MRC's Business & Media Institute has been tracking the MSM's slanted coverage of oil and gas. Here's a recent example. Hat tip to MRC's Ken Shepherd.
Even in its tease at the top of the show, GMA hinted that this might not be your typical gloom-'n-doom gas-price story: "Coming up, we have pain at the pump. Gas prices. With all this unrest in the Middle East and now new terror threats what will this do to the price of gas? You might think that prices automatically go up. But you may be surprised."
Later in the first half-hour, host Robin Roberts introduced Mellody Hobson, ABC's personal finance expert, with this question: "After a tumultuous week with a thwarted terror plot and BP'S partial shutdown of its Prudhoe oil field what can we expect in the immediate future?
Hobson: "Well, after six consecutive weeks of rising gas prices, I think we are actually going to see prices stabilize and steady themselves. There are two reasons for this. As you already mentioned, the cease-fire. This one is big. There was so much concern this crisis would spill over into other countries and really affect worldwide global oil supply. Additionally, after the thwarted [terrorist] attack, the prices fell. There was belief people would be traveling less. The wild card remains we are in the heart of hurricane season. Even though the national forecasters have said it won't be as severe as they expected, they are still expecting an above-average hurricane season."
Roberts: "You know about this over the weekend BP made a big announcement saying they will keep half of Prudhoe Bay open. . . What's the latest with BP? How's this crisis going to affect prices?"
Whereas the MSM normally only lets bad gas-price news seep out, Hobson gave a surprising reply: "The news is good, actually. After last week where we thought maybe 400,000 barrels of oil would be stopped, 8% of US production, BP came back over the weekend and said it is not as bad as we thought. It is not going to be the worst-case scenario. We will close the pipeline down but will be able to produce 200,000 barrels of oil. Right now they are at 150,000 and think they will get it up to 250,000. That's great news. After last week, prices spiked because there was a sense we would be having a crisis here in our own production."
Roberts: "All right. We have a couple of weeks summer left. We have the big weekend coming up, Labor Day weekend. Where do you see prices as we head toward that holiday weekend?"
Hobson: "Hopefully they will be stable and steady up until Labor day. After Labor Day [drum roll, please] they will decline a little bit. Because we usually use about 5% more oil during the hectic summer season."
Mellody certainly sang a refreshingly different MSM tune this morning!
