“Gasland” Director Josh Fox Arrested

The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox was handcuffed and arrested Wednesday as he attempted to film a Congressional hearing on the controversial natural gas drilling technique, known as fracking, which the Environmental Protection Agency recently reported caused water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. Fox directed the award-winning film, “Gasland,” which documents the impact of fracking to communities across the United States, and is now working on a sequel. Fox says he was arrested after Republicans refused to allow him to film because he did not have the proper credentials. “We wanted to report on what happened [at the hearing]. I was not interested in disrupting. It was not a protest action,” says Fox. “I was simply trying to do my job as a journalist and go in there and show to the American people what was transpiring in that hearing, so that down the line — as we know there will be a lot of challenges mounted to that [Pavillion, Wyoming] EPA report, and frankly to the people in Pavillion who have been sticking up for themselves and demanding an investigation into the groundwater contamination — to make sure that people could view that in a larger forum than usually happens.”