional “outreach” campaigns that net diminishing returns in the digital age of public affairs…  activists stretched every dollar with online efforts that prove far more effective.

The trend is also important in politics. Levick links to another assessment that recaps the advantage Obama had over Romney by understanding and applying the power of Social Media in an “era where familiarity, credibility, and the ability to forge personal connections trump traditional advertising at every turn.”

The accounts of Levick, Murphy, and Ridge are but a few assessments of how the industry has failed with the traditional media with patronizing and heavy handed messaging, and failed with the new media with its inability to engage savvy and influential audiences on line. But there is a critical third frontier that they don’t address: Big-money politics.

Popular opinion is only one gauge of a campaign’s success. The other is special interest – the megaphone through which public opinion is conveyed to Washington. The size of the megaphone is related to lobbying wherewithal of a given interest, and the lobbying wherewithal is largely a function of the money behind it. Here the industry is winning, at least in Washington. The Obama administration has identified shale gas development as a “priority” in meeting the nation’s future energy needs. That may be related to lobbying, or not. But certainly lobbying has everything to do with the policy framework that heavily favors the industry over others.  Specifically, Obama’s administration and Congress have preserved drilling and fracking industry exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste disposal laws – passes that allow industry to operate with one foot in the pre-regulatory era. Without these exemptions, the industry would have to reveal what hazardous substances that it puts into the ground, and characterize the waste that comes out – revelations that would open the door to a host of other laws, and cast fracking in an altogether different public light.

The lobbying battle at regional and local levels is not going as well for the industry, or conversely, is going much better for the activists. New York state remains off limits to the industry pending a moratorium now in its sixth year. And this month local municipalities in California and Colorado have advanced the Home Rule movement -- which settles drilling issues with local town boards and referendums -- that is gaining traction in New York and Pennsylvania. As Levick notes about the recent vote in Colorado: Boulder, Fort Collins and Lafayette overwhelmingly voted for drilling bans. The industry had only one victory in Broomfield, an area that traditionally trends Republican, where voters rejected the environmentalist agenda by the slimmest of margins.

In the long run, operators and investors continue to push forward with shale gas development that has flooded the market with cheap natural gas. The industry’s success or failure over the longer term hinges on its ability to address issues of sustainability -- not just ecologically, but economically and politically -- in the Market Place of Ideas, where voters and investors judge the good from the bad.

Reporting of shale gas story influenced by Internet trends PR, advocacy, fill niche as journalistic void grows

This post considers the latest news about methane migration in Pennsylvania. But to tell that story, I first have to tell another story.

In 2010, the number of public relations specialists in the U.S. had risen to an all time high of 320,000. By contrast, the number of reporters had fallen to a low of 58,500. The fantastic trajectory of the PR business will hold strong at least through 2020 with a 21 percent growth curve, according to Statistics at the Department of Labor. Over the next decade, the number of new PR jobs alone will exceed the payroll of the entire news industry.

For professional reporters and those who value their vocational contributions to society, it’s only going to get worse. The reporting payroll is projected to decline by another 6 percent by 2020. That means the public will be receiving more information billed as news that has been shaped, spun, or fabricated by professionals working within the narrow parameters of particular corporate interests. This growing rubric of the Fourth Estate will use the traditional tools – press releases and phone calls -- to leverage stories into news outlets. It also has at its disposal Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter – powerful tools to bypass the working press altogether.

At the same time free content on the Internet has eroded the number of staff writers and newscasters and lent traction to corporate interests, it has given rise to a volunteer corps of citizen journalists, muckrakers, and filmmakers. Josh Fox and Michael Moore have become role models for a new breed of advocacy journalists who, once merely consumers in the Market Place of Ideas, now have new access as vendors via social networks. By way of example, I have written about Vera Scroggins, an amateur videographer who lugs equipment over hill and dale, into town and country, recording municipal meetings, toxic spills, and interviews with residents. She filmed operations of shale gas operators that were beyond the wherewithal of the sparse professional reporting staff in rural northern Pennsylvania, and posted footage on the Internet, providing a repository of information otherwise unavailable. Participation of people like Vera is a good thing. It’s empowered the populous by giving everybody a voice -- access to the public stump in the square, and the ability to share information.

But it comes with a cost. The indy and PR news sources that thrive on the Internet are a welcome boon to free speech, but they also tend to undermine the traditional free press, which is unable to generate on-line revenue sources needed to sustain professional reporting. Beyond that economic consideration, there is the matter of content: Independent news largely comes unfiltered for noise, bias, and confusion. When newspaper reporters get a fact wrong, large or small, they are called on it. If necessary, corrections are issued, and their frequency is considered in a reporter’s annual performance evaluation. Additionally, reporters’ work has to pass muster with a staff of editors. These editors undoubtedly have varying political views, but they are all professionally committed to serving the expectations of a diverse readership. Editorial staff is separate from the news staff, both in the physical segregation of office space and in clearly defined roles.

As the public turns to free content on the Internet at the expense of paid content by professional reporters, the type of credibility and checks and balances that professional journalists have traditionally brought to the public are disappearing. The depth of reporting, and the newspaper’s traditional role as advocate for open government and transparency in matters of public interest are also suffering with the decline of revenue available for investigative journalism. It’s not just about the revenue, it’s about the source of revenue – from an independent readership and viewers – that makes the press such an effective watchdog.

Now for the other part of this story.

The gas industry claims that drilling is not a public health threat, and that fracking fluid is harmless. In support of these claims it cites lack of evidence tying operations to pollution and illness. What’s missing is full disclosure. The industry operates on private property without the level of regulatory oversight that other industries face. (It is exempt from both federal Safe Drinking Water Act and  hazardous waste laws that require disclosure of what goes into and what comes out of the ground.) When something goes wrong, it is often a matter between the company and the homeowner to resolve. When legal pressure necessitates, the industry can make the problem go away with settlements that contain non-disclosure clauses.

A recent example came to light with a personal injury claim against Range Resources and other operators by a family in Mt. Pleasant Township, Pa. Range Resources agreed to pay the Hallowich family $750,000 to settle a lawsuit for personal injury damages related to operations near their home. The case was settled by the parties in 2011, no official complaint was filed, and the records were sealed.  

We only know this because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Washington Observer-Reporter filed and won a suit to get the records unsealed. The unsealed documents also revealed that the PA Department of Environmental Protection did not maintain records of an investigation into a complaint about water contamination at a neighboring property, and that the investigator, Mark Kiel, soon left the agency to work for the gas drilling company he had been investigating. For every case that gets unsealed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of cases sealed in documents that are never opened because their public relevance goes unchallenged, and that’s largely because mainstream media outlets have fewer resources to do that then they did in the golden age of investigative journalism.

Meanwhile, both the DEP and gas companies are able to keep matters of public interest unfolding in Susquehanna County from full public view. Last week, the DEP issued a brief statement that exonerated gas company WPX of causing methane pollution in three wells in the Township of Franklin Forks. Yet the agency is not releasing any results related to the investigation or to its conclusions. It is known that the Franklin Forks area and the nearby Salt Springs State Park contain rich methane reservoirs in both deep and shallow formations (hence the attractiveness of the area to petroleum operators). Although the DEP released its conclusions that the gas affecting the water wells was not from nearby gas wells or production zones being tapped by WPX, it did not explain the source or course of pollution at concentrations five times greater than the threshold for explosion risks.

It’s been a high-visibility case dominated by interest groups. Yoko Ono and other celebrities supporting anti-fracking groups visited the site in January to press their case against allowing fracking in neighboring New York state. On the other side of the fence, the industry group Energy In Depth issued a press release titled “DEP Debunks Methane Claims in Franklin Township,” which seized on the conclusion of the DEP investigation as proof that the industry is being vilified. Meanwhile, the landowner of one of the affected wells – the Manning family – is suing WPX for the pollution. Given the trend, it would be unsurprising if this gets settled behind closed doors.

Franklin Forks may have been less of a story if not for events that have unfolded in Dimock Township, about a dozen miles to the south. More than four years after the explosion of a residential water well called attention to the problem, the DEP is still investigating recurring water pollution problems in the middle of a gas field being developed by Cabot Oil & Gas. Wells providing water to several dozen homes have been taken off line or fitted with filtration equipment to remove gas and other pollution since the water well of Norma Fiorentino exploded on New Year’s Day, 2009. Under the Rendell administration, the DEP cited Cabot for various violations related to the problems.

Now Governor Tom Corbett’s DEP is investigating cases involving two homes in an area where the agency has banned drilling of new wells in the wake of chronic water problems. Recent tests showed dangerous levels of methane flowing into residential water wells near the junction of Carter Road and State Route 3023. Yet the problem, in the eyes of the DEP, remains elusive.  “We are slowly getting some test results back,” DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said. “However  - as per our attorney, DEP does not share test results from private water wells with anyone but the private well owner.”

To be clear, the agency has a policy of releasing incomplete data to homeowners, a policy that has produced much criticism but little action. Officials justify the long-standing practice of excluding some fields as a sound method to filter noise from relevant data. Critics argue that the agency cherry picks the data, and the unreleased fields might be useful indicators of drilling contamination and other problems. Moreover, homeowners have a right to all results of water quality tests that can flag health risks.

The fight over the cause and consequences of methane seeping into private water wells in Susquehanna County is one example of an issue that could stand a little more legal leverage from professional news outlets. While some outlets, including the Scranton Times-Tribune, do what they can with declining resources to report the story, readers would be well served by a legal challenge to the DEP’s refusal to release ground water analysis paid for by tax-payer money concerning matters of overwhelming public interest. News outlets, of course, have to choose their battles and they have less discretion than ever as their revenues fall. In the meantime, we do our best with half-page press releases issued by regulatory agencies, rhetoric from talking heads for or against fracking, or hyperbolic “I told you so” by PR firms and activists representing stakeholders.  

More on Pulitzer’s legacy in context of fracking debate --- Are core media values changing with tools, expectations?

 Anti-fracking protesters crowd the Albany Capitol.
PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI 

Last week I wrote about the role and influence of the media in the anti-fracking debate during a time when the tools and form of reporting are evolving almost as fast as the fracking story.

In response, anti-fracking activist Michael LeBron raised some good points, which give me another chance to circle back to one of my favorite subjects – the function of media. In my July 7 post, Does Gasland controversy reflect reporting in the 21st Century, I cited this quote by Joseph Pulitzer as the embodiment of values once embraced by traditional daily newspapers:

Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

I then questioned whether these ideals are falling from favor amid reporting generated by citizen journalist often aligned with or motivated by specific causes, or politically canted coverage from outlets like Fox News. (And I will here add MSNBC.)

Lebron is a New York City resident, artist, and board member of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability who has been an anti-fracking activist since the early days of the dispute, when water wells began going bad in Dimock, Pa. in 2009. This is what he had to say:

Tom, I'm not sure what you are saying. From the quote you selected, it sounds to me like Joe Pulitzer was an advocate for advocacy journalism!

If it could only be said that truth resides in objectively measurable phenomena and with a public that has the patience to take the time needed to observe them. This begs the question as to whether or not - in the absence of having all the relevant phenomena that is observable at the ready (indeed, who decides what is relevant?) - it is possible to observe in a way that is lacking in subjective bias and that will lead to "the truth". But isn't good science more about asking the right questions, questions that lead to ... not answers, but better answers? Ask Tony Ingraffea. [the Cornell University engineering professor and industry consultant now opposed to fracking.]

Having said that, in a society where great concentrations of wealth hang on selected definitions of "truth" and use all the tools at its disposal to aggressively frame them, "better answers" be damned if they depress 3rd quarter results, "advocates" * must provide a counterbalance by seizing the tools of journalism that have been democratized to such a great degree by the advent of the digitization era. In this age, mankind's survival may depend on it.

* and btw, aren't FOX, MSNBC, etc advocates? Why are the Michael Moores and Josh Foxes always the ones to be characterized as advocates? It is sort of like the distinction between "collateral damage" which is what the United States does, and "terrorism" which is what the folks without the drones and smart bombs do, but I digress.

Some of us think that ALL journalists are advocates. What is called "good" or "old fashioned" journalism is simply a journalism that is skilled at masking - or simply oblivious to - its own subjectivism, and that advocacy journalism is much more honest and ethical because it accepts its inevitable subjectivity.

My response to Michael:

You raise some great points. My quote of Pulitzer reflects a broad ideological baseline once paraphrased in newsroom as “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” This was the starting point for mainstream newspapers aimed at working class readers, and yes, there is no doubt that it’s a liberal one. I feel need to apologize for that. The media has always been a critical watchdog of power and an agent of reform in truly free countries. Somewhere along the line, I’m going to say during the Rush Limbaugh/Karl Rove/ Fox News era, big institutions saw they could effectively attack this liberal line and present it as bias, rather than as a natural watchdog function necessary for a government “of the people.”

 Pulitzer and his newspaper

Getting back to Pulitzer as an activist. Yes, he was an activist along very broad lines -- the popular press being a just equalizer for the commoner, a counterweight to the influence of wealth and power that became dangerously centralized during the Gilded Age. Pulitzer’s career spanned a time when newspapers served the working class in pre-union days of unparalleled accumulation of wealth and exploitation. But I don’t see that Pulitzer was advocating that reporters be married to any particular cause. On the contrary, he was urging them to be “drastically independent.” Everybody has his or her own interpretation and comfort level with this. I personally feel I operate better allowing myself a bit of distance between both sources and story, and my training and disposition lend themselves to this approach. I admit judging this tends to be a fine line for reporters who are diving headlong into personal and compelling story lines. While examining and critiquing the very important work of Josh Fox, I will always be open to views from people who disagree, and also to the possibility that my own views are not infallible. This is just my frame of reference, and it doesn’t diminish what Fox or Michael Moore (or any of their followers) have done.

Having worked at mainstream newspapers for decades, I can safely say that being both open minded and critical were points of pride and value in the newsroom, and that those (not on the Op Ed desk) who held strong views were very aware when their own thinking might be encroaching on a story. The newsroom culture was also marked by free thinkers from diverse backgrounds with broad knowledge of the communities and beats that they covered, and a way of connecting with their readers’ interests. Yes, there is plenty of what Fox criticizes as “he-said-she-said” journalism (often made necessary by keeping up with the most relevant and provocative issues of public interest on relentless deadlines), but I will argue there is a place for that along side of the investigations.

Times are changing, and I am not a person who fears change and who is looking at the good old days through the rosy mist of nostalgia. The new degree of freedom, power, and immediacy the Internet brings to challenge, express, and explore views is a good thing. I hope that the good things that traditional institutional reporting brings – resources, experience, talent, reach, and competiveness -- can coexist with the decentralized and very able voices of citizen journalists. If they can, I believe we are heading into another golden age of reporting.