BP Oil Threatens To Arrest CBS Reporters Attempting To Investigate Spill

video

by Glynnis MacNicol | 10:15 am, May 20th, 2010

» 12 comments

Perhaps BP Oil has decided that their reputation is already so shot to shreds why even bother pretending to be nice. Last night CBS Evening News aired a segment on the oil spill and included a clip of BP contractors turning the CBS crew away from investigating part of the oil-drenched Louisiana shoreline under threat of being arrested if they proceeded. The contractor, or a Coast Guard…it’s not quite clear, told CBS that they were merely enforcing BP’s rules.

Alas, the CBS crew does not appear to have put up much of a fight. Which among other things makes me think BP better hope that Fox News doesn’t decide to send Shepard Smith to the Gulf Coast (the rest of us can just keep our fingers crossed that they do) because I imagine that would be the sort of coverage they wouldn’t so easily be able to shoo away.

Meanwhile, the scientific community is apparently losing patience with this administration’s slow reaction to the oil spill, This from the NYT:

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope…The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean. And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”

You know a ‘heckuva job’ meme is not far behind if this storyline catches on. CBS video below.

BP Oil Spill, CBS News, Deepwarter Horizon, Katie Couric, Shep Smith

Fox News: We proudly pander to Teabaggers

Corporations like BP like are benign entities that only do good. Just ask any teabagger.
http://PoliticalGlutton.com PoliticalGlutton

Great!~ Let’s give the Private Sector the right to arrest journalists. Sounds like the type of freedom Rand Paul could get behind.
timzank

This becomes a comments section now to determine if you hate big oil more than the press.

Big oil puts gas in my car, media just plain gives me gas. In this case I’ll side with BP & the Coast Guard based on the theory I assume the “zone” is more or less a crime scene type scenario whereby you can’t have every Tom, Dick, & Harry walking and boating around the shoreline while trying to contain the biggest oil spill in history.

Probably a few liability issues in there as well, i.e. reporters boat sinks, etc…who let them in the danger zone?

Don’t you think the low flying aerial reports we just saw are adequate at this point in time? What will standing in the sand 20 feet lower tell us?
The Real Royal King

I am so pleased to see CBS doing this. It has been a very long time since we have had anything resembling solid television journalism in America. Between MSNBC’s and FOX’s shameless advocacy journalism and CNN’s droning repetition, we get very little real news. This is a welcome change.
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LotusMan

Since when does BP get the set the “rules”?
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@LotusMan: Brett Michael Dykes of Yahoo! tweeted this afternoon that when he called BP’s Louisiana press office, his call was “fielded” by a Coast Guard Petty Officer.
lazzzlo

The news snippet is obviously edited…however, it does still seem like BP won’t address any common concerns.

And they certainly won’t take any responsibility which is what almost all of the journalists are asking.
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