Kelly Crummy spent 11 years essentially doing opposition research for the oil and energy industry, all while working as an investigative reporter for the Denver Post.
Crummy, who now works as a spokeswoman for two pro-fracking groups in Colorado, addressed a meeting of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission in May and offered suggestions on how to discredit those she previously worked with.
Crummy suggested that her listeners should comb the web for any evidence of potential “bias” that could be used to undermine a journalist’s reporting. “If you are really having a problem with a certain reporter or something, go do some oppo[sition] research on them,” she said. “Are they contributing to campaigns? Are they a member of, you know, a business group or environmental group?”
An attendee at the conference provided HuffingtonPost.com with a recording of Crummy’s remarks.
It’s not unusual for reporters to move over to the public relations industry, in fact it's a growing trend. What is unusual is for its practitioners to stalk reporters on the Internet, just in case there is bias.
Corporations have used “flacks” to spin public opinion their way for more than a century, noted Chuck Lewis, a professor and executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.
Former reporters have often participated in this practice, Lewis said. But he added, “There is nothing more dispiriting or disgusting to me than a former journalist working for a powerful corporation or other institution who has been hired to trash a reporter who is doing his or her job.”
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But it seems that part is what Crummy likes the most.
A year and a half earlier, Crummy bragged, she had found something she felt was incriminating on a reporter’s Facebook page, which she printed it out and took to the Denver Post’s editor-in-chief. She wanted attendees to feel similarly empowered.
“If I get a correction, I put it on Facebook, anywhere you can,” Crummy said. “That’s the beauty of social media. You can go out and do whatever you want.” She laughed.