Penn State President Graham Spanier said he thinks the recent “This American Life” episode that focused on the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania was unbalanced.
The Public Radio International program, which was broadcast on WPSU, looked at the Marcellus Shale boom, including what it portrayed as an “entwined” relationship between industry, Penn State and Pitt universities and state government. That segment of the program featured interviews with Penn State Professor Terry Engelder and former Pitt professor Dan Volz. Volz is critical of the industry, while Engelder is supportive.
“I’m not sure the purpose of the program was to portray a balanced view of a very complex issue of the exploration and environmental protection around Marcellus Shale,” Spanier said when asked about the show. “We have 500 researchers working in the area of energy and the environment — 500. So, whatever conclusions you’d want to make about what one person is saying and therefore jump to conclusions about what the president of the university is thinking or doing is pretty off-base.”
“Wasn’t one of their main points that we were in collusion with the governor — really?” Spanier asked, before laughing.
Gov. Tom Corbett had proposed cutting state funding for Penn State and the other state-related universities in half this year. In the end, the final 2011-12 budget cuts state funding for the universities by 19 percent.