My letter published in the Sept. 4 edition of the Aspen Daily News
Please forgive my conceit for reposting it here.
(http://www.aspendailynews.com/)
Fact-checking the press
...Editor:
I am a recently arrived first-time guest in your neck-of-the-woods. Wow. I‘d go on about the natural beauty of this place but of course, you already know.
I have also been favorably impressed with your newspaper, however I do have a bone to pick regarding a story you ran, hence this note.
In your Aug. 24 edition you ran an Associated Press story by Julie Pace and Matthew Daly titled “Romney economic plan calls for increased offshore drilling.” In it the authors wrote: “Romney’s plan focuses heavily on boosting domestic oil production, including approving the Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Canada to U.S. refineries in Texas.”
The company that wants to build this pipeline clear across the U.S. is called TransCanada. There is a hint in its name as to the national origin of the company. I wondered how the authors concluded that a Canadian company moving oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to Texas for refining and likely export qualifies as “domestic production.” Perhaps Canada became a state and nobody told me.
The answer may have come in your Aug. 29 edition in which you ran another AP story that summarized the just-adopted GOP platform (”GOP OKs platform barring abortions and gay marriage”). It read in part, “The party [GOP] is committed to domestic energy independence … and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.”
I don’t think you have to be too cynical to conclude that Pace and Daly were a bit careless when they pulled their story from a Romney or GOP press release. As editor, you should have caught their error when you ran the story.
Now a real cynic might wonder how much money a foreign company has to lavish on U.S. policy makers before their construction project gets such prominent billing in a national political convention.