CJR, NYTimes, a few more: BP tries to clamp a cap on another thing: the press
It’s hard to cover a story one cannot get to. We’ve been reading occasional complaints for weeks that BP, with most of the hardware (however ancient it may be) for dealing with the worst crude oil spill in the nation’s history and thus having most of the people running the show, has been no help and plenty of hindrance to reporters covering their public demonstration of calamitous non-preparation. It’s no surprise that a private company’s suits would want to stifle press freedom to go to the spill, to take pictures, and to interview people in the know. But pathetic that they have been permitted to get away with it. I mean, does BP really have authority over air space and navigation in the Gulf of Mexico? ow about just going to a public beach? Who gave them that? Where are the federal agencies that say they are in charge? Are they in cahoots with BP in stifling press access?
Some reporters have bit back the best way they know: in print. At McClatchy, Erika Bolstad late last month wrote a furious story on the “litany of half-truths, withholding crucial video, blocking media access to the site and a failure to share timely and complete information” by BP. The story strongly suggests that the feds have stood by and done nothing to get information faster to the public – the success of one congressman, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, at getting a live video stream of the streaming well head made public being an exception.
That piece triggered at the Columbia Journalism Review an editorial castigating all involved for trying to manage the news. Also at CJR, Brett Norman in late May wrote on “the gall” of BP for shutting down its “top kill” effort for the better part of a day while the press, not told, blithely went on reporting that the ultimately failed effort was continuing as planned.
While some outlets – notably NPR and its Rick Harris have done exemplary work in calculating independently how much oil is being spilled, CJR’s Curtis Brainard this week posted on the timid acceptance by many reporters of official statistics and techno-optimism. Brainard gathered his own list of pleas, some from members of the press to their colleagues, to use their own heads too when listening to official sources.
The NYTimes‘s coverage has been voluminous and largely expert from the start, but only today did it turn a bright light on the hectoring its and others’ reporters have had to endure to get the story. Jeremy W. Peters reports vividly several anecdotes, including one instance in which operators of an airplane leased by reporters were repeatedly stonewalled by CP in trying to get an overflight of some spill areas. Eventually the FAA got BP out of that loop, but why was it in it in the first place? It goes on.
Reporters are accustomed to finding ways around barriers to covering the news. They are good at it, too. But the failure by federal agencies, which have to know that full public disclosure of this spills is one way to be sure it gets controlled this time and chances of it happening again will go down, is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, the drear goes on:
Nat’l Geographic – Christine Dell’Amore : Oil-coated Gulf Birds Better Off Dead? - Reuters – Michael Peltier: Heavier oil from Gulf spill washes up in Florida ;
- Time Magazine – Brian Walsh: The Gulf Disaster: Whose Asses Need Kicking? ; worth a whole separate post – a long essay and roundup.
- AP – Rich Matthews : AP journalist dives into Gulf, can see only oil ; He’s not the first reporter to go swimming in it. Included video link, and a lot of footage from a commercial diver who, until the last month, told everybody how good oil rigs are for the environment.
- Charlie Petit
