Dear Soledad: Appalachians Respond to CNN’s Blair Mountain Special on Mountaintop Removal
In a move that has bewildered many affected residents in central Appalachia, O’Brien and her producers decided to tell the story of Blair Mountain and mountaintop removal, an admittedly criminal mining practice that provides less than 5 percent of our national coal production, stripped jobs and gutted the miners’ unions, and left the central Appalachian communities in entrenched poverty and illness, through the eyes and experiences of seemingly embattled strip miners who are afraid of losing their jobs.
Many Appalachian viewers have asked: What about the already displaced coal mining communities afraid of losing their lives?
The article goes on to quote reactions from people in West Virginia communities impacted by mountaintop removal.
Using the Blair Mountain march as metaphor, CNN has done a grave disservice to the actual crisis, the real and ongoing human rights disaster that exists in Appalachia. The choice in Appalachia is NOT, as CNN suggests, between “jobs” and “environmentalists,” but between Life, itself and the grim death that is the handmaiden of the eternal profit-seekers who destroy our homes, our communities, our heritage and our very lives. I’m no “environmentalist.” I’m a human rights advocate who opposes the mountaintop removal industry’s callous disregard for the value of my family’s, friends, neighbors’ and colleagues’ very lives. I’m a student of history who understands that the people of this state have a constitutional right to the quiet enjoyment of their property that is actually greater than a mountaintop removal company’s right to make a profit.
There are many more excellent quotes in Biggers' article. Most of those quoted bring up coal industry advertising on CNN and the network's history of biased reporting on coal.
The story posted at CNN is headlined: "Steady job or healthy environment: What would you choose?"
This is deceptive in several ways. First, mountaintop removal employs fewer miners than less destructive mining methods. Mine companies do it because they can cut costs by hiring fewer people. Also the wind industry already employes more people than coal. Blowing up mountains destroys the potential for other economic activity like building wind turbines or creating a tourism industry.
In this case, protecting the environment would create MORE jobs, not less. The "jobs v environment" framing by CNN is outdated propaganda that's usually pushed by polluting industries. And anyone familiar with the coal mining industry knows that calling it a "steady" job is a bit of a stretch.
This is part of a pattern at CNN. Nothing makes media bias more obvious than knowing the reality behind their reporting on the coal industry. It's as true at CNN as it is for several coal friendly newspapers in downstate Illinois.