Alberta energy 'war room' chief apologizes for tweets attacking New York Times
Four tweets were deleted from 20-tweet thread posted Wednesday
The head of Alberta's $30-million-a-year energy war room is apologizing after the organization posted a lengthy social media response to an article in The New York Times that questioned the news organization's credibility.
The Canadian Energy Centre's Twitter account said The Times has been "called out for anti-Semitism countless times," has a "dodgy" track record, is "routinely accused of bias" and is "not the most dependable source."
Four of the tweets were then deleted from a 20-tweet thread posted in response to a Times article on international lenders that have stopped financing oilsands projects in Alberta.
We have a new article to talk about today. As always, lets provide some information (no reference to Mad Max though as jokes seem to make a lot of you really angry)<a href="https://t.co/2kNGUQUEWY">https://t.co/2kNGUQUEWY</a>
—@CDNEnergyCentreThe remaining tweets take issue with the news agency's interpretation of the data, and defend the environmental record of Canada and the oil and gas sector, but don't directly attack the newspaper's credibility.
The centre was promised by Premier Jason Kenney in the provincial election last year with a mandate to promote the energy industry and fire back in real time against what the United Conservative government deems to be misinformation.
Tom Olsen, who heads the energy centre, apologized via his personal Twitter account for the offending tweets and said the issue has been dealt with internally.
I apologize for some of the tweets in <a href="https://twitter.com/CDNEnergyCentre?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CDNEnergyCentre</a> Twitter thread this am<br>The tone did not meet CEC's standard for public discourse<br>This issue has been dealt with internally<br>There will be a substantive response to the NYT article w/in our mandate of challenging inaccuracies
—@TomOlsenXIX