Good catch by Fallows here.
See if you can guess how the lead paragraph of the story ends. It begins this way:
“Americans are using more gadgets, televisions and air conditioners than ever before. But, oddly, their electricity use is barely growing, …”
Possible choices for the rest of the paragraph are:
(a) “… reflecting hard-won efficiencies in electric-power use by industries and utilities.”
(b) “… raising hopes that economic growth can coexist with reduced resource-use and greenhouse-gas emissions.”
(c) “… which together with increased shale-gas production may hasten the era of ‘energy independence’ for the United States.”
(d)”… posing a daunting challenge for the nation’s utilities.”
OK, you peeked, and know that the real answer is (d).
The objectivity of news versus the corporate mentality. Fallows says there is no way to be objective about news that some outlets will report one way and others will report another, but I think this skips a vital point about our susceptibility to corporate propaganda. Corporate messaging takes us, by ambulance, to the monument of corporate personhood. There, cases like Citizens United are debatable, while back on the street or over the fence, the look silly. Editors at major news outlets allow corporate personhood to become another point of view, but we have to view this is as a fundamental corruption we live with voluntarily and not allow it slip into yet another example where views merely differ.