Fox News thinks it's “heartbreaking” that a “one-sided” pro-fracking film was rejected from a film festival in Minnesota, questioning the right to “freedom of speech.” But the screening was canceled simply because it did not live up to the festival's standards.

On January 23, Fox and Friends hosted Phelim McAleer, director of the pro-fracking film called FrackNation, to complain about the film's cancellation from the Frozen River Film Festival. Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck lamented that the cancellation “has to just be heartbreaking,” that Ireland-native McAleer came to America “to express [his] freedom of thought [and] expression.” In McAleer's eyes, the festival organizers “don't want the people of Minnesota to be exposed to an alternative point of view.” Co-host Steve Doocy ended the segment by asking, “Freedom of speech? You be the judge.”

Doocy has previously answered his own question, acknowledging that “a private company can do anything they want” and it's “not [a] free speech [issue].”

A chyron during the segment stated that “MCALEER REJECTED INDUSTRY FINANCING FOR FILM.” However, a review by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that “scores of energy industry associates” donated to the film's Kickstarter campaign, which was promoted by several pro-industry lobbying groups. What's more, McAleer and his co-director Ann McElhinney previously produced two anti-environment films openly funded by the fossil fuel industry. They are both listed as “experts” on the Heartland Institute's website, an organization infamous for climate change denial. It's no wonder that the San Francisco Chronicle previously dubbed McAleer “climate denial's Michael Moore” for his misleading film portraying global warming as "junk science."

The festival organizers cited the film's industry ties as one reason that they decided to cancel it, following in the footsteps of the Sundance Film Festival and Telluride's Mountian Film Festival (Frozen River's partner festival). 

While Fox News noted that the film was called “methodically researched” by the New York Times, other movie reviewers have panned it. A Los Angeles Times review called it a “one-sided attack piece” that “doesn't add much to the conversation.” The New York Daily News gave it a whopping one-star review, and wrote, “the accuracy of this crowd-sourced documentary -- funded by small donations on Kickstarter -- seems as reliable as a Wikipedia entry.”