Since USA Today's January 7 disclosure that the Bush administration paid conservative pundit Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy, Tribune Media Services has dropped Williams's weekly column and African American television network TV One has stopped broadcasting his show On Point, pending an investigation. But in the fallout over the disclosure, Sinclair Broadcast Group has yet to publicly comment on whether they will continue to air Williams's television show The Right Side. Sinclair owns 51 of the 91 stations that broadcast The Right Side, according to Williams's website.

In addition, a January 28, 2004, article about Sinclair, published on right-wing website NewsMax.com, referred to Williams as a "News Central commentator" (News Central is Sinclair's Maryland-based news center, which provides Sinclair stations with national and international news coverage, as well as commentary). His biography as a 2005 honoree of BellSouth South Carolina African American History Online describes him as a "regular contributor" to Sinclair.

During the December 14, 2004, edition of "The Point" -- Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman's televised conservative commentary segment, aired daily on all Sinclair stations -- Hyman cited Williams as a source for his smear on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as Media Matters for America has noted. (Media Matters has launched a campaign to spur action against Sinclair's misuse of public airwaves to air one-sided, politically charged programming without a counterpoint.)

In a May 3, 2004, column, Williams praised Sinclair's controversial April 2004 decision to forbid its ABC affiliate stations to broadcast an edition of ABC's Nightline that showed the names and photographs of the 700 American soldiers who had died in Iraq up to that point. Williams described himself in the column as "a paid on-air analyst with Sinclair."

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Kimberly A. Strassel, a senior editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal, falsely claimed that "most of the estimates" indicate that allowing oil production in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) "could be really significant" and "could replace most of the oil we get from Saudi Arabia in 20 or 30 years." But a U.S. Department of Energy study, conducted by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to assess the potential impact of oil production in ANWR, concludes otherwise: By 2025, the United States would import an estimated 66 percent of its oil if ANWR production were permitted, compared with an estimated 70 percent if production were not allowed.

Further, according to EIA estimates, the United States presently imports about 58 percent of the oil it consumes; in 2003, some 9 percent came from Saudi Arabia.* So even if Strassel had been correct that ANWR production could "replace most" U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia, this would still constitute only a small portion of total U.S. imports.

Finally, even if the United States decreased its oil imports through increased domestic production in places like ANWR, Persian Gulf states would still control oil prices, since oil markets are global and these states control most of the world's oil supply and decide on the quantity they pump on a given day. As conservative Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson explained on October 6, 2004: "Even if we eliminated Persian Gulf imports, we'd still be vulnerable. Oil scarcities and prices are transmitted worldwide. The global economy -- on which we depend -- remains hugely in need of Persian Gulf oil." Indeed, EIA's 2004 analysis estimated that oil production in ANWR would reduce oil prices by a relatively insignificant 30 to 50 cents per barrel by 2025, "relative to a projected 2025 world oil price of $27 per barrel."

On the January 7 edition of PBS's Journal Editorial Report, host and Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot asked Strassel about the effect ANWR drilling could have on oil imports:

STRASSEL: When, you know, Republicans go to take up on an energy bill this year, the hope is that we will have some sort of thoughtful debate about supply in this country --

GIGOT: Particularly drilling in Alaska. How much of foreign imports would that displace, if any?

STRASSEL: Well, It could be really significant. People like to talk about our dependence on the Middle East. The reality is, if we got ANWR up and running, most of the estimates is -- are that it could replace most of the oil we get from Saudi Arabia in 20 or 30 years. That's not insignificant.

*Calculation: 1,774,000 barrels per day imported from Saudi Arabia (from this EIA chart) divided by 20,034,000 barrels per day consumed (from this EIA chart) equals approximately 8.9 percent.

1:47:38 PM    comment []