Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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That’s what millions of readers are asking after seeing a piece that asserted:
“The vast Marcellus and Utica shale formations are already paying off in thousands of wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, bringing great wealth to landowners and jobs throughout the region.”
Actually, the industry has created relatively few jobs in Pennsylvania and many of the jobs that it has created have gone to out-of-staters, providing little benefit to the people in the regions where fracking is taking place. News stories should not include unsourced assertions like this one in the AP piece. The article should have sourced the claim and made an effort to evaluate its accuracy if it came from someone with ties to the industry.