On October 24, the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal published an article under the headline “Fracking Isn’t as Popular (or Important) in Pennsylvania as You Think.” “Politicians—and the press—often act as if support for extracting natural gas from shale is essential to electoral success in the state,” the article notes. “But polls show that Pennsylvanians, like other Americans, are about evenly split on fracking,” it continues, adding that “there’s little evidence that voters in the state are deciding how to cast their ballot based on the candidates’ positions on the issue.”

For months, Fox News has been pushing the idea that support for fracking is a litmus test for the presidency — a narrative that was also a staple of the network’s coverage in 2020. During the week leading up to that election, Fox repeatedly pushed the narrative that Pennsylvania would be won or lost by the candidates’ stance on fracking. 

Fox has seemingly based this narrative on misleading claims that the fracking industry is a significant employer in the state. For example, last month, Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt argued that the fracking industry supports “423,000 jobs in the state of Pennsylvania.” On October 23, Fox & Friends hosted Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, who claimed “there are 425,000 jobs in Pennsylvania … because of fracking.”

According to a September 13 fact check from public broadcaster WHYY, “The state of Pennsylvania reported about 26,000 direct jobs in the oil and gas industry in 2020, less than 1% of all jobs in the state. Four years later, that number is even smaller.”

This figure seems to be more in line with reality than the inflated estimates of industry sources, The Wall Street Journal reports, noting that “these purported job numbers are delusional.”