Fox News Turns A Blind Eye To Keystone XL Protest

Thousands of demonstrators formed a human chain around the White House on Sunday in protest to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian tar sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries. Protesters highlighted environmental concerns related to the risk of oil spills and groundwater contamination along the pipeline route and expressed frustration with the “clout of oil company interests in Washington.”

CNN, MSNBC, and several major newspapers covered the Keystone XL protest -- the largest in a series of demonstrations that have sparked a national debate over the pipeline.

Yet after relentlessly promoting Tea Party protests last year, Fox News has not even reported on Sunday's protest.

In fact, Fox News' “straight news” anchor Megyn Kelly devoted an entire segment to the pipeline today without mentioning the protest once. Kelly downplayed environmental concerns, saying only that “the environmentalists don't like it, they're worried about what the pipeline is going to do, is it going to leak, what's it going to do to the Midwest, and so on.”

But Kelly did make time to repeat grossly exaggerated oil industry estimates about the benefits of the project: “It would create at least 50,000 jobs according to estimates and help generate billions of dollars in revenue. Sounds good, right?”

UPDATE (11/8/11): On November 7, Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier covered the protest.