Moscow and Doha outlets sometimes offer toughest coverage of fracking

This week, the U.S.-based arm of Moscow-based 24-hour English-language news network RT broadcast an alarming story.

It linked hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, to earthquakes in Oklahoma.

It comes four months after a lengthy documentary on RT that questioned the safety of this technique.

The video below shows high methane levels in drinking water near fracking operations.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, has been running hard-hitting reports on fracking for several years.

The one below, which links fracking to earthquakes in Ohio, appeared on Al Jazeera three years ago.

Al Jazeera has also given coverage to environmental concerns about fracking in the United Kingdom. 

In his recent book Groundswell: The Case for Fracking, author and Canadian energy-industry booster Ezra Levant claimed that the Russian and Qatari governments are trying to whip up fears about this drilling technique. That's because through fracking, countries are gaining access to new supplies, which pose a threat to Russian and Qatari natural-gas exports.

The Qatari government headed in Doha owns Al Jazeera.

It's not just Levant making these types of claims.

Former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen claimed last year that Russia "engages actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations—working against shale gas obviously to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas".

Environmentalists and First Nations activists in Canada, on the other hand, argue that our media outlets don't pay nearly sufficient attention to fracking because they rely heavily on advertising from energy companies profiting from this practice.

This week, Levant's book was one of seven finalists on the long list for the National Business Book Award, which is sponsored by BMO and PwC.

The other nominees are UBC journalism professor Alfred Hermida's Tell Everyone, Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, Gordon Pitts' Fire in the Belly, Peter Foster's Why We Bite the Invisible Hand, Jacques Poitras' Irving vs. Irving, and Clive Veroni's Spin: How Politics Has the Power to Turn Marketing on its Head.

The jury is chaired by CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge and includes suspended senator Pamela Wallin, publisher Anna Porter, Home Capital Group chairman emeritus William Dimma, businessman David Denison, and former journalist Deirdre McMurdy, who works for the Toronto-based public-relations and government-relations firm Navigator.

If Groundswell wins the National Business Book Award, it will say something not only about the jury, but also about Canada in 2015.