BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

[IScreamSundays]

Source: Newsweek

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

“We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists,” the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “We strongly feel that the reason for this massive is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press.”

The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation’s attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. Within days of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon. Consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon’s 7 million credit cards. Forty days after the spill, protestors organized a national boycott of Exxon. So far, no national boycott of BP is in the works, despite growing frustration over the company’s inability to cap the leaking well. Obviously, pictures are emerging from this spill, but much of the images are coming from BP and government sources.

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Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html

[Angry Dragon]

1. Control the press..........Control the message

FREEDOM OF SPEECH??

I guess bp does not care about our Constitution

What the hell is going on??

[tavalon]

2. You guess?

Be honest. You know they don't care about our Constitution. And they aren't the minority.

[Angry Dragon]

5. Just trying to let others come to the same conclusion

[chill_wind]

3. K & R.

[FailureToCommunicate]

4. That was why the ending of "China Syndrome" was even scarier than the mishap

Control the press control the disaster.

[mzteris]

6. "even flyovers"

hey - did you know this:

"There's not much the media loves more than a good disaster, especially when it comes with images of vulnerable animals covered in oil. But to get those heart-wrenching photos, sometimes you have to make a few sacrifices ... like the vulnerable animals. Where the oil hasn't hit widlife yet, the media has.

The Deepwater Horizon Unified Command had to put out a release last week reminding media that it's illegal to land aircraft on wildlife refuges. The federal regulation prohibits flying anything from helicopters to hang gliders at an altitude that disturbs wildlife, or performing unauthorized landings or take-offs on a national wildlife refuge, except in an emergency. Getting the perfect shot of the oil slick doesn't qualify as an emergency.

Apparently the media's new favorite fly-over spot and landing pad is Breton National Wildlife Refuge's Chandeleur Islands, a system of coastal islands near Louisiana where several threatened and endangered species of birds are in their nesting season. When aircraft, even the small ones, get too close, it can frighten the birds away from their nests, exposing the eggs to predators. The disturbance may also cause the birds to abandon their nests completely.

The refuge has been temporarily closed to the public so that officials can assess the damage from the oil spill and help injured or oiled wildlife. Just a few days before Unified Command's press release on aircraft, the second oiled bird was found, a young male pelican rescued in Breton Sound. . . "

-more-

http://animals.change.org/blog/view/oil_spill_wildlife_threatened_by_media_coverage


Reminds me of that "GET OUT OF THERE" clip. Was the BP guy "ordering the media out" or trying to keep the stupid ijit who was NOT wearing protective equipment OUT of the damn oil??

[Bonobo]

9. I couldn't decide...

Whether you were grasping at straws or just building a strawman. Which is it?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mupm2BmIjtc/S8EhVTEpDTI/AAAAAAAALck/m_E2KPBJBHU/s1600/grasping+at+straws.jpg

[mzteris]

10. little things called facts & reality.

sorry if those are foreign concepts for ya.

so Breton is NOT a "national refuge" there are NOT laws governing access? media hounds are NOT endangering wildlife even further?

Which part of this do you think is "just straw"?

[boppers]

7. "We strongly feel that the reason for this massive..."

missive? massive <something> ?

[chill_wind]

8. Embedded controlled media and a gagged local citizenry.

We should more used to it by now.

Local fishermen and charter boat captains are also being pressured by BP not to work with the press. Left without a source of income, most have decided to work with BP to help spread booms and ferry officials around. Their passengers used to include members of the press, but not anymore. “You could tell BP was starting to close their grip, telling the fishermen not to talk to us,” says Jared Moossy, a Dallas-based photographer who was covering the spill along the Gulf Coast earlier this month. “They would say that BP had told them not to talk to us or cooperate with us or that they’d get fired.”

It's a good thing a few American citizens and journalists have decided not to play along and be such docile subjects of BP rule.

Gulf Cleanup Workers say not given protective gear. More Reports of Illness Emerging. (LA Times & ProPublica)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8425060

Mother Jones:

The spill workers staying at my motel later tell me they've been specifically instructed by BP not to talk to any media, but they're pissed because BP tried to tell them that the crude they were swimming around in to move an oil containment boom was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud.

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

[Cybergata]

11. The Evil that is being done is mind boggling.

First we weren't allowed to see the war dead from Iraq so people in the U.S. won't realize that U.S. citizens are dying. Now the press is being kept away from covering one of the worse man made ecological disasters! Isn't it amazing how in an age of information, the information that people are allowed to have is so tightly controlled by the evil bastards who control the world. I put the oil companies up there are the number one evil bastards of our time. You would think this would be a wake up call for people in this country, but way too many will believe anything that is pumped into their brains via the T.V. :-( The sad part about it is that we are all "fiddling" while the world is burning.