All gas and rare earths: where are the proper journalists?

The truth is out there

A short post about a big topic.

Proper journalism has, with honourable exceptions, been eviscerated by social media, tech oligarchs and far right politicians. Everyone has their favourite examples of what has gone wrong.

This, the first in an occasional series, will list my frustrations with things wrongly recorded and, more importantly, not recorded at all.

In ascending order of significance:

First, energy prices. Wherever you live you will have noticed that they are on the rise again. In the U.K., headlines have been dominated by Ukraine and Trump’s evisceration of The West. But the other item in the news has been a bigger than expected rise in gas and electricity prices announced for April by the energy regulator. That rise has been blamed, correctly, by the regulator, on ‘recent’ behaviour of wholesale gas prices. Gas prices, for all sorts of reasons, drive domestic energy bills, including electricity.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, has covered what has been happening to gas prices in the last few days. While this might be all sound and fury signifying nothing, I would have thought that a near 33% drop in natural gas prices might be worthy of some comment.

Second, another big - bigger - story has been the dispute between Zelensky and Trump over Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Trump is the extortionist, Zelensky the guy refusing to be extorted. Nevertheless, the Ukraine President is on the way to the White House to sign a deal about future revenues arising from the exploitation of those minerals.

Virtually all journalists - with honourable exceptions - have failed to spot that Ukraine (a) may not have those minerals and (b) even if they do, they may not be recoverable. Here is one of those honourable exceptions (from Bloomberg):

Also from Bloomberg:

Ukraine has no major rare-earth reserves that are internationally recognized as economically viable.

It is possible that Trump has been totally played by Zelensky on this issue. I for one would have liked to have seen much more about this. I, for one, would like to believe that Zelensky has totally shafted Trump.

Third, here is a hopeless opinion piece masquerading as serious analysis - from a publication I both respect and subscribe to

Adonis is a good man. A historian turned Labour politician turned journalist. Clearly a very bright man who has now reached the limit of his abilities. He makes three specious arguments about why we need to ignore all the obvious signs about our drift towards the next war.

First, we should not take Trump literally.

Second, even if Trump abandons Ukraine (which Adonis can’t for a second believe he will), provided Europe comes together, America’s alignment with Moscow won’t matter.

Third, Trump wouldn’t be so daft as to pursue policies that hurt America.

Where to start? Perhaps best not bother.

I’ll just leave the final world to Martin Wolf, a member of the dwindling band of proper journalists: