Journalism & Media

Texan Steve Lipsky can set his well-water on fire. A major U.S. fracking company, Range Resources, has taken him to court for telling the news media about it.

"Billy Talen to stand trial for preaching on bank's environmental record accompanied by choir members wearing toad hats"

"Swing state voters in Virginia and Ohio last fall were bombarded with television advertisements encouraging them to 'stand with coal' and 'vote no on Obama's failing energy policy.' But the sponsor of these ads — a pro-business nonprofit advocacy group called the American Energy Alliance — says the messages weren’t designed to aid Republican Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama."

After New York Times editors dismantled the paper's environmental desk and killed its Green blog this year, they said they were doing it to improve environmental coverage. But the Times' Public Editor says the results don't live up to Times editors' claims.

"Most Americans have heard little or nothing of the oil and gas production process called hydraulic fracturing, and many don’t know if they support or oppose it, according to a new paper by researchers from Oregon State, George Mason and Yale universities."

"Nature and man together cooked up the disaster in the Philippines. Geography, meteorology, poverty, shoddy construction, a booming population, and, to a much lesser degree, climate change combine to make the Philippines the nation most vulnerable to killer typhoons, according to several scientific studies."