Correction (2/19/21): Media Matters credited one of the articles and an editorial to the San Antonio Express-News. In fact, these were unlabeled reprints from the Houston Chronicle.
While Fox News has been pushing the lie that renewable energy is the primary cause of the winter storm blackouts in Texas, local media outlets -- especially newspapers -- have done an excellent job of debunking these lies. This commitment to the facts shows how local media can act as a bulwark against right-wing misinformation, both during and beyond crises, to keep their communities safer and hold poor political leadership accountable.
The fact is that Texas’ power grid failed in the sub-freezing temperatures because Texas electricity regulators failed to require that the state’s electricity generating plants weatherize for severe cold -- leading instruments to freeze, natural gas pipelines to seize up, and other such problems that are preventing these plants from generating power. Wind energy actually overperformed expectations during the crisis. And the widespread blackouts amply demonstrate the need to upgrade infrastructure to prepare for the challenges of climate change, which is causing extreme and unpredictable weather events.
Right-wing misinformers such as Fox News have instead been lying to audiences that renewable energy is to blame. Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson claimed on February 15 that the Texas power outages are due to its “reckless reliance on windmills.” Multiple Fox News shows ran with Carlson’s lies the next day. On Hannity, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed the situation in his state “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America” and primarily blamed renewable energy. Over the course of approximately a day and a half, Fox News lied 128 times about the cause of the Texas blackouts.
But many local media outlets in Texas are debunking this right-wing misinformation: