Putin's Other American Propaganda Effort: Anti-Fracking News

Energy politics makes strange bedfellows, none stranger than Robin Hood and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

RT, a media organization that the U.S. intelligence community calls "the Kremlin's principal international propaganda outlet," published an article on Jan. 2 under the unlikely headline: “Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest hideout under threat from frackers.” The article, which carries no byline and cites the work of environmental activists, laments plans of a unit of Ineos Group, a Switzerland-based chemical company, to conduct seismic testing for natural gas near Major Oak, the millennium-old tree that served in legend as headquarters to Robin Hood and his merry fellows. (Ineos Shale and Friends of the Earth have been involved in a public dispute over the environmental group's depiction of fracking, with the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Board weighing in.)