Big Oil In Our Schools...Have Their Media Enablers Been Completely Co-Opted?

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Remember when Chevron's supporting of technology-ish programs in public schools became an issue during last fall's Lotuslandian municipal election? 

And remember how some folks, including some of the usual proMedia suspects (Keef!), made fun of those who were concerned that ulterior motives were at play here.

Well....

It looks like, when it comes to this 'infiltrating-the-schools' business at least, Big Oil just may have at least one of their media enablers in the bag.

Jesse Brown has the story at Canadaland.

Here's his lede:

When teenagers at a Vancouver high school demanded in a November 2013 open letter/petition that the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers stop spreading oil sands "propaganda" to their school in the form of free lesson content, CAPP was adamant: they did no such thing.

Yes, they acknowledged sponsoring Energy IQ, "an energy education resource" distributed for free online and to 13,000 classroom teachers in public schools across Canada. CAPP's involvement was clearly labelled.

But CAPP spokesperson Geraldine Anderson told the Vancouver Sun that the oil sands lobby group "had no control over content or development of lesson plans.” She directed questions about the educational material to the people who, she said, created it - CAPP's partners at Canadian Geographic.

Another CAPP representative, Chelsie Klassen, reiterated that message to CANADALAND this week, stating that it was Canadian Geographic, not CAPP, who "created a teaching tool that provides independent and objective energy information in Canada’s classrooms."

Canadian Geographic supported CAPP's story in comments to the Vancouver Sun (they have not responded to CANADALAND's requests). Gilles Gagnier, then the magazine's vice-president of content creation (currently its publisher) said that “Canadian Geographic maintains full editorial control of all content created for this program."

Documents obtained by CANADALAND seem to tell a different story...


Head on over Canadaland to see Mr. Brown's documentary evidence, and see if you find this as egregious as I do.

OK?


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Me thinks that Canadian Geographic may soon be in news for other reasons pretty soon....Stay tuned to Canadaland for that stuff as well...


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