PBS Uses Slow News Day to Cover Keystone XL Pipeline

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The PBS NewsHour used the slow news cycle of the Columbus Day holiday today to cover the Keystone XL pipeline issue:

A Canadian company wants to build a $13 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline to carry crude oil from the so-called tar sands region in Alberta through six states and a major aquifer to Texas for refining. Correspondent Tom Bearden reports from Nebraska on the high-stakes environmental and economic battle over the Keystone XL project.

PBS, which seems to be increasingly outsourcing its news gathering operations, presented a comment by one "JASON BERRINGER, Laborers International Union Local 1140", who said:

I worked with TransCanada before on another pipeline. And I have never had a company like them that took care of environmental issues like they have. They really care about the environment.

This would be the same Jason Berringer who was spotted in a paid pro-pipeline ad on a commercial cable news network within an hour or so of the PBS broadcast.

Speaking of outsourcing, there was no mention of the glaring conflict of interest represented by the State Dept. outsourcing the environmental review to a company with close ties to Keystone:

A few days into the demonstrations, the State Department released the final environmental impact statement on the project, a study three years in the making. It says the pipeline would carry a blend of synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen and poses no significant impact to the environment.

In a classic example of false equivalence, the feckless reporter concludes, "Both sides accuse each other of playing fast and loose with the truth."