Politico Publishes Environmental Response to That Absurd BP Op-Ed

Politico Magazine stepped in it last week when it published an op-ed defending BP’s role in the 2011 Deepwater Horizon oil spill — an op-ed written by BP. It looked even worse when it turned out that the glorified BP press release comprised the entirety of Politico Magazine’s coverage on the topic. It looked even worse after we all remembered that BP sponsors Mike Allen’s Playbook.

Well, no more. PM evened the score Monday morning, running a counter from Kara Langford, “interim director of the Gulf Restoration Program at Ocean Conservancy,” who accuses BP of carefully selecting data points and even citing injury studies that haven’t yet been released to the public in order to skew the effects the spill had on the gulf:

BP is quick to remind us of their ‘unprecedented response’ to the oil disaster. Let’s not forget, however, that the time and money spent cleaning up the oil was not an indication of BP’s generosity, but rather a testament of the unprecedented damage that BP’s oil inflicted on the Gulf.

Per the “both sides” school of journalism, we’re all good here. If you are, however, tempted to object that the wildlife, local industries, and communities devastated the Deepwater spill lack the platform that multinational corporation BP enjoys and perhaps deserve more space in journalistic publications capable of countering such an imbalance, then Politico and its subsidiaries might not be the publication group for you.

[Image via Shutterstock]

——
>> Follow Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) on Twitter

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!