The January 18 edition of America Reports used a different number in its initial reporting, as correspondent Hillary Vaughn called the cancellation “a gut punch to the U.S. energy industry and also the estimated 20,000 jobs along with it.” This number appears to come from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as the same number is also mentioned in a recent blog by Heartland Institute director and Fox regular Steve Milloy, which links to a now-defunct page from the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute website. The site also used the larger State Department estimate to misleadingly claim that “the proposed project would have provided approximately 42,100 badly needed manufacturing and construction jobs” but provides no explanation or source of the 20,000 jobs figure.
The bottom line is that Fox, unable to even accurately report inaccurate numbers, is misleading its viewers on what the Keystone XL pipeline would mean for American workers -- and not for the first time.
In late January 2012, a poll was released about how the media’s coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline had shaped public opinion. It showed that 78% of those surveyed said the pipeline would create “a significant amount of jobs.” A Media Matters study at the time underscored the role major media outlets had played in skewing the public’s perception of the project, finding that the media largely favored GOP talking points in their coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline. The vast majority gave a greater amount of airtime to proponents of the pipeline than to critics and portrayed the project as a “job creator,” often repeating discredited jobs estimates in the process. And we found that “Fox News uncritically repeated these numbers more than all the other television networks combined.”
In the years leading up to the Obama administration's initial denial of the permit in 2015, Fox News repeatedly pushed misleading claims about the amount of employment Keystone XL would create, crediting the project with up to 1 million new jobs. The network's reaction this time is more of the same, but now it’s playing out against an energy and climate landscape that looks very different.
Fox’s disingenuous outrage over the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline ignores economic reality while dismissing environmental justice and climate considerations
To be clear, the loss of any amount of jobs is not something to be flippant about -- it is unfortunate that cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline means the loss of temporary construction jobs in Montana and South Dakota.
However, Fox’s coverage is not brokering an honest discussion about jobs in the energy industry. Aside from deliberately inflating the number of would-be jobs from Keystone XL pipeline to bludgeon the newly inaugurated Biden administration, the network is mum about both the overall decline of the oil and gas industry on one hand and the growth of the renewable energy sector — which is essential to Biden’s plan to help decarbonize the U.S. economy — on the other.
Over 250 oil and gas companies have gone bankrupt in the U.S. since 2015, and the industry’s stock sector is the worst-performing on the Standard & Poor ratings over the last decade. In August 2020, Exxon Mobil was dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it had been ranked for 92 years. At the time, a Politico energy reporter quipped, “So when do we stop calling it Big Oil?”
And despite massive subsidies and weakened regulations under the Trump administration, the industry has not rebounded and continues to hemorrhage jobs: Over 100,000 jobs were lost in 2020. Meanwhile, clean energy is the fastest-growing industry in America, and clean energy jobs pay well above the national average, provide good benefits, and can’t be outsourced to other countries. Moreover, a study by progressive think tank Data for Progress found that investing in bold climate and clean energy policies would likely create over 10 million more high-quality jobs over 10 years.
Biden’s action to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline did have some immediate impact on energy sector workers, but his administration is also planning a huge investment in clean energy jobs and is proposing a plan to assist communities and workers dependent on polluting industries that are in rapid decline. But none of this made it into Fox’s coverage of the pipeline cancellation.
Moreover, Fox failed to characterize the breadth of environmental threats and environmental justice issues from the project, including threats to drinking water sources of indigenous communities whose land the pipeline would intersect. In response to the cancellation of the pipeline, Angeline Cheek, a member of the Fort Peck tribes in Montana, remarked:
