missions. today on our tail like a canary in a coal mine natural gas companies are singing and singing out a greener cleaner energy along with more jobs and a way to energy independence and utilities companies are buying into hydraulic fracturing big time we'll bring you the latest in the great energy debate coming up . plus for sale to the highest bidder your most private information including your political preference microsoft and yahoo are selling out to their customers all to make a quick buck well tell you what this means for your privacy ads well you can do about it sort of just complaining and begging them to cover important issues like to build a good citizen journalist just how to know if they're really well if they're not

going to do we're going to do it. and if you don't like what you see on t.v. change it that's the attitude of today's citizen journalists many risking arrest to bring you the stories but now police are cracking down will speak to independent journalist lucrative koski about the trouble of you've encountered all reporting on stories that go ignored. it's thursday june fourteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching arts. well here at our tier we have dedicated many segments to talking about hydraulic fracturing better known as fracking the risks it poses the dangers and on the flip side the economic benefits of the controversial procedure either way the practice is not only forging on it actually is expanding take a look at this it's a breakdown of the u.s. energy projection for the year two thousand and twelve the forecast for coal

generated electricity is expected to fall between forty percent that's the lowest level since the government started collecting the data back in one thousand and forty nine meanwhile natural gas use is on the rise it will be used to produce twenty nine percent of electricity up from twenty percent and two thousand and eight nuclear energy production now accounts for twenty percent of electricity and the remainder comes from renewable energy sources so as you can see companies are ditching coal for natural gas and the supply and the more supply at this gas grows the cheaper it gets people on both sides of the issue are passionate about their position those who support fracking say it paves the way for energy independence and creates thousands of jobs and a tough economy those against it say that the dangers outweigh the benefits of the case well our t.v. correspondent christine has covered this topic extensively actually traveling to some of the locations where fracking is happening and joins me now to discuss the

pros and cons of the energy source welcome christine good to be here so the country shifting away from coal to natural gas is this a good thing i mean i think at its core it is a very good thing not just shifting away from coal this was sold to the american people as shifting away from our dependence on foreign oil drilling for this natural gas being able to use this natural gas that we get on our own soil. is an amazing thing the problem is in a lot of cases it's been done in a way that has been harmful to people who live in the area. now some of these oil and gas companies say you know nobody really admits exactly what's going on but some of them admit it in different ways in one of the areas i travel to dimmick pennsylvania cabot oil and gas is the company there and they pay for huge water tanks you know this big to be stationed outside of people's homes because they were using well water in their plumbing system and it wasn't working it was dirty it was

giving them rashes it was making them sick it was making their pets sick so they haven't exactly said this is our fault but they've certainly done taken steps to make it a little bit easier for them but you know i think i really think that it's a good thing and i don't think fracking is a bad thing when it's done the right way and as you say the problem is that i guess in some instances it hasn't been done correctly and there was a movie that kind of brought to light all all of the issues associated with fracking the problems the health problems that people have encountered as a result of this method but there is a movie that is countering everything in this movie called gas land and i wanted to play for our audience a clip of this movie. is . not relevant there was

a point of your home movie just i was really glad to be going home and even more happy to be bringing good news the real truth about gasoline and the truth is that gas land is mostly how they are sure companies can do better but the people i talk to they said they actually are working hard and getting better every day. ok so that is in response to gas too that's true plan and response to this clip let's let's play right now. six states have documented over one thousand incidents of groundwater contamination bubbles and his says when it comes out. i wonder if they can drill whether we are going to it's a proof our water was good before you started girl or what i thought it was bad obviously we have

a problem here. ok so true plan is a most everything and that film that we just saw is bogus basically what they're trying to do is debunk some of what they're calling the myths and they're one of them is the fact that they brought attention to water being having the capability of being lit on fire i mean having investigated this yourself what do you think here's the deal i went to homes where people were able to light their water on fire that was post fracking contaminating their system no they could not do that before so the fact that this thirty four minute film called truth land by the way gasoline is one hundred seventy seven minutes and probably could be a lot longer because josh fox with gasland talks to families talks to real people shelley who doesn't give her last name in truth land interviews the so-called experts former department of environment environmental protection people you know people with interest in the business so she interviews them because she wants to

find out the truth now we know here in washington we live here in washington you can interview experts on any topic and get any answer that you want right you can get them to say you know one thing about hydraulic fracturing and then you can get other experts to say the this is of it both would probably be right but they skew the numbers and they skew things in their direction so you know again i think it's fine to go after a documentary i think it's fine to call things out and say you know this isn't this isn't right or this isn't real but the fact is you know josh fox it happened on his property it happened to the people that he spoke to i also spoke to several families and you got to ask the question what would. you know blue collar families in the middle of rural communities have to gain is there anything to gain by speaking out against this some people might say well you know they want lawsuit money or whatever but these people really believed when the capital and gas came to their homes and told them they would be paying them to be able to drill on their property they figured well i'm going to have extra money to pay my mortgage off

they would put a little away for my kid's life is good. if it would have worked as it was intended this would be a win win situation the problem is it didn't and so a lot of people were very upset so they complained and these are people you know not looking out for anything not looking out for attention or money they just want to make the situation better so i think it's truthful and i haven't totally watched it i've just read some reviews. i don't know if it's an alternative to gasoline i don't know how much it really calls it out other than that one short clip you showed where josh fox says oh yeah they did it before it's irrelevant but you know they catch it they got a gotcha moment and they use it for their film to try to prove a point that i don't really think they did a good job doing and of course fracking as you have witnessed for yourself and as a lot of critics say associated with some problems i guess what these people are saying maybe in this film they were blown out of proportion maybe not completely showing the full picture and i think we do have a map that shows just how widespread fracking is and the u.s.

these are all the states where it is currently happening at the moment where this practice is going on and christine natural gas is becoming the u.s. is number one export and using coal comes with its with its own environmental concerns and natural and as natural gas supply grows energy becomes cheaper for you know average consumers so america had these in these are all the pluses for the economy that that advocates of fracking are touting that's the thing you know one of the people i spoke to and i should say some of these rural communities i visited there are a lot of people who are against it but there are also a lot of people who are for it you know they say you know i am doing this for my country i like that you know these people are drilling in my backyard or in my you know zip code to get this natural gas to make energy cheaper i'm happy and one guy made a good point he said you know what one hundred years ago or however many probably a hundred when they came in to do the subway system in new york

a whole lot of people weren't happy about it. a whole lot of people said you know this is going to ruin my life but guess what the subway system is an amazing thing for the little tiny island of manhattan new york with that you know is able to sustain more than one million people on it so that's true i mean perhaps this is just growing pains but the fact is if fracking was done correctly and that's the thing that doesn't get out there fracking is an amazing thing if it's done right the problem is it's not done right it's hurting people's water supplies and they're not doing anything to fix it so would you say that the issue is that these companies they just need to be held more accountable yes but here's the thing regulations they keep trying to pass regulations to make it so the fracking companies have to report what's in their water supply and they keep what's that what chemicals they use to drill because you know they're fracking into the the rock down there and they need some chemicals to release that gas they wanted to make it so they don't have to report that obviously that's shady if you're not

doing anything wrong put it on a piece of paper say this is exactly what we're doing in our process and you know that's the best way to be for be frank with people and they will trust you if you are being shady and trying to get around these regulations and trying to get around transparency obviously you have something to hide so that's the deal here you know that's going on and you know it's sad because josh fox made this movie brought fracking to light really other than r t which also did. to try to get the word out to get people to understand exactly what's going on as you showed in that map fracking is happening more and more and more hopefully some of these companies are taking the precautions they need to take to make it safer and to make it so it can be used it can be a money maker as far as exploiting it like you said and to be used here at home so obviously still a lot of controversy a lot of people have passionate feelings towards whether they're on the pro side or the concert if not natural gas what is the alternative well the alternative is coal in the alternative is oil and you know i would love to think that we would have

a time when we only relied on that. that it was done safely but you know as you live here in d.c. i mean were you know our government is certainly in bed with these oil companies and you know that's not going away anytime soon but that is sort of the message that they tell to try to get this bring it to more prominence and more use so i don't have the answers are you saying very informative thank you so much for weighing in that was our t. correspondent christine friends out. also ahead here on our t.v. you hate getting spam as much as i have zero well before you go blaming cyber hackers and crazy advertising agencies you might want to look at the company hosting your e-mail account which well well tell you which web giants are selling your private information next. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through

it's already been made can you trust no one. is you view it with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called fascism when nobody dares to ask we do r t question more. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. at first break that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you'd be by

a lot of. thousands of times stronger than any kind of. well we've all seen them on our e-mails on our facebook pages and via text messages advertisement advertisements promising you a magical pelt to make you thinner an energy drink to pump you up for the day or a half price dream trip spam plagues all of our inbox is the amount you get depends on who has your information and it looks like the problem is about to get a whole lot worse major companies like microsoft and yahoo are playing the price is right with your personal information actually auctioning it off to the highest better and the better these days seems to be

a political ads all the while users have no idea it's happening here to explain how and why this is happening r.t. web producer andrew blake joins me now in the studio welcome andrea thank you very much was only under this is all going down without consumers having any idea that their information is being sold well and until now just within the last couple of weeks and couple of months pro publica in the new york times or through the big outlets who have actually tried to shine a little bit of light of what's been happening it's actually been happening all the way back to around two thousand and four presidential race and we're seeing a lot of it lately and what's happening is yahoo and microsoft in particular as well as a couple other companies what they are doing is that they're going through third party companies to take personal user info that you willingly voluntarily hand over when you create accounts with them they take that information they're matching it with information that you wouldn't expect them to have because they don't and political campaigns are spending lots and lots of money to get these personalized

profile so that they can then target specific audiences so you might you know just like oh i know sometimes i accidently go on your computer and i log on to your facebook and it posed a bunch of annoying things bunch of mr shoe ads or it was in your shoes but if you go on my it's just you know i don't want to know it comes out. that's it's a family program. anyways presidential candidates and smaller candidates through you know all sorts of elections they're putting lots of money into these campaigns and they're using some of that money to go out there and buy ads that will target specific people whether it has something to do with gender or shopping habits it's one thing but they're not just selling retail products here they're not selling you shoes they're selling you the future of the country the future selling you policy they're selling you ideologies that's not how that works out sorry ideology there you go there you go so a lot of people don't realize this right now and it's completely completely legal

for now and some are saying it might actually be working in some cases i mean and if you go back and look at the recall election in wisconsin from last week we know we don't know but we have a lot of people saying that money can buy votes then that was just direct advertising what about when this money is you know going to cater specifically liz wall or andrew blake that money is going to buy both votes if you ask me who is more likely to so i need and they obviously this can be used to influenza voters. is this another example that money can buy politics i know you mean that you know this is in the wake of super pacs and unlimited spending and record spending and elections is this yet another example of that i mean it's too early to really save it like a sort of cinema going on for a couple of years and obviously with the pace of technology it's becoming more and more rampant and you know i don't want to say we're going be able to tell with the two thousand and twelve presidential election because they say that the entire election came down to some sort of micro targeting micro marketing kind to be

ridiculous but down the road are we going to see this continuing is it actually going to have an effect on the way people vote is very well may be and the way they do this is they will start following the customers start following their online habits and they'll see what they do online they'll match it up with their account information they. zip codes their shopping history their education their income all these factors and they'll go ok i want to make sure that people in zip code two zero zero zero five that are undecided for the upcoming election that went to a four year college i want to target these people and they won't see the names but they will see this pool of people and they'll be able to say oh let's compare you with what we know about the statistic and let's make ads that are going to cater just to you and a lot of people there's a comparison i was just reading online believe it was in pro publica was saying

that when you're driving around you see a billboard everyone sees that billboard that's everyone's idea of what to that politician wants to do but when you go online sometimes you don't even expect these to be advertisements you just think that is just a pretty picture it's just a couple of words it's maybe you think it's a big campaign talking point but no these are these are ideas that are being spread just to you in a couple of the people that have a very few things in common that these campaigns want to capitalize on like they're getting pretty crafty or would you say that this is the future of election campaigning i really hope not i mean given. the size of the race in wisconsin last week and you know what we've seen with systems you know in the vote in a super pacs the future of campaigning in america has already been skewed so dramatically over the last you know two years that it really comes down to this. really really hope not by the i mean like i said this is one those things where only recently only unless a couple weeks are people starting to come out and talk about it president obama

and governor romney their offices have talked a little bit about this micro-targeting but not not a whole lot yahoo and microsoft they've admitted you know some sort of role in this but there's a bunch of third party companies some of them are even based in ireland and what they do these are the companies that take the name that you give the yahoo when you make an e-mail account and they take the. information and they try to match it up with publicly available information they're doing all the dirty work and those are being sold to the big campaigns all right so here we are all of us though we're hearing all this don't like the sound of it is there anything that one can do to safeguard our information absolutely opt out opt out opt out any time you know when these accounts first no one should have a yahoo email address this isn't one thousand nine hundred nine anymore come on this to no end what it's all and it's actually really weird if you if you go and look at yahoo and microsoft are the two big companies the two biggest that emitted

that this is what they're doing but google and facebook have both publicly come out and said no we respect you know the rights for users we're not going to do this you will and facebook are on the top of their game right now microsoft like they peaked you know ten fifteen twenty years ago yahoo yahoo has been downhill since two thousand it's still you know obviously of value but nowhere near what it was a decade ago so is this their last chance to try to make some money before they go the way of the whole dot com boom. i don't know if you are a wealth of knowledge in around this time every day we ask you what you have cooking over there be the website what are you working on today stories like a story let's hear it let's. see what do we have today you know i just finished a lot of this so you can go see the slightly more eloquent talking points that i made on air right now i thought that was quite eloquent. on the one that's not being eloquent what else is new. we only have so many stories every day i don't

want to i want to tell you what to go look at go read them all one mark mine give us a peek of something else one more i know there's another good one there. they're trying to put up with. well to check out all the wonderful work so if you really need one every i restart i want you to give me one chance at a time all right now everybody's going to go online check out you know that were. work and that is our usa see all the important stories that you and your blake is working on and that was andrew blakers our r.v. web producer so this all still had an artsy cable rating cable news ratings are on the decline so where are people heading for their daily dose of how lines the future of the industry might just rest with the citizen coming up we'll tell you all about the trials and tribulations of so-called organic journalism. one of american power continue. on our show

about. might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that of you were drinking starbucks or the surprising him really you. but in the alone or so we'll get a real headline with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and for what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. .

to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. citizen journalists are often there to report on things the mass media is not but this function is threatened by harsh treatment at the hands of police force they're often lumped together with activists and protesters which results in being tear gassed and even arrested some insist they are specifically targeted by officers artie's abby martin takes a look at how this all can pose a threat to democracy. the fourth the state something that's crucial to keep power in check but as

a consolidated corporate media machine continues to marginalize the voice of the people most are more radical leftists they hate capitalism want to burn a british system down or distort the truth yet the bank bailout made money for american taxpayers right now to the tune of ten billion dollars anticipated that it will be twenty billion dollars. citizen journalists and independent press outlets have picked up the slack instead of just. planing and begging them to cover important issues like the build a bear group citizen journalist just had enough and they're like well if they're not going to do it we're going to do it luke is the one man band of independent media who has built a custom rig for live streaming and video recording was able to put together in order to provide the best coverage i could possibly do any. coverage often watched by thousands however police are making it increasingly difficult for journalists to report the ground truth especially since the start of occupy wall street independent journalists who are considered outside of the us corporate media are

arrested on no charges whatsoever this guy just saw to me can you please do something off certain you stop that meant they were singled out they say for providing raw and unfiltered video footage of police action i have watched the semi p.d. i arrest people for streaming just specifically target them in the crowd will point them out and. some have been intimidated they didn't give us an explanation to why they're stopping us and we had homeland security target me and many other we are changed chapters during our nato coverage we had guns pulled on us scott campbell's citizen journalist from occupy oakland was shot with a beanbag round simply for filming a police line oh i know how we were sent in with time to send a message and also. possibly because i was out and we are. now. so why the fear of citizens keeping a check on authorities so innocent journalists and independent journalists have.

countered the spin put out by city hall you are. this stablish man is scrambling to stay relevant in a new media world but they're fighting a losing battle according to polls the majority of americans don't trust the mainstream media to provide them with accurate and unbiased reporting and many cities networks is driven by corporate interests and dominated by their financial. bakker's if truth telling and power challenging are not the most profitable thing then that becomes the sole. jurisdiction of corporate media people who are specifically focused you know not product not for profit media citizen reporting live streamers things like that but with no corporate sponsors dissident journalists pose a threat to the system they can bring the power back to the visual people by telling the truth and that could be dangerous for them as technology develops it will be increasingly difficult for the mainstream media to maintain control over the flow of information to the american people really no longer history but when it

was just. a scary thought for the powers that be. are to washington. they a lot of shows coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with alona to see what's on today's agenda a lot of what you were going on over there and what we've got two great panels this evening for us we're going to look at a little foreign policy we're going to talk about yemen we're going to talk about syria and we're going to talk about the fact that we are expanding our operations all over africa where they're sending three thousand u.s. troops next year so looks like the u.s. military is not going to leave one single corner of this globe untouched and then we'll just talk about billionaires ruling the world as carlos slim tells us that the retirement age should be raised to seventy sheldon al adelson says that he's going to spend a hundred million dollars to make sure obama doesn't get reelected it just seems more obvious that you know all the power these days is concentrated in the hands of

very few people. that is all coming up next with the ilona show in just half an hour a lot of thank you that's going to do it now for the news if you missed part of any part of this show today you are in luck because we post all of our interviews on line and follow you can just head on over to our youtube channel that's youtube dot com slash r t america click comment and post you can also check out our website and that is r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter outlets well we'll see you right back here and a half hour hour and a half that is seven o'clock be here. the climate of american power continues. are things in our country so bad that might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks has a surprising him greedy i'm bored.