Fracknation
FrackNation is a pro-fracking documentary made by directors Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda. Touted as 'a journalist's search for the fracking truth', it claims to address 'misinformation' about the process of hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking.
Contents
Background
McAleer and McElhinney say they are independent journalists working independently of corporate funding. The San Francisco Chronicle describes McAleer as 'climate denial's Michael Moore'. The climate change-denying Heartland Institute lists both McAleer and McElhinney as 'experts'.[1]
Their past films include Not Evil Just Wrong, which challenges Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth by suggesting that the evidence of global warming is inconclusive and that the impact global-warming legislation will have on industry is much more harmful to humans than beneficial.
Another film, Mine Your Own Business(2006), focusing on protests against a proposed large-scale open-pit goldmine project in Romania, was billed as 'the world's first anti-environmentalist documentary'. Gabriel Resources the Canadian mining company behind the project, partly financed the filmakers, who also travelled to Madagascar and Chile, where international environmental groups oppose planned mining operations. The New York Times reported that the film 'portrays environmentalists as condescending elitists while impoverished locals insist they would welcome the jobs and development the mines would bring'. [2]
Fracknation funding
To raise money, the filmmakers launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Within a month they had achieved $150,000; over $22,000 in the first two days alone. Questions were raised over the independence of some those who donated money: they reportedly included 'the director of an Ohio-based oil and gas outreach program and the head of external affairs at Cabot Oil and Gas, the company that's fought accusations of water contamination in Dimock, Pa., for the past several years'.
Articles
Following high profile anti-fracking protests against Cuadrilla Resources proposed drilling in Balcombe in the UK, Fracknation's director Phelim McAleer penned an article, 'Ten big fat lies about fracking' for spiked. [3]
Affiliations
- Market Aces LLC runs Fracknation's email list
- Gabriel Resources
- Moving Picture Institute - McAleer received a fellowship [2]
- Donors Trust / Donors Capital - partially funded Fracknation filmakers' first two films [4]
Website and social media
- http://fracknation.com/
- Twitter: @FrackNation
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phelim.mcaleer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FrackNation
Resources
- Steve Horn, Exposed: "FrackNation" Deploys Tobacco Playbook in Response to "Gasland 2", Desmogblog.com, 3 June 2013
- Steve Horn, "FrackNation" Part Two: The Koch Industries Ties That Bind, Desmogblog.com, 4 June 2013
Notes
- ↑ Steve Horn, Exposed: "FrackNation" Deploys Tobacco Playbook in Response to "Gasland 2", Desmogblog.com, 3 June 2013
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 JOHN STRAUSBAUGH, A Maverick Mogul, Proudly Politically Incorrect, New York Times, 19 August 2007
- ↑ [http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/ten_big_fat_lies_about_fracking/13944#.UhkVP2Q6URg Ten big fat lies about fracking, Spiked, 22 August 2013, acc 25 August 2013
- ↑ Steve Horn, "FrackNation" Part Two: The Koch Industries Ties That Bind, Desmogblog.com, 4 June 2013
