Two filmmakers behind a new pro-fracking documentary went on the attack yesterday at a gathering of newsmakers in Washington, D.C., lambasting what they call myths about hydraulic fracturing that their film aims to counter.

Filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "FrackNation" makes its television debut next week, were in D.C. to promote the film. The film's third director, Polish journalist Magdalena Segieda, was not present.

"According to myths propagated by The New York Times, CNN, etc., if you go to Dimock, Pa., where there's fracking occurring, [you'll find] death, destruction," McElhinney said. "Obviously, with that kind of description, you'd expect to find dramatic stories everywhere."

Dimock was made famous in the 2010 documentary "Gasland," in which some of the town's residents are shown setting their tap water on fire. The filmmakers attribute this phenomenon to naturally occurring emissions rather than hydraulic fracturing.

McElhinney said there was no such evidence of fracking-caused problems in Dimock. Rather, she and McAleer argue fracking has helped local communities across the United States. In part of the film, they took that message to Poland, which is largely reliant on Russian energy giant Gazprom for its natural gas needs.

"FrackNation" bills itself as a rebuttal of "Gasland" and bears the tag line, "a journalist's search for the fracking truth." It focuses on the controversy surrounding the use of hydraulic fracturing -- the process of shooting sand, water and chemicals down well bores at high pressures to extract previously unreachable deposits of oil or natural gas. The documentary aims to debunk environmentalists' claims that fracking can contaminate groundwater.

The publicist for "Gasland" did not respond to a request to interview filmmaker Josh Fox. However, a section of the film's website includes a 39-page document called "Affirming Gasland" in which Fox responds to criticism from gas-industry groups.

"FrackNation" directors McElhinney and McAleer previously produced the 2009 film "Not Evil Just Wrong" in response to Al Gore's documentary about climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Reactions to "FrackNation" have been mixed. Reviewers lauded the documentary's thorough research and McAleer's use of the Freedom of Information Act to garner video and background from U.S. EPA, although other critics denounced the film's heavy-handed approach to the issue and considered it one-sided.

John Armstrong, an organizer with the Albany, N.Y.-based FrackAction anti-fracking group, dismissed the film's premise and insisted it was an attempt to debase grass-roots movements.

"It seems like a personal attack on our side's credibility as well as our motives," the New York native said in an interview, pointing out what he described as a "cozy" relationship between the filmmakers and oil companies based on promotions by Energy in Depth, the online public outreach arm of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

McAleer was quick to observe that "FrackNation" received no funding from the oil and natural gas industry and turned away $30,000 from such companies.

"We just felt we can paddle our own canoe," he said, adding that the funding issue "was very important for us."

Instead, the film was financed by more than 3,000 individual contributors via the online funding platform Kickstarter, raising $212,265.

"FrackNation" is set to air Tuesday on Mark Cuban's AXS TV at 9 p.m. EST.