On Sunday, 35,000 protestors marched on the Washington Mall urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, giving the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson ample space to hype the march. In the 20 paragraph expose, the Post fails to label the protestors as liberal once and does not include any quotes from supporters of the pipeline, instead choosing to hype their global warming hysteria.
Instead, the article is peppered with liberal quotes, while criticizing President Obama from the left:
Leaders of the rally said they wanted to press Obama to follow up on the strong rhetoric in his inaugural address about the need to slow climate change. The official posters at the rally borrowed Obama’s campaign slogan “forward.” The read: “Mr. President, Forward-on Climate.”
As the article continues, the author frets about what action President Obama might pursue to quell his liberal doubters:
But the rally had an edge of uncertainty about how hard Obama will push to take legislative or executive action.
Included in the article were quotes from the liberal environmental group the Sierra Club, without identifying them as liberal, as well as major Obama donor Tom Steyer, but failed to include a single pro-Keystone quote in the article. Instead, the Post quotes liberal Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) on his concern that Obama won’t satisfy his base:
If the president and Secretary Kerry choose to approve the pipeline and proceed, there will be a massive credibility gap between that and what he said in the inauguration, especially if this is the first deed out of the box. That will be a problem for him.
The Post clearly showed sympathy for the protestors, describing them as “braving the cold” and how many of the demonstrators were, “college students who had traveled for hours by bus to take part in the rally.”
As the story concluded, the author feels it important to mention the role the all but extinct Occupy Wall Street group had in the march:
They marched behind a long banner that read, “Occupy Wall Street, Stop Keystone.” Some dressed as grim reapers, including one carrying a paper scythe with the words “tar sands.”
On a side note, MRC’s Joe Schoffstall caught up with former Obama Green Czar Van Jones at the rally, who said that approving the XL pipeline would be like, “Lighting the fuse on a carbon bomb.”
